With police moving in at Columbia, a violent clash at UCLA and simmering
tensions at Stanford. At UC Berkeley, the tent city on the steps and grass in front
of and around Sproul Hall continues to grow, with maybe 75 tents there now, but
that encampment remains surprisingly calm and peaceful, with little of the
tension we’ve seen elsewhere.

Those students are not blocking access to a Cal education, and the administration is taking a hands off approach for now, with no police presence at all.

To find out more about what’s going on there, I sat down at Sproul Plaza with Yazem Kashlan, a PhD student in developmental economics who is one of the leaders of the Cal encampment. He is of Syrian and Moroccan descent, born and raised in New Jersey.