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In June of 2020, as demonstrations spread across the country in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, Biden gave the best speech of his campaign. “We need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction,” he said. “And we must be vigilant about the violence that’s being done by the incumbent president to our democracy and to the pursuit of justice.” He then attacked Trump for using riot police to clear a protest outside the White House so he could do his infamous photo op holding the Bible that he’s never read.

It was a similar message to the one Biden delivered on Thursday—except that you’d be hard pressed to find many instances of un-instigated violence by student protesters over these past few weeks. Meanwhile, there is ample, indisputable evidence of police violence against student protesters. At UCLA, police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators, causing one student to require 11 staples to close a head wound. At Arizona State University, four Muslim students had their hijabs ripped off by officers. At New York’s City College, police shattered one protester’s ankle and broke the teeth of two others. Student journalists have been pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested at some protests. At many, reporters are locked out altogether—a grotesque assault on the press’s ability to inform the public and uphold democracy.

In his speech this week, Biden attempted to define what he meant by violence and chaos—and it wasn’t what I just described. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations—none of this is a peaceful protest,” he said. Misdemeanors like vandalism or trespassing—a reference to the occupation of Hamilton Hall—surely don’t warrant hundreds of NYPD officers in riot gear. Moreover, classes were canceled at Columbia in large part because of the police presence on campus. If anyone caused a disruption to education at Columbia, it was its embattled president, Minouche Shafik, whose panicked response escalated the situation dramatically. And the only commencement that has been called off was at the University of Southern California, which did so after the controversy generated by its decision to block its pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking.