Hooded youths caused serious damage to the premises of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University early yesterday as academics warned that violence on campus is escalating and that they are becoming hostages to a small group of troublemakers.

In the center of Thessaloniki, dozens of self-styled anarchists hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at riot police, who responded by firing tear gas. The youths torched a number of parked cars and wrecked the facades of several banks near the campus.

There were no reports of injuries nor, as usual, of any arrests.

This kind of violence, as well as attacks on individual professors inside lecture halls, is on the rise, professors told Sunday’s Kathimerini, noting that troublemakers are exploiting a ban on police entering university grounds to essentially do whatever they want. “We have to put a stop to this violence which unfortunately appears to be spreading,” said Evgenia Bournova, a senior official of the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (POSDEP). “This behavior is an affront to the institution of university asylum,” Bournova said, noting that “universities are places where the free exchange of ideas should be promoted.”

Yiannis Panousis, an Athens University criminologist who was badly beaten in a lecture hall last year by assailants wielding iron bars for his criticism of domestic terrorism, told Kathimerini that the situation is no better now. “There is a climate of fear in universities,” he said, adding that the upheaval cannot be blamed purely on organized groups but is also due to a “general climate of lawlessness” prevailing on campuses.

As self-styled anarchists cause problems on campuses, there are reports of a spike in violent behavior by another group, much further to the right of the political spectrum. A series of attacks against immigrants living in districts close to the center of Athens, such as Neos Cosmos and Aghios Panteleimonas, is being linked to the extreme right-wing group Chrysi Avgi, or Golden Dawn. Last Monday, a group of youths beat up an Iraqi teenager in Neos Cosmos, the latest in a string of attacks on migrants in the area.