Wealthy son of advertising executives has long record of participating in violent demonstrations.
By World Israel News Staff
The leader of an anti-Israel mob that stormed a building at Columbia University and held a staff member hostage is a “professional agitator” with no links to the school, authorities revealed.
James Carlson, 40, was arrested by New York City police for refusing to vacate a building on campus illegally occupied by protesters.
He is the son of Richard Tarlow and Sandy Carlson Tarlow, who founded the wildly successful advertising firm Carlson and Partners.
After Richard Tarlow died in May 2022, his estate was estimated to be worth at least $20 million, according to UK outlet the Daily Mail.
Carlson, who is an animal rights lawyer, is married to a former model and lives in a $3.4 million Brooklyn brownstone, the Mail reported.
Despite his privileged background, Carlson had had numerous run-ins with the law.
He is a “long-time figure in the anarchist world” and antigovernmental “extremist circles,” sources told the New York Post.
In April, Carlson attacked a counter-protester, physically assaulting the victim and then setting their Israeli flag ablaze.
He was arrested and charged with a hate crime, but the pending criminal charges did not dissuade Carlson from rejoining the protests at Columbia.
In 2005, Carlson was charged by San Francisco prosecutors for participating in an “anti-capitalist” march, which saw a police officer physically attacked and their cruiser set on fire.
But Carlson is just one of many outsiders who participated in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
While the protest movement has been portrayed in mainstream media as a student uprising, the identities of those arrested tell a different story.
“A preliminary review of the numbers, just the beginning process of analyzing, but it appears, though, that over 40% of those who participated in Columbia and CUNY were not from the school and they were outsiders,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams told NPR.