New York City police arrested dozens of Pro-Palestinian protesters on Columbia University on Wednesday evening after they took over part of a central library on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The mass arrest, which was authorized by Columbia\u2019s acting president, Claire Shipman, comes about a year after Columbia was the epicenter of student anti-Israel protests. At the beginning of May 2024, police had stormed the campus to clear out and arrest protesters who had forcibly entered a campus building, alongside an encampment protest on the quad.<\/p>\n
Since then, protest activity at Columbia has been less frequent, as the school has contended with a Trump administration crackdown on it and other schools with high-profile pro-Palestinian protests. The demonstration at the library on Wednesday by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the school\u2019s main pro-Palestinian coalition, appeared to be an attempt to revive that movement.<\/p>\n
Shipman authorized the NYPD to break up the protest on Wednesday evening, hours after protesters entered a reading room in the school\u2019s Butler Library en masse and began a demonstration there. The protest took place at a time when students are studying in advance of final exams.<\/p>\n
The protesters beat drums and unfurling a banner reading \u201cBasel Al-Araj Popular University,\u201d named for a Palestinian writer killed in a gunfight by Israeli troops in the West Bank in 2017, years before the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Many of them wore masks, which Columbia banned in March in a bid to recover $400 million in funding frozen by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
Columbia officers blocked the exits and would not let protesters leave the building without showing ID. This was the first time since last May that school leaders had called in police to clear out a protest, The New York Times reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe individuals who disrupted activities in Butler Reading Room 301 still refuse to identify themselves and leave the building,\u201d Shipman\u2019s statement said. \u201cColumbia has taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added, \u201cRequesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community\u2026 Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The protest and police raid occurred as campus pro-Palestinian protests are reentering the spotlight. At the University of Washington, a pro-Palestinian protest caused $1 million of damage to an engineering building, the school said. And on Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik and other members of Congress threatened university presidents with the loss of federal funding, or pressure to resign, in the latest hearings on campus antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the Trump administration has suspended billions of dollars of federal funding at a series of schools, has arrested international students and has revoked student visas in what it says is an effort to fight campus antisemitism.<\/p>\n
CUAD , which has embraced extreme rhetoric during this school year, decried the NYPD\u2019s presence on campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cColumbia called in fascist NYPD on its own students protesting genocide\u2014because nothing says \u2018global leadership\u2019 like brutalizing courageous youth in service of empire. Basil al-Araj lives. Honor our martyrs. The Student Intifada continues,\u201d the group said, in a reference to two Palestinian uprisings against Israel, the latter of which included a series of lethal bombings.<\/p>\n
Columbia Hillel\u2019s director, Brian Cohen, praised the arrests, and called for the students involved to face consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarlier today, masked protesters took over Butler Library while Columbia students were studying for finals,\u201d he tweeted. Once again, protesters violated many University rules and infringed on the rights of Jewish students to study for exams without being screamed at and harassed. We are grateful to the public safety officers who, at great risk to themselves, tried to stop the protesters from storming the library.\u201d<\/p>\n
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