Police arrested dozens of Columbia University students who took over part of the school’s main library on Wednesday in one of the largest pro-Palestinian protests on campus since last year’s wave of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
At least 40 to 50 students, their wrists cuffed with plastic zip-ties, were observed being loaded into New York Police Department buses and vans outside Butler Library as NYPD officers swept through the six-story building to arrest other protesters who refused to disperse.
Police came on campus in numbers at the behest of Columbia officials who reported that the student protesters who had taken over the second-floor main reading room of the library were committing trespassing. Social media videos and photos depicted protesters, many masked, standing on tables, drumming and unfurling signs reading “Strike For Gaza” and “Liberated Zone” under the chandeliers of the Lawrence A. Wein Reading Room.
US President Donald Trump attacked Columbia last year for pro-Palestinian campus protests, calling them antisemitic and a display of failure to safeguard Jewish students. Student demonstrators, some of whom are Jewish organizers, counter that Trump and other conservative politicians who are most pro-Israel are unfairly equating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism.
Columbia’s trustees have been in negotiations with the Trump administration, which in March declared it had cancelled grants totalling hundreds of millions of dollars to the university for scientific research. The university has maintained that it has made efforts to fight antisemitism and other forms of bias on its campus while attempting to ward off charges by civil rights organizations that it was capitulating to government incursions into academic freedom.
Columbia University reported late on Wednesday that it had asked for NYPD support “in securing the building,” and that two of its public safety officials were injured in the standoff. A police spokesperson confirmed “multiple arrests” of protesters who had occupied the library but refused to give an exact figure.
“Everybody has the right to protest peacefully. But vandalism, destruction of property or violence are not acceptable,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul posted on social media. Before police presence at the scene, university public safety officers were observed locking the front doors to the library, blocking additional students from entering the building and leading to a short bout of pushing and shoving outside.
