NEW YORK: Police arrested dozens of Columbia University students who seized part of the school’s main library on Wednesday in one of the biggest pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus since last year’s wave of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
At least 40 to 50 students, their hands cuffed with plastic zip-ties, were seen being loaded into New York Police Department vans and buses outside Butler Library as NYPD officers swept through the six-story building to round up other protesters who refused to leave.
Police arrived on campus in force at the request of Columbia officials who said the student demonstrators occupying the library’s second-floor main reading room were engaged in trespassing.
Videos and photographs on social media showed protesters, most wearing masks, standing on tables, beating drums and unfurling banners saying “Strike For Gaza” and “Liberated Zone” beneath the chandeliers of the Lawrence A. Wein Reading Room.
U.S. President Donald Trump had lashed out at Columbia over pro-Palestinian protests on campus last year, saying they were antisemitic and showed a failure to protect Jewish students.
Pro-Palestinian protesters occupy building at Columbia University
Student protesters, including some Jewish organizers, counter that Trump and fellow conservative politicians who are strongly pro-Israel are unfairly conflating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism.
Columbia’s board of trustees has been negotiating with the Trump administration, which announced in March that it had canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of grants to the university for scientific research.
The university has said it has worked to combat antisemitism and other prejudice on its campus while seeking to fend off accusations from civil rights groups that it was giving in to government intrusions on academic freedom.
Columbia University said late on Wednesday that it had requested NYPD assistance “in securing the building,” and that two of its public safety officials were hurt in the standoff.
Scuffle at front door
An NYPD spokesperson confirmed “multiple arrests” of protesters who occupied the library but did not provide an exact number.
“Everyone has the right to peacefully protest. But violence, vandalism or destruction of property are completely unacceptable,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on social media.
Before police arrived on the scene, university public safety personnel were seen locking the front doors to the library, preventing any more students from entering the building and sparking a brief episode of pushing and shoving outside.
One student appeared to have been injured in the fracas. Another individual was seen being carried out of the building on a stretcher.
With further entry to the library barred, a growing crowd of demonstrators outside the building moved to the streets just beyond the campus gates.
One student organization representing the protesters said on social media that school security had assaulted demonstrators and acknowledged that some activists had refused to show their IDs to officials.
Police clear pro-Palestinian camps at three US universities
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a collection of student groups, recirculated long-standing demands on social media on Wednesday for the university to no longer invest its $14.8 billion endowment in weapons makers and other companies that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories.
On Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a University of Washington building, demanding the school cut ties with Boeing over its contracts with the Israeli military.
The university said 34 protesters were arrested, and charges of trespassing, property destruction and disorderly conduct would be referred to prosecutors.
On Wednesday, it said the 21 students who were among those arrested have been suspended and banned from all of the school’s campuses.
Columbia was at the forefront of a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that swept across U.S. campuses last year over Israel’s war in Gaza, which began in 2023.
Trump, a Republican, is also trying to deport some pro-Palestinian international students at U.S. schools, saying their presence could harm U.S. foreign policy interests.
The protesters in the library also demanded the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student who remains in a Louisiana immigrant jail after he was among the first to be arrested for possible deportation.
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