Dozens of Columbia students arrested as NYPD violently clears Palestine solidarity sit-in
New York, New York - The New York Police Department on Wednesday arrested dozens of student activists who had occupied part of Columbia University's main library building to protest the ongoing atrocities in Palestine.
Columbia administrators called in the police after around 100 protesters transformed a reading room at Columbia University's Butler Library into a "Liberated Zone" in solidarity with the besieged and starving people of Palestine.
The activists renamed the library the Basel Al-Araj Popular University after a Palestinian anti-imperialist revolutionary killed by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank, according to a Substack post by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition.
"Today, the people at the Basel Al-Araj Popular University teach each other the stories our universities refuse to tell," CUAD wrote. "The Popular University is not only a demand for divestment. It is a living counter-institution, a revolutionary pedagogy in practice, and a declaration that another university – and another world – is already in formation."
Columbia Acting President Claire Shipman, echoing accusations of antisemitism, announced Wednesday afternoon she had "taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community."
Police said at least 80 people had been taken into custody.
Before they arrived, university public safety officers had locked the front doors to the library to prevent students from entering or leaving. They are also accused of assaulting the protesters, with at least two people in keffiyehs reportedly removed from the building on stretchers.
Columbia activists issue defiant response after latest brutal crackdown
Wednesday's mass detention of activists marked the largest arrests at Columbia since the NYPD launched militarized raids on the campus' Gaza solidarity encampment last year.
Multiple people were injured Wednesday as the NYPD also targeted people protesting outside the campus.
"We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University's library. Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation," Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X Wednesday night, implying threats of further deportation moves against noncitizen student activists.
"This is the 4th time in 13 months that Columbia University has brutalized our peers for standing against the genocide of our people," the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) said in a statement on social media.
Columbia in March caved to Donald Trump's demands to crack down even harder on student protesters after the president announced $400 million in federal funding cuts to the university.
"To Columbia administrators and the US government: You have abducted two of our peers," CPSC said, referring to Mahmoud Khalil, who remains detained in Louisiana, and Mohsen Mahdawi, who was last week released on bail.
"You have arrested 299+ protesters here over the past year. You have expelled, suspended, evicted, and hospitalized more anti-genocide students than we can count," the statement continued. "Haven't you learned by now that your repression only fuels more dissent?"
The Butler Library protest came as Israel has killed at least 52,653 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, though the real death toll is believed to be far higher.
Amid a growing consensus that the destruction of Gaza constitutes genocide, the Israeli cabinet this week approved a plan to conquer and ethnically cleanse the territory as international aid agencies warn of incredibly dire conditions in the ongoing blockade on humanitarian aid.
Cover photo: REUTERS