Police push back protesters gathered outside of Columbia University’s Butler library in New York City, on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Getty Images)
The US police have arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University after scores of demonstrators expressed strong dissent over the university’s ties to Israel, which has been waging a genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip for nearly 19 months.
According to figures from New York radio station 1010 WINS, around 80 protesters were arrested on Wednesday evening after university authorities called on the New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers to enter the main library building on the campus and disperse activists who had occupied it for several hours.
“We will not be useless intellectuals. Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent oppression,” protesters said in a statement posted online.
In a statement, Claire Shipman, Columbia University’s acting president, denounced the rally as “completely unacceptable”, saying that she had requested NYPD officers to help clear the building where demonstrators stood on tables, chanted, and beat drums in protest against Israel’s genocidal aggression in the Palestinian territory.
In an attempt to clear the Butler Library reading room, NYPD officers in riot gear stormed the building as protesters locked arms and chanted, “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”
In a statement, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian student group, stressed that it had occupied the library to protest the university’s links to the Israeli regime.
“Over 100 people have just flooded Butler Library and renamed it the Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” it said, referring to the Palestinian activist and writer who was killed by the Israeli army in 2017.
“The flood shows that as long as Columbia funds and profits from imperialist violence, the people will continue to disrupt Columbia’s profits and legitimacy. Repression breeds resistance – if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus,” the group emphasized.
Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) condemned “police brutality” against protesters at Columbia University.
“The police violence that occurred on our campus tonight should never be normalized. Public Safety hit student journalists in the face, tore students’ shirts off, and caused a severe concussion. When a Palestinian student bystander recorded Public Safety’s violence, they beat him up after he refused to stop filming,” it said.
The group added that more than ten Columbia Public Safety officers slammed the student to the ground and choked him.
US President Donald Trump has begun acting on his threat to deport all non-citizen university activists linked to last spring’s pro-Palestine protests, which saw students stage daily demonstrations on college campuses nationwide for weeks.
Trump officials have accused the students of being “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US over their condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Columbia University emerged as one of the focal points of nationwide student protests last year, as rallies against Israel’s war in Gaza spread across more than 100 campuses in the US.
