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New York city police arrested dozens of masked protesters on Columbia University's campus Wednesday evening after they took over part of a central library while students were trying to study for final exams.
New York Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday evening that city police were entering campus to remove people who were trespassing. He said the city would defend the right to protest peacefully but would never defend lawlessness.
The Columbia Spectator, a campus newspaper, reported that dozens of protesters had been arrested after 7 p.m. New York police confirmed that multiple arrests had been made.
The Ivy League university's acting president, Claire Shipman, said two public safety officers had been injured as a crowd surged with people trying to force their way in.
"These actions are outrageous," she said in a message to the campus community. Disruptions to academic activity would not be tolerated, she said, and "Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today."
Students not involved in the pro-Palestinian protest were allowed to leave the library, according to an earlier university statement. Protesters were asked to show ID and disperse and were warned of consequences.
The Spectator reported that a crowd formed outside Butler Library around 5 p.m. and that some tried to rush in past public safety officers.
Shortly before 7 p.m., protesters said on social media that they refuse to show their IDs "under militarized arrest. We refuse to go down quietly."
Some students at the library said on social media that protesters were vandalizing the library with graffiti slogans such as, "COLUMBIA WILL BURN 4 THE MARTYRS," and that there were scuffles with officers. In video from the scene, crowds can be seen pushing against doors of the library.
The protest started not long after a House committee finished questioning three college presidents about campus antisemitism in the wake of protests over the Israel-Gaza war.
Columbia was the epicenter of protests last year and is under intense federal scrutiny; the Trump administration announced earlier this year research funding cuts of $400 million to the school, saying it had failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. The administration's antisemitism task force has launched numerous investigations of colleges, and threatened funding at multiple universities.
This spring, several international Columbia students with lawful permanent resident status have been sought or detained for deportation in connection with pro-Palestinian protests. The Trump administration has vowed to deport protesters, which officials have claimed were "pro-jihadist."
In March, graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead negotiations last spring between protesters and university administrators, was seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is being held in detention in Louisiana. Like several others targeted, Khalil has challenged that in both immigration and federal court. He alleges the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views, in violation of his constitutional right to free speech. Free-speech advocates have said Khalil and other detained international students are political prisoners.
President Donald Trump called Khalil a "Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student" and said in a social media post that the arrest was the "first arrest of many" for those "who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity."
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian protest group on campus, posted on social media that the main reading room of the library had been seized, calling it "the Basil-Al-Araj Popular University." They shared photos as well, and wrote on social media, "When Columbia speaks of its rich history and commitment to upholding its values, these are the values it speaks of: death dealing, displacement, imperialism, segregation, colonialism, nazism, state violence, abductions, anti-Black racism, zionism, and white western hegemony."
The group reiterated its demands Wednesday night, including divestment, amnesty for students, faculty and staff facing university discipline, and the removal of police and ICE agents from campus. In an email, protesters wrote, "We are not intimidated by the university's repression. Columbia cannot ‘expel' the student intifada. As the zionist entity escalates its decimation of Gaza, students must escalate across every university."
Columbia/Barnard Hillel Executive Director Brian Cohen said Wednesday that he was grateful to the public safety officers who, "at great risk to themselves, tried to stop the protesters from storming the library. The University must act quickly and decisively to discipline every student involved in today's takeover, and the local authorities must do the same for non-students involved."
The protest came a year after demonstrators seized an iconic building on the Ivy League campus, leading to dozens of arrests, and a protest encampment that touched off similar demonstrations at colleges across the country.
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