The New York police department arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian activists who occupied part of the main library building on Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday evening, ending an hours-long standoff, roughly one year after student anti-war protest swept the Ivy League school.
Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said in a statement that she requested officers with the NYPD to help clear the building, after protesters had refused to leave despite being warned that a failure to comply would result in disciplinary action and possibly arrest for trespassing. A spokesperson for the NYPD said officers arrested “multiple individuals” who refused to disperse.
Video posted online by the student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) showed NYPD officers in riot gear entering the Butler library reading room, as protesters locked arms and chanted: “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”
The demonstration began hours before, on Wednesday afternoon, when a large group of masked protesters, many wearing the keffiyeh, the traditional black-and-white checkered that has long been a symbol of Palestinian liberation, flooded into Columbia’s Butler library and took over the main room on the second floor, according to statements and images shared on social media by CUAD.
Renaming the space “the Basel Al-Araj Popular University”, some activists stood on desks with bullhorns, while others hung a sign that read “strike for Gaza” and distributed pamphlets calling on the university to “divest” from funds and businesses that activists say are profiting from Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
“We will not be useless intellectuals,” they said in a statement posted online. “Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent oppression.”
The university first sent in campus public safety officers, who warned the activists that they would face disciplinary action and possibly arrest if they refused to leave. The protesters said they refused to show their IDs and described a physical confrontation between them and the security officers. The university said two public safety officers were injured, while protesters reported being “kettled” and kept from leaving the building.
At 6pm EST, students received an alert saying the library was closed and the area “must be cleared”.
“Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community,” Shipman said in a statement, calling the protesters’ actions “outrageous”.
Video shared on social media showed more than a dozen protesters, handcuffed with zip ties, being led out of the building by police officers and loaded on to an NYPD bus. The student-run Columbia Daily Spectator reported that about 75 protesters were arrested.
In an interview with a local NBC affiliate on Wednesday evening, the New York mayor Eric Adams called the protest “unacceptable”. In a later statement, the mayor said he had received a “written request” from the university for police backup.
The New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she was “grateful to public safety officials for keeping students safe”.
“Everyone has the right to peacefully protest. But violence, vandalism or destruction of property are completely unacceptable,” she said in a statement.
“We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state posted on X on Wednesday night. “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”
The standoff comes at a fragile moment for Columbia, as the university faces a crackdown by the Trump administration over its response to student protests against the war in Gaza last spring. The administration has accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus and canceled $400m in federal research funding from the school.
On Tuesday, the university announced a round of layoffs as a result of the cuts. University officials said they were working with the Trump administration in the hopes of getting the funding restored.
Last spring, protesters set up an encampment and seized Hamilton Hall, a campus building, which led to dozens of arrests and inspired similar demonstrations at universities across the country.
Since then, the university has undergone a series of leadership changes. In March, the interim president of Columbia stepped down after agreeing to nearly all of the Trump administration’s sweeping demands – a decision that outraged faculty and critics who said the university had sacrificed its independence and academic freedom.
Among the changes have been a ban on students wearing masks to conceal their identities and a rule that those protesting on campus must present their identification when asked. The school also said it had hired new public safety officers empowered to make arrests on campus.
The protest comes amid renewed tensions at US universities over the war in Gaza. The Trump administration has in recent months launched a sweeping crackdown on student demonstrators involved in last year’s campus protests, including the recently released Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student who was detained for his activism, and the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in March and remains in custody.
Robert Mackey and the Associated Press contributed reporting
