US: Pro-Palestine Protesters Arrested at Columbia University
Washington (Quds News Network)- Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested Wednesday at Columbia University during one of the largest demonstrations at the school, opposing the university’s ties to Israel and condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Videos and photographs on social media showed the protesters with banners saying “Strike For Gaza” and “Liberated Zone” beneath the Lawrence A. Wein Reading Room’s chandeliers in the Butler Library.
The demonstrators were standing on tables, chanting, beating drums and unfurling pro-Palestinian banners inside the university’s main library.
New footage reveals NYPD forcibly arresting pro-Palestine students in Columbia’s largest mass detention. Over 75 protesters were taken into custody as the university president deployed the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group to raid the Basel Al-Araj Liberated Zone, Columbia’s… pic.twitter.com/WvJA3akAc8
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) May 8, 2025
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian student group, said it had occupied the library to protest the university’s links to Israel.
The group recirculated on social media on Wednesday their long-standing demand that the university end investments of its $14.8 billion endowment in weapons makers and other companies that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories.
“Over 100 people have just flooded Butler Library and renamed it the Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” the group said on Substack, referring to the Palestinian activist and writer who was killed by Israeli forces 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.”
U.S. police arrested over 78 pro-Palestine students at Columbia University for protesting and denouncing the Israeli war, which is backed by the U.S. pic.twitter.com/Y0nwRHSrgz
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) May 8, 2025
US Presidnet Donald Trump has also called the pro-Palestinian student protests across college campuses last year antisemitic and anti-American.
Student protesters at Columbia, Jewish organizers among them, say the government is unfairly conflating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism.
Trump is also trying to deport some pro-Palestinian international students at U.S. schools, claiming 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 immigrants jail after he was among the first to be arrested over his pro-Palestine activism.
The protest comes as Columbia’s board of trustees continues its negotiations with the Trump’s administration, which announced in March it had canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of grants to the university for scientific research.
BREAKING: Pro-Palestine protesters occupy the main reading room of Columbia University’s Butler Library – the university’s campus security is clearing the library right now.
Photos and videos to follow.
This photo courtesy: Johanna Hansel@DropSiteNews pic.twitter.com/LP6IoPX0a3
— Meghnad Bose (@MeghnadBose93) May 7, 2025
Columbia University’s acting president, Claire Shipman, condemned the demonstration as “completely unacceptable”.
University officials called police after demonstrators refused requests to provide identification and leave the building, Shipman said.
The New York Police Department said in a statement that “multiple individuals who did not comply with verbal warnings” to disperse were taken into custody.
New York radio station 1010 WINS reported that around 80 demonstrators were arrested.
Columbia University, one of the top-ranked US universities, was the site of large demonstrations last year when student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza erupted on more than 100 campuses across the US.
