Dozens of Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested at Columbia University

By Staff, Agencies

New York police arrested around 80 pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University on Wednesday evening after the administration called in the NYPD to clear out demonstrators occupying the campus library.

The protesters were voicing opposition to the university’s ongoing ties with the "Israeli" entity, which has been waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip for nearly 19 months.

According to local outlet 1010 WINS, the arrests took place after activists occupied the Butler Library for several hours. In response, the university requested intervention by the New York City Police Department, which deployed officers in riot gear to forcibly remove the demonstrators.

Protesters released a statement online declaring, “We will not be useless intellectuals. Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent oppression.”

Columbia University’s acting president Claire Shipman condemned the protest, calling it “completely unacceptable,” and confirmed she had personally asked NYPD officers to help remove the demonstrators, who had stood on tables, chanted slogans, and beat drums inside the building.

In an effort to clear the library’s reading room, NYPD officers stormed the premises while protesters locked arms and chanted, “We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

The student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest stated that over 100 people had occupied Butler Library and symbolically renamed it the Basel Al-Araj Popular University, in honor of the Palestinian writer and activist killed by the "Israeli" military in 2017.

“As long as Columbia funds and profits from imperialist violence, the people will continue to disrupt Columbia’s profits and legitimacy,” the group said. “Repression breeds resistance – if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus.”

The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition [CPSC] condemned what it described as “police brutality” during the crackdown, citing instances of Public Safety officers attacking students, including journalists. “The police violence that occurred on our campus tonight should never be normalized,” CPSC said, reporting that a Palestinian student bystander was beaten after filming Public Safety’s actions.

The group claimed that over ten Columbia security officers tackled the student, slammed him to the ground, and choked him.

In a wider development, US President Donald Trump has started acting on his threat to deport non-citizen university activists involved in last year’s wave of pro-Palestine demonstrations. Trump officials have labeled the student protests “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US, citing their opposition to "Israel’s" military actions in Gaza.

Columbia University has been at the heart of nationwide campus protests, with anti-"Israeli" demonstrations spreading across more than 100 college campuses throughout the US over the past year.