Above photo: Butler Library occupation. CUAD Twitter.
Roughly 80 protesters were arrested Wednesday after occupying a library on Columbia University’s campus.
The Trump administration is stepping up actions against student protesters as Gaza encampments are starting to spread once again across the U.S.
Roughly 80 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested on Wednesday night after occupying a library on Columbia University’s campus.
Demonstrators rushed through Butler Library’s security gate at about 3:00 p.m., hanging banners, tagging shelves with graffiti, chanting pro-Palestine slogans, and renaming it the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” a reference to the Palestinian writer who was killed by the Israeli army in 2017.
By 7:00 p.m., the school had called in the police. A volatile scene had already developed, as a crowd of supporters gathered outside the building and public safety officers prevented students from leaving the library without showing identification.
BREAKING: Public Safety won’t let protesters exit without presenting ID. They’re now in a standoff. pic.twitter.com/Wy3548oYVi
— Shoshana Aufzien🎗️ (@shoshanaaufzien) May 7, 2025
Onlookers chanted”Free Palestine!” while protestors were cuffed with zip ties and hauled from campus to police vehicles.
NYPD now arresting student protestors from Columbia University library @CBSNewYork pic.twitter.com/DtR1qEPzT9
— Ali Bauman (@AliBaumanTV) May 7, 2025
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) released a statement criticizing the school’s treatment of student activists and explaining the occupation.
“Despite Columbia’s transformation of the university into a dystopian site of surveillance through its carceral expansion of cameras, wifi and ID tracking, externally contracted security, disciplinary processes, and arresting power for Public Safety officers, it still failed to quell the student movement,” it reads. “The Students outsmarted the university, exposing the cracks in their broken system. In the spirit of our martyr Basel al-Araj, the Popular University will educate our comrades towards revolutionary consciousness—taking back our university to practice a liberated, demilitarized education. Students know that resisting genocide is their moral imperative, and history is on their side.”
Long live the Basel al-Araj Popular University! Long live the Student Intifada! pic.twitter.com/ARxpGxHUUm
— CU Apartheid Divest (CUAD) (@ColumbiaBDS) May 7, 2025
Acting Columbia president Claire Shipman said the “substantial chaos” compelled her to call in the NYPD. She also seemingly blamed the protesters for the government’s recent targeting of students.
“I am deeply disturbed at the idea that, at a moment when our international community feels particularly vulnerable, a small group of students would choose to make our institution a target,” read her statement.
Since erecting the nation’s first Gaza Solidarity encampment last spring, Columbia has been the epicenter of the current wave of campus activism. Since regaining power, Trump has targeted the school over an alleged inability to eradicate antisemitism, and Columbia has readily complied with nearly all the administration’s draconian demands.
The government kicked off its crackdown on the Palestine movement by arresting Columbia graduate and campus activist, Mahmoud Khalil. He is currently being detained in Louisiana despite committing no crimes.
In a letter released from his detention facility last month, Khalil attacked the school for facilitating his abduction.
“To the students who remain apathetic to Columbia’s disregard for human life and its willingness to discard student safety: As pressure from the federal government intensifies, know that your neutrality on Palestine will not protect you,” wrote Khalil. “When the time comes for the federal government to target other causes, it will be your names that Columbia will offer on a silver platter, it will be your pleas that fall on deaf ears, it will be your just causes that are stonewalled.”
“This institution’s singular concern has always been the vitality of its financial profile, not the safety of Jewish students,” he continued. “This is why Columbia was all too happy to embrace a superficial progressive agenda while still disregarding Palestine, and this is why it will soon turn on you, too.”
After police arrested the Columbia protesters, Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to deport the participants who are not U.S. citizens.
“We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library,” tweeted Rubio. “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”
We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library.
Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 8, 2025
The sentiment was shared and celebrated by fellow Republicans and pro-Israel pundits.
“Attention pro-Hamas rioters on college campuses across the country: you are on notice,” wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson. “America will no longer tolerate your antisemitic violence, destruction, harassment, and intimidation.”
Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced that it was investigating the University of Washington (UW) in response to protestors occupying a campus engineering building on May 5. The Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return (SUPER) organized the action to demand that the school sever its ties to Boeing over the company’s connections to Israel.
“WE DEMAND: UW will no longer be complicit in genocide. WE DEMAND: that our tuition money and our research not be used to fund and fuel genocide,” read a statement from the group. “Students have occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building and declared that this building, renamed the Shaban al-Dalou Building will not be used to fund genocide, but to meet the needs of students and community.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon claimed that the occupation was a “horrifying display of..antisemitic harassment and lawlessness.”
Shortly after the White House’s announcement, UW said it would suspend 21 students over the protest.
Students at Johns Hopkins University launched an encampment on the same night as the Columbia occupation, but say they shut it down after police “caused multiple injuries” on campus.
Wednesday also saw the GOP-led Committee on Education and the Workforce grill a number of university faculty on the subject of antisemitism, which the Republican lawmakers openly conflate with anti-Zionism.
During his testimony, Georgetown University Law Center professor and former ACLU national legal director David Cole criticized Congress for targeting students and faculty over support for Gaza.
“To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold,” said Cole. “And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans.”