Student protesters took over a room of Columbia University’s Butler Library in a resurgence of the on-campus protests against the institution’s ties to Israel that rocked the nation last spring and inspired similar protests and encampments at colleges and universities country-wide.
Columbia University said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that it was “dealing with a disruption in reading room 301 of Butler Library,” noting that the public safety team was “working to mitigate the situation.”
The statement said that people involved have been asked to identify themselves and to leave the premises.
“They have been told that failure to comply will result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest,” Columbia University said in the statement. “No individuals who have been protesting in the reading room, have chosen, at this point, to identify themselves and depart.”
The school was allowing others in the library who were not involved in the protest to leave the building. In an alert sent to students, the school said the library was closed and the area should remain clear.
“While this is isolated to one room in the library, it is completely unacceptable that some individuals are choosing to disrupt academic activities as our students are studying and preparing for final exams. These disruptions of our campus and academic activities will not be tolerated,” the school said, promising that those found to be involved will “face disciplinary consequences.”
A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said they are aware of the protest but have not been requested by the school yet.
“NYPD does not have any involvement or participation at this time,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson later said that New York police officers were in the “vicinity of the campus but they have not been requested on campus.” NBC News witnessed a heavy police presence around campus Wednesday evening.
Around 3:30 p.m., Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a group that calls on the university to divest its ties from Israel, publicized an “EMERGENCY RALLY: ALL OUT TO BUTLER LIBRARY” in a social media post.
The group said more than “100 actionists have reclaimed the main reading room as the Basil-Al-Araj Popular University.” The post called on others to “support, bring noise, and wear a mask.”
“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,” CUAD wrote in a post on its Substack. “Repression breeds resistance — if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus.”
The protesters were barred from leaving the library without presenting public safety officers with their identifications. A large group of protesters, their faces obscured by keffiyehs, appeared to try to force their way through a set of doors where a group of what appeared to be security officers was standing, video posted to social media shows.
Officers appear to resist and push the group back as someone on a megaphone pleads with the group to, “Stop pushing, please,” the video shows. The speaker says they would let the protesters go if they took out their ID cards, to which the group responds with a resounding, “No!” and a chant of, “Let us go!”
Outside the library, other groups of masked protesters in various locations around campus continued chanting, videos from the scene showed.
The protest comes just two days after Israel’s security Cabinet approved a plan to seize all of the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the plan an intensive military operation aimed at defeating Hamas.
Gaza remains blockaded by Israel, the longest since the war began in October 2023, as Israel’s total ban on the entry of all goods, including food, fuel and medical supplies, enters its third month.
The protest Wednesday also comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to block federal funding from some universities, including Harvard and Columbia, over the fact that it says the schools are not doing enough to combat antisemitism on their campuses.
In the Substack post, CUAD offered insight into the protest’s location and meaning.
The group said it “renamed” the library to Basel Al-Araj Popular University as a reference to Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian writer “whose writings on the Palestinian resistance and on the nature of war guide revolutionaries around the world today.”
The group chose Butler Library to rebuke the building’s namesake, Nicholas Murray Butler, a former president of the University who the group called “a shameless Nazi sympathizer.”
CUAD also offered its demands of Columbia, including a full financial divestment from Israel, for police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to leave campus, and amnesty for all “targeted by Columbia University’s Discipline.”
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