Over the past year plus, Columbia University in New York City has tried to stomp out pro-Palestinian protest, but courageous students and faculty have persisted. 

On the afternoon of May 7, some 100 protesters, overwhelmingly students, staged an “Emergency Rally,” taking over a reading room in Butler Library in a nonviolent occupation. 

Their demands included “full financial divestment from Zionist occupation, apartheid, and genocide; cops and ICE off our campus; amnesty for all students, staff, faculty, and workers targeted by Columbia University discipline.” 

“Over 100 people have just flooded Butler Library and renamed it the Basel Al-Araj Popular University,¹ CUAD (Columbia Apartheid Divest) posted on Substack. 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….

“Today, the people refuse the name “Butler Library,” which honors Nicholas Murray Butler, a shameless Nazi sympathizer and president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945. During his presidency, Butler welcomed Nazi ambassadors to campus with open arms, limited the number of Jewish people who could attend Columbia, and expelled students who protested against Columbia's ties with the Nazis."

The University’s response was immediate and violent. According to the Columbia Spectator, “Public Safety officers [campus police] used force on the protesters, pushing multiple protesters to the ground when they attempted to leave. Public Safety officers dragged one protester down the stairs and pinned them to the ground before detaining them.”

Columbia had deployed these “officers” following “demands from President Donald Trump’s administration that Columbia employ Public Safety officers with arrest power.”

Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman called in the NYPD. “As the NYPD made arrests, two individuals were visibly led off campus in stretchers by Columbia University Emergency Medical Service,” the Spectator reported. “The NYPD used force on protesters who picketed around Columbia’s campus after the arrests. Officers punched, pushed, and pinned protesters to the ground.” All told the NYPD arrested 78 students and one supporter outside the campus.

Afterward, Shipman praised the NYPD for their “professionalism.”

Columbia and Barnard College even issued interim suspensions to four student journalists covering the protests, which were later rescinded. 

“This is the 4th time in 13 months that Columbia University has brutalized our peers for standing against the genocide of our people,” the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition wrote.

Ominously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that the federal government would be “reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library.”