The pro-Palestinian encampment on the lawn in front of Columbia University’s Butler Library in April 2024. Protesters took over a reading room in the library Wednesday. Photo by ProudFarmerScholar, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Louis Keene May 7, 2025

Police removed and arrested dozens of people from a pro-Palestinian student group who took over Columbia University’s Butler Library on Wednesday, temporarily shutting it down in the run-up to finals.

Eyewitnesses said about 100 people filled a reading room inside Butler, where they chanted, banged on drums and hung banners that read “Strike for Gaza,” “Liberated Zone” and “Free Mahmoud,” referring to Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate in ICE detention.

Video posted to social media showed the protesters streaming past campus security, most of them masked and wearing dark-colored clothing, though the student-run Columbia Spectator reported that security guards pushed several protesters to the ground.

But after a Columbia public safety employee told protesters they would be required to show student identification in order to leave the library, the protesters refused to comply — and campus security kept them inside even after a fire alarm was pulled.

Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said two Public Safety officers were injured when a crowd surged toward the reading room to try to free the protesters.

“Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community,” Shipman wrote in a statement.

The campus group that organized the protest, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, billed the action as the launch of “Basel Al-Araj Popular University.” Basel Al-Araj was a Palestinian writer and activist who was killed by Israeli police near Bethlehem in 2017.

An Instagram post from the group said at least three protesters had been arrested.

The protest comes as the university seeks to show the White House it is addressing antisemitism on its campus. The school has laid off at least 180 people due to about $400 million in federal funding cuts and is currently weighing a consent decree, a form of government oversight that would allow a judge to monitor the school’s compliance.

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