The New York Police have arrested dozens of proportority protesters who occupied on Wednesday part of the main library of Columbia University in a protest that challenged the prohibitions of the administration of Donald Trump about this type of actions against the Israel War in Gaza.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced that he will review the status of the visas of the foreigners arrested. It is not clear how many of the detainees, about 70 people in total, are US citizens and how many foreign students in Columbia. Nor were their identities known.
The incident occurs in the middle of Trump, which threatens the main American universities, but especially Columbia, with cuts in financing for allowing protests such as Wednesday. Hundreds of visas have also been canceled for participating in protests against the war that altered academic life in dozens of campus throughout the country during the past year.
The interim rector of Columbia, Claude Shipman, described the occupation as “outrageous”, which was broadcast on social networks with a video in which protesters are seen entering the library with their faces covered by Palestinian scarves and masks, deploying a Palestinian flag and struggling with the agents.
“(The protest) represented a serious risk for our students and for the security of the campus,” said Shipman in a statement. “Violence, vandalism and search of a library have no place. These are not Columbia’s values,” he added.
The protesters accused the University of “Violent Repression” on social networks. Rubio referred to them as a group of “Intruders and Vandals.” New York Police said four of their agents had been injured.
In a post in his X account, the Secretary of State added: “Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.” After a while, he bounced a message, also in X, in which Republican congressman Mike Johnson, president of the House of Representatives, addresses those protesters: “The United States will no longer tolerate your anti -Semitic violence, destruction, harassment and intimidation.”
Protesters demand that the university withdraw their investment from companies linked to Israel, and that the library change its name to “Popular Universidad Basilea al-Araj”, according to a publication in Replaceck of the Columbia University apartheid divest movement. Al-Araj, a Palestinian activist, died in an Israeli raid in 2017. It is not clear if all, or how many of the protesters who took the library on Wednesday are affiliated with that group.
The protest occurs approximately one year after Columbia became the symbol of the wave of protests in campus throughout the country that culminated in the formation of camps and in mass arrests. In 2024, protesters entrenched themselves at the New York university until the police violently dissolved the protest.
Last March, Columbia folded to the demands of the Trump administration so as not to lose 400 million dollars of federal funds and contracts. The threat of withdrawal of that money forced to claudicate the institution, belonging to the exclusive Ivy League, accessing nine demands aimed at hardening the rules that regulate the protests on their campus.
Columbia agreed, among other things, prohibit the use of masks in the protests, reform their admission process and repress antiisraelis protests more determined, giving 36 police officers of the Campus the power to stop students. The White House also achieved the appointment of a main vice -rector to supervise the Department of Studies of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, as well as the Palestinian Studies Center.
