May 9, 2025
To Suppress the Latest Protest, Columbia Unveils a Violent New Form of Campus Policing
By Phoebe Grandi
Protestors rechristened the Lawrence A. Wien Reading Room “Basel Al-Araj Popular University” in honor of the late Palestinian writer before Public Safety and the NYPD arrived.
On May 7, Columbia University authorized the New York Police Department to carry out its fourth mass arrest of pro-Palestine students in 13 months. At least 78 activists protesting Israel’s war on Gaza—and what they argue is the university’s complicity in it—were apprehended following their participation in a Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) rally in Butler Library. All participants were released, but Columbia has promised disciplinary proceedings that “reflect the severity of the [students’] actions.”
Even before the NYPD’s arrival on the scene, students were met with the ever-intensifying violence of Columbia’s Public Safety officers—36 of whom were recently granted arrest powers. At around 3:15 pm, protesters flooded into Butler’s Lawrence A. Wien Reading Room, rechristening it “Basel Al-Araj Popular University” in honor of the late Palestinian writer. Among their demands were full divestment from Israel, a police- and ICE-free campus, and amnesty for university students, staff, faculty, and workers targeted by Columbia’s disciplinary procedures.
