The New York Police Department made at least ten arrests on Wednesday in connection with an anti-Israel protest at Barnard College, where participants took over the school library and refused to leave the premises after administrators warned them of an active bomb threat.
The protesters stayed inside the Milstein Center for almost four hours before police officers arrived to the scene and started detaining students with zip ties. Less than an hour earlier, protesters were told to leave the building due to a bomb threat. Many decided to stay because they thought it was a joke, according to video footage.
Ten people were arrested, according to multiple reports. There are no official charges yet.
Activists organized the demonstration to protest the expulsion of three Barnard students who expressed anti-Israel views and to call for their reinstatement.
The first two who were expelled disrupted a class about the history of the Jewish state by handing out Hamas propaganda at the start of the spring semester. The episode was caught on camera. The third was expelled for their involvement in Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall occupation last spring.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters seized another academic building to demand the return of the first two expelled students. The third faced expulsion after that protest. No arrests were made at the time, although one employee was injured.
Columbia, which is affiliated with Barnard, called the latest protest unacceptable.
“We are in touch with Barnard’s leadership and security team as they address the situation and will continue to monitor it closely,” Columbia said in a statement on Wednesday. “The disruption of academic activities is not acceptable conduct. We are committed to supporting our Columbia student body and our campus community during this challenging time.”
Representative Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.), an outspoken pro-Israel progressive, issued a more forceful statement in response to this week’s incident.
“The pro-Hamas agitators, who were proudly distributing pro-Hamas propaganda in defense of October 7th, not only orchestrated a hostile takeover of Barnard College but also subsequently kept the administrators from evacuating the building in the midst of a bomb threat,” Torres posted on X.
“Barnard College should expel every single one of these students for endangering the safety of the campus.”
Columbia was the site of a similar anti-Israel protest, in which students forcibly seized Hamilton Hall for 17 hours before police moved in. The sit-in last April led to dozens of arrests, although most of those charges were later dropped.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump vowed to crack down on “agitators” by making arrests and deporting foreign students to their home countries. He also threatened to pull federal funding from any school that enables “illegal” protests. Pro-Hamas sympathizers have been causing turmoil on college and university campuses since the terrorist group’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Trump administration is currently investigating antisemitism at elite American universities. The Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force recently said it would visit ten universities, including Columbia, to address the problem. Earlier this week, the DOJ opened a civil rights investigation into allegations of antisemitism across the University of California education system.