Note: I’ve moved content from the previous post to this separate post, about the events today at Butler library. For early comments, see the last post, for newer ones on this topic please comment here.
Around 3:15pm, some students started a protest in a room in Butler library, and many are still there. I went over there to take a look (first heard about this from a blog commenter here…). Three helicopters hovering over the campus, otherwise everything normal except around the entrance to the library. A crowd has gathered there, including a small number of protestors, with the usual “Free Palestine” shouts. Someone with a bullhorn at a window in the room was saying that students were trapped in the library, public safety would not let them out. A few people in the crowd chanted “Let them out!”. When I got back, here’s the email sent out to the university:
Unfortunately, the University is dealing with a disruption in reading room 301 of Butler Library. Columbia’s Public Safety Team is responding and working to mitigate the situation. Individuals have been asked for identification, which will be recorded, and asked to disperse. They have been told that failure to comply will result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest. No individuals who have been protesting in the reading room have chosen, at this point, to identify themselves and depart. Individuals who were not involved in the protest have been allowed to leave. While this is isolated to one room in the library, it is completely unacceptable that some individuals are choosing to disrupt academic activities as our students are studying and preparing for final exams. These disruptions of our campus and academic activities will not be tolerated. Individuals found to be in violation of University Rules and policies will face disciplinary consequences. We ask our community members to please avoid the immediate area near Butler Library in the near term.
No idea what is going on in the library. There’s a crowd with cell-phones out trying to film what is going on inside. Every so often someone comes out, but no one going in. Sounds like the students are not occupying the library (they say they are trying to get out), but that public safety won’t let them out unless they identify themselves.
There’s reporting at the Columbia Spectator, which says that starting at 3:55
a Public Safety officer inside the reading room said over a speaker that protesters must present their IDs or would be subject to arrest for trespass.
A message from the acting president:
I want to update the community on the latest information regarding the disruption at Butler Library. The individuals who disrupted activities in Butler Reading Room 301 still refuse to identify themselves and leave the building. Due to the number of individuals participating in the disruption inside and outside of the building, a large group of people attempting to force their way into Butler Library creating a safety hazard, and what we believe to be the significant presence of individuals not affiliated with the University, Columbia has taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community.
Sadly, during the course of this disruption, two of our Columbia Public Safety Officers sustained injuries during a crowd surge when individuals attempted to force their way into the building and into Room 301. These actions are outrageous.
Individuals participating in the Reading Room 301 disruption were repeatedly asked for identification and to leave, and were repeatedly told that failure to comply would result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest for trespassing. We have been clear from the outset about applying our protocols and advising participants of the potential consequences of not complying. Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community.
Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies; this is especially unacceptable while our students study and prepare for final exams. Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today. We are resolute that calls for violence or harm have no place at our University. We will continue to keep our community apprised as the situation evolves.
Sincerely,
Claire Shipman
Acting President, Columbia University in the City of New York
I’ve written some more about what I saw in the comments. I was outside the entrance to the library around the time of the “crowd surge” that is said to have injured two of the public safety officers. From what I could see, the group of people pushing towards the building entrance included many journalists with cameras, as well as people who appeared to be just trying to push forward to try and get a better shot on their cell-phone. These people mostly did not seem to be protestors (e.g. no keffiyehs). I also doubt the claim above that these were people not affiliated with the university (the security here remains tight, and they looked like Columbia students).
In retrospect, I think a mistake the security people were making was that there were none of them outside the entrance. If a couple people had been politely asking people to stay back and not push towards the entrance, for everyone’s safety, that would have been helpful.
Update: On my walk home, the campus was completely peaceful, very few people now at the Butler entrance. Nothing happening at the campus entrance at 116th, but the NYPD had closed off much of 114th street, which is the south boundary of campus and has entrances from the back to Butler library. At the time they were clearly preparing for going into the library and arresting for trespassing those students who refused to identify themselves to campus security. Some protestors and a lot of lookers-on had gathered at 114th and Broadway. The most reliable outside protestors were there: the group of anti-Zionist Hasids. Somebody with a camera at 114th and Broadway (while I was walking past him) took a full trashcan, dumped all the trash into the street and turned over the trashcan so he could stand on it and get a better shot of what the NYPD were doing.
Update: I’m back in the office this morning and the campus and neighborhood are back to the usual peace and quiet. Butler library and the reading room there are open again. For today the university is only allowing guest passes requested by faculty, not those requested by students or staff. There seems to be some suspicion that non-Columbia affiliates yesterday got on campus through abuse of the guest pass system. Our acting president is a TV journalist, so she has the right background to put out statements on video, here’s the latest one.
Some thoughts on the events here yesterday:
- The actual disruption was rather small, basically just that Butler library was closed for several hours. It’s one of many places on campus students can study (classes recently ended and students are studying for final exams). Since few people these days read physical books, likely hardly anyone was inconvenienced by not being able to get a book there. The biggest disruption was the helicopters hovering above campus. Having three news helicopters and then an NYPD helicopter all in the airspace above the campus was both disruptively loud and seemed to me more than a little dangerous.
- The new policies the university has put in place to deal with disruptive demonstrations seem to have worked out exactly as planned. Those involved were offered the opportunity to identify themselves and leave, or to refuse to do so, stay and be arrested by the NYPD for trespassing. The NYPD arrived fairly quickly, made arrests and the campus was soon back to normal.
- There was no “antisemitic threat to Jewish students”, with the only interaction of the protestors with Jewish students the fact that likely some of them were Jewish.
- Fortunately, it seems that no one was seriously hurt. The most serious violence did not involve the occupation of the room in the library, but the actions of people at the main door to the building (more about this later).
- The group organizing this was CUAD, you can read their statement about how they were turning the library into “Basel Al-Araj Popular University”. Their program is not just to protest what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, for which they likely could get a large amount of support, but also to call for a much wider “anti-imperialist” struggle, demanding for instance “END COLUMBIA’S OCCUPATION OF HARLEM; RETURN LAND TO HARLEMITES AND OPEN THE GATES!”. Tactically, they do things like vandalizing the reading room while they were there, and engaging in delusional claims about their interactions with security people, for instance yesterday issuing the statement:
“Despite over three hours of kettling and assault by Columbia Public Safety, we continue to hold the line,” the post read. “We are facing one of the largest militarized police forces in the world. Deputized Public Safety officers have choked and beaten us, but we have not wavered.”
“We refuse to show our IDs under militarized arrest,” the post read. “We refuse to go down quietly.”
- When I left the campus last night, NYPD had blocked off part of 114th Street, bringing arrested protestors out the back of Butler. A group of people had gathered at the end of the street, shouting obscenities at the police and trying to taunt them into a violent reaction.
- Looking at X and Bluesky this morning, social media discussion is mostly either really stupid “Columbia is taken over by violent anti-semites, the university is doing nothing and deserves to be burned to the ground” commentary or the equally stupid “The NYPD and Columbia security are cracking the skulls of innocent students. The Fascist university deserves to be burned to the ground”. If you look hard you can find some actual true information there, but on the whole social media is a sewer wrecking our society.
Looking at the helicopters, the students in the reading room, people outside the front of the library with their video equipment, and those gathered at 114th and Broadway, what struck me is that there were an awful lot of people out there who very much wanted to see someone get hurt. Thanks to the Columbia security and NYPD people who did their job and stopped these people from getting what they wanted.
I still don’t understand one thing that happened, the violent confrontation in the entrance vestibule to Butler around 5pm. You can watch a video of this here. I was outside the building at exactly this time (in the video you see someone helping someone else get out, I saw them come out through the crowd from the other side). I took a picture from outside, here it is
At the time I didn’t know what was going on. There were some students shouting “Let Them Out” and a student with a bullhorn at a window above the entrance saying there were 120 students there trapped by security, which would not let them leave. The people I could see pushing to get closer to the entrance included some protestors in keffiyehs, but mostly what appeared to be curiousity-seekers trying to see into the lobby to see what was going on. Basically everyone had either a cell-phone or professional camera and was holding it high trying to video what was happening. For a second I was tempted to get closer to see what was going on, but decided that was a bad idea.
If you look at the video filmed inside the vestibule, there are a lot of security people trying to keep the door closed and stop anyone from coming into the building. At least one person is shouting at them and demanding entrance. The rest seem to be some combination of several people with press badges, several photographers, some other people who might want to try and get in the building, some who wanted to shout abuse at security while filming, and possibly several who were trapped by the crowd pushing from the outside that you see in the photo.
I’d be curious to read an actual report from one of the press people there. If anyone has seen such a thing, let me know. As discussed above, my general impression of this crowd in the vestibule is that just about everyone in it was consciously or not hoping for a violent confrontation with security, a few wanting to be part of it, most wanting to get a video of it.
Update: Another possible reason the president and trustees are anxious to revamp the Senate is that current rules require her to consult with the Executive Committee of the Senate before bringing the police on campus, something that likely did not happen yesterday.
Update: The Trump Task Force approves.
Update: There’s an article in the Nation which may answer some of my questions about the violence going on in the Butler vestibule. A picture of the scene is captioned “Students attempting to retrieve personal belongings from the library, protesters, journalists, and legal observers, struggled against Public Safety to be let into Butler.” I’m finding it hard to believe that any sane student trying to get back their stuff thought it a good idea to try and fight their way through a doorway held closed by a large group of public safety officers. “protestors, journalists and legal observers” does sound plausible: most people were shooting video the whole time. More from the article:
Outside the library, Public Safety employed similarly aggressive tactics on the critical mass gathering at Butler’s main doors. Students attempting to retrieve personal belongings from the library, protesters, journalists, and legal observers elbowed their way into the library vestibule before being violently shoved by officers attempting to hinder further entry. One protester ended up on the floor trampled and injured, before two fellow demonstrators removed her from the area.
Ian Borim, a student who was present at Butler’s exterior, says this is the worst violence from Public Safety officers he has witnessed to date. “I truly saw the university in crisis,” he commented. Indeed, up until recently, it was highly atypical for Public Safety to put hands on students…
Out of “urgent concern for the well being of students,” Borim asked multiple Public Safety officials who was in charge, and how students may identify the new special patrol with arrest powers. They refused to respond. Later, when he propped open the handcuffed door with his hands and legs to locate a Public Safety representative who might help mediate the situation, officers shut the door on him. “His arm is in there! Do you not care about the safety of your students?” cried one observer.
“The actions wouldn’t keep escalating if…the administration didn’t just repeatedly take authoritarian decisions in how it handles advocacy for…Palestine,” said Borim. “There is an underlying assumption that…student protesters are just insubordinates that need to be forced into compliance. That’s the approach that the administration has been taking for the past two years, and it’s not really working for them or anyone else.”…
Several public safety officers pushed and barricaded credentialed journalists attempting to enter the premises.
From the Nation story, I’m guessing the Ashli Babbitt figure was Ian Borim, whose behavior is described by
when he propped open the handcuffed door with his hands and legs to locate a Public Safety representative who might help mediate the situation, officers shut the door on him. “His arm is in there! Do you not care about the safety of your students?” cried one observer.
Also in the vestibule I guess were “credentialed journalists attempting to enter the premises”. From the video they’re next to the protester who ended up on the floor trampled and injured. Can they report who trampled and injured the protester since they were standing right there?
Update: I just watched the youtube video again, after reading the Nation article. I don’t have much of an opinion about what the right discipline is for students protesting by taking over a study room, but the violent behavior by the students in that video seems to me much, much worse.