More than 100 masked anti-Israel demonstrators stormed Columbia University’s main library on Wednesday afternoon — disrupting students studying for finals by banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine.” As public safety officers attempted to clear out the protesters, several of the officers were forcefully pushed to the ground near the building’s front entrance. 

“The sense of entitlement and sheer ignorance of these students remains astonishing, and it is an embarrassment that they were even admitted to this university in the first place,” Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies — who was in the library as the chaos began — told Jewish Insider. 

By Wednesday evening, New York Police Department officers arrested around 75 of the protesters after acting President Claire Shipman authorized the NYPD to enter the library. Two individuals were led off campus by Columbia University Emergency Medical Service on stretchers, one of whom had their face covered by a keffiyeh and the other had their face covered by a sheet, Columbia’s student newspaper, The Spectator, reported.

It took the NYPD more than 24 hours to shut down last year’s anti-Israel encampment and occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams praised the NYPD’s swift response and called on parents of students protesting to “call your children and make clear that breaking the law is wrong and they should exit the building immediately.”

“To those protesting on campus who do not attend Columbia: exit the campus immediately or you will be arrested,” Adams warned in a statement.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the government is reviewing the visa status of the “trespassers and vandals” who took over Columbia University’s library.

“Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation,” Rubio wrote on X.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of at least 80 university student groups — which has been banned from Instagram for promoting violence — took responsibility for the sit-in. 

Brian Cohen, director of the university’s Hillel, said in a statement that the protesters “infringed on the rights of Jewish students to study for exams without being screamed at and harassed.”

Cohen called for Columbia to “act quickly and decisively to discipline every student involved in today’s takeover, and the local authorities must do the same for non-students involved.” 

Columbia University said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon, as the protest was still ongoing, that “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.” 

The school has seen relatively fewer anti-Israel disruptions since university leaders entered into negotiations with the Trump administration in March — an apparent effort to combat the anti-Israel activity that had roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. 

Those negotiations, which include rules around the wearing of masks on campus as well as oversight of the school’s Middle Eastern studies department, are a first step toward restoring $400 million in federal funding, according to both the university and the White House. 

Columbia University’s main graduation ceremony was canceled last year due to security concerns related to anti-Israel activity. This year the commencement is slated to be held on May 21.