Columbia, NYU Antiwar Protests Yield 230 Arrests, Finger-Pointing

NEW YORK CITY — Roughly 230 people have been arrested by NYPD officers tasked with controversial crackdowns on tense pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia University's and NYU's campuses, police said.

Cops cuffed 120 students and faculty at NYU late Monday, in addition to more than 100 in the past week on Columbia's campus, officials said.

All but a handful received a trespassing summons — a ticket that won't go on criminal records, an NYPD spokesperson told Patch.

The crackdowns may legally be a slap on the wrist, but the actions by the NYPD — and university administrators at both schools who called cops onto their campuses — have been seen by protesters as an indefensible escalation.

"NYU Leadership's decision to call the NYPD was capricious, unwarranted, and without justification," an open letter from NYU's chapter of American Association of University Professors states.

"It would have been unconscionable under any circumstances, but is all the more so given that a large proportion of the protestors were people of color, and NYPD are known for their particular history of brutality toward Black and Brown people."

The letter came after NYPD officers broke up a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on NYU's campus.

The clash late Monday yielded vivid scenes of flare-carrying protesters, cops in riot gear man-handling demonstrators and the subsequent denunciation of NYU leaders who asked the NYPD to deal with the encampment on Gould Plaza.

The denunciation contradicted a contention by an NYU spokesperson that protesters potentially not affiliated with the school breached barriers.

"Given the foregoing and the safety issues raised by the breach, we asked for assistance from the NYPD," a statement from the spokesperson reads.

A Columbia spokesperson Tuesday likewise contended that an encampment on that campus raised concerns about safety, harassment against Jewish students and the prospect of protesters not connected with the university on campus.

The school switched to hybrid learning amid the protests, the Associated Press reported.

During a news conference Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams noted bottles and chairs were thrown at officers during the NYU protest, with one officer's helmet reportedly dented due to the clash.

"Across the country, there are people who come, have nothing to do with the issue, and they want to aggravate," Adams said. "If those police officers didn’t show a high level of discipline, this could’ve been an ugly situation."

Adams echoed suspicions expressed by NYPD and university officials — who both failed to provide any concrete examples — that violent outsiders were trying to hijack the protests.

He contended there were a "number of people" seeking to take advantage of the protest to "cause violence in our city, and we're going to seek them out and we’re going to identify them."

Hizzoner pointed to apparent similarities in tents across campus encampment protests, joking that there must've been a "sale" on the items.

A quick search by a Patch reporter found that the Camel Crown tent, which has been spotted repeatedly at Columbia's protests, is listed for as low as $25 on Amazon.

Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information, told FOX5 that only a small percentage of protesters on NYU's campus appeared to be violent.

He said the school's faculty involved in the protests were some of the most aggressive toward police Monday evening.

"It was a shock to see the amount of faculty that was out there," he said.

The NYU protests sprang up following tense pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the war in Gaza on Columbia University's campus that have led to more than 100 arrests. Similar encampment protests have since been erected at Yale and The New School.

Read more: Dozens Arrested In Columbia Protests As NYPD Moves On Campus

Accusations of antisemitic harassment of Jewish students at Columbia has prompted condemnations from the White House and Adams, although the protests' supporters contend those incidents, if they happened, are isolated.