Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Daughter Arrested At Recent Columbia Pro-Palestine Protest: Report

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY — Actor and director Maggie Gyllenhaal's daughter Ramona Sarsgaard was arrested during a pro-Palestine demonstration at Columbia University's library last week, the New York Post reported.

Sarsgaard, 18, was issued a desk appearance ticket for criminal trespassing, the Post reported, after a group of protestors occupied the main library on campus, while students were studying for finals on Wednesday night.

The NYPD arrested 80 people from the protest. Among those arrested, 78 protestors were issued desk summonses, and two were issued court appearances, NYPD officials said Thursday.

The protest started around 3 p.m. when protestors entered Room 301 of Butler Library, pushing past security, many of them wearing keffiyehs and masks, according to several videos posted to social media.

"We had no choice but to ask for the assistance of the NYPD," Columbia's Acting President Claire Shipman wrote in a statement, detailing an afternoon of chaos that she said left two Public Safety officers injured during the protest. She said one was wheeled out on a gurney.

Leaving hours later, she said there was "disturbing" vandalism on the library's reading room.

"Let me be clear: Columbia unequivocally rejects antisemitism and all other forms of harassment and discrimination," Shipman wrote. "And we certainly reject a group of students—and we don’t yet know whether there were outsiders involved—closing down a library in the middle of the week before finals and forcing 900 students out of their study spaces, many leaving belongings behind."

During the demonstration, the protestors renamed the space the Basel al-Araj Popular University after a Palestinian activist, called for the university to divest from businesses that were involved in Israel's military operations, and criticized Columbia for allowing federal immigration agents on campus, which led to the detention of graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest said.

The following day, more than 65 students were placed on an interim suspension while an investigation is underway, and a total of 33 students from affiliated schools have been barred from the Morningside Heights campus, school officials told Patch.

An unspecified number of alumni at the protest were also barred from campus, the university official told Patch.

Read the New York Post's story here.

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.