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Grandmother of ‘Ivy Nepo Baby' Ramona Sarsgaard was a radical herself—and her best friend would go on to lead the Weather Underground

Grandmother of ‘Ivy Nepo Baby' Ramona Sarsgaard was a radical herself—and her best friend would go on to lead the Weather Underground

Yahoo11-05-2025

Runs in the family.
The grandmother of 'Ivy Nepo Baby' Ramona Sarsgaard — the daughter of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard who was arrested during an anti-Israel protest this week at Columbia University — was also a radical in college.
'I went wild,' screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal told The New York Times in 2004 of her time at Columbia's sister school, Barnard College, where her best friend was Eleanor Stein, who went on to become a fugitive leader of the terror group Weather Underground.
The radical leftist outfit undertook a number of attacks in the US, including the infamous March 1970 accidental bombing of a Greenwich Village townhouse.
'I still thought we could do it in the system,' recalled Naomi, now 79, who used Stein's time on the run as inspiration for her 1988 flick, 'Running on Empty,' about a family of fugitives on the run from the FBI after a bombing.
A Brooklyn native who grew up in a family of 'high-achieving New York Jews,' the elder Gyllenhaal — mother to Maggie and her actor brother, Jake — also supported director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer's controversial 2024 Oscars speech, in which he compared Nazi Germany to Israel's fight in Gaza.
While more than 1,000 Jewish creatives slammed Glazer's speech, Gyllenhaal was among 300 people who signed a letter backing the director.
'We should be able to name Israel's apartheid and occupation — both recognized by leading human rights organizations as such — without being accused of rewriting history,' according to the letter Gyllenhaal signed.
Maggie's father, director Stephen Gyllenhaal made it clear that he and Naomi are no longer together when reached by The Post Saturday.
'We're divorced, you know,' Gyllenhaal, 75, said from his Los Angeles home. When asked about Ramona's arrest, he said only, 'they speak for themselves.'
Naomi Gyllenhaal could not immediately be reached for comment.
Sarsgaard, 18, who attends Columbia College, was slapped with a desk appearance ticket for criminal trespassing Wednesday, the sources said. She could not be reached for comment.
Her dad, Peter Sarsgaard, declined comment Saturday on his daughter's brush with the law.
'I don't have anything to say,' he said outside the family's Cobble Hill home.

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