Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard's daughter arrested during Columbia University protests

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10-05-2025

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American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal's daughter Ramona Sarsgaard was arrested during the chaotic anti-Israel protests at Columbia University on Wednesday, police sources said.
Ms Sarsgaard, 18, who attends Columbia College, was slapped with a desk appearance ticket for criminal trespassing, the sources told New York Post.
The actress' daughter — who Gyllenhaal shares with actor husband Peter Sarsgaard — was one of nearly 80 agitators arrested while storming the university's Butler Library on Wednesday evening as students prepared for final exams.
At least two school safety officers were injured in the melee, officials said.
As of Thursday, the elite Morningside Heights school had handed down at least 65 interim suspensions to students who were part of the chaos, pending further investigation, a school official said.
It's unclear if Ms Sarsgaard was one of those suspended.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ramona Sarsgaard on September 27, 2022. Picture: Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com / Shutterstock
Video obtained by The Post showed a line of protesters led out in zip ties by NYPD officers and onto waiting police buses following the ruckus, which started when demonstrators shoved past a security guard at the library's front entrance, disrupting focused students.
Once inside, they draped large signs over bookshelves, scrawled 'Columbia Will Burn' on a glass case inside the library, and marked tables with coloured tape.
Another 33 individuals, including those from affiliated institutions, and an unspecified number of alumni, were also barred from campus, the official said — as Columbia faced public pressure to take strong action against the rabble-rousers.
Little is known about Ms Sarsgaard's personal life and she doesn't appear to have ever publicly spoken out about the Israel-Gaza war or the ensuing protests that have roiled college campuses nationwide.
It's also not known what she is studying at Columbia, but she follows in the footsteps of her famous mother, who graduated from the Ivy League school with a bachelor's degree in English literature before appearing in dozens of films including the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight.
Her uncle, Jake Gyllenhaal, attended the prestigious university for two years before dropping out to concentrate on his acting career. And her grandmother, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, is also a Columbia alum, according to reports.
Naomi's first husband, American history expert Eric Foner, is currently listed as a professor within Columbia's Department of History. Her second husband, Stephen Gyllenhaal, is Maggie and Jake's dad.
Protesters take over the Columbia University library. Picture: Obtained by NY Post
Ms Sarsgaard's parents have had roles in films that explore parts of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Gyllenhaal, 47, starred as a British-Israeli billionaire who uses her family business to promote peace and resolution between Israel and Palestine in Sundance TV's spy thriller miniseries The Honorable Woman.
The series was released in July 2014, in the midst of a bloody, 50-day long battle launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip that left over 2250 people killed on both sides.
At the show's premiere in the Big Apple on July 23, 2014, Peter Sarsgaard wore a peace sign T-shirt and told his two daughters – who were seven and two years old at the time – that there was 'a lot of war going on,' Variety reported.
In an interview about the series with the Hollywood Reporter, Gyllenhaal said the war 'feels like an impossible situation.'
'I just mean it can be so difficult to have a conversation about what is happening in Israel and Palestine right now. [The show] very consciously does not take a side; it doesn't say, 'We believe this, and we don't believe that.' We lay out aspects of the conflict, and we ask the audience to think and feel for themselves. I'm really hungry for that, and I bet a lot of other people are too,' she told the outlet.
Gyllenhaal shares her daughter with husband Peter Sarsgaard. Picture: Jason Crowley/BFA.com / Shutterstock
Just last year, Peter Sarsgaard, 54, starred in September 5, a movie based on the true story of the 1972 Munich Massacre, in which a group of Palestinian terrorists stormed the Olympic Games, taking Israeli athletes hostage.
While filming the movie in 2024 – just months after Hamas's vicious, October 7, 2023 attack on Israel – onlookers would yell 'Zionist propaganda' in the film crew's direction, the Irish Times reported in February.
The film 'has a Swiss director. We have German producers and we have American producers, but I don't think any of them are Zionists so far as I know,' Peter Sarsgaard told the outlet.
'My position has always been that what was true in 1971 is still true today – about the Palestinians and the Israelis,' he said.
Reps for Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When The Post paid a visit to Sarsgaard's ritzy Cobble Hill townhouse on Friday, an unidentified woman swiftly shut the front door after a reporter identified herself and asked for Ramona.
A Columbia spokesperson declined to answer questions about Ms Sarsgaard's role in the protest and whether she faced disciplinary action, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
This article originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard's daughter arrested during Columbia University protests