Pro-Palestinian Activists Occupy Barnard Building for 2nd Time in Week
Chanting 'Free Palestine' and wearing masks and kaffiyeh over their faces, the protesters began their sit-in inside the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning about 1 p.m. The school blocked access to the building shortly afterward, and classes were disrupted.
The protest came at a moment when pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses is a subject of intense interest to the Trump administration. In executive orders, President Trump has threatened to revoke federal funding to universities that allow what he and his administration regard as antisemitic activity, and he has made clear that pro-Palestinian protests, particularly those that appear to support Hamas, can qualify as such in his view.
Hours after the protest began on Wednesday afternoon, the situation remained fluid as Police Department vans and officers with zip ties began gathering near Barnard's campus at 116th Street and Broadway. Shortly afterward, Barnard administrators announced to protesters that they had received a bomb threat, and police and security began evacuating the building.
The protesters initially decided to remain, chanting over the sound of alarms, according to a witness and social media reports.
At 5 p.m., Police Department officers walked through the lobby inspecting the building as chanting continued, according to a video shot on site. About 10 minutes later, the police began pushing the protesters out of the building.
As the police became more aggressive, there appeared to be resistance from some protesters. The police responded by taking at least several students into custody and placing their wrists in zip ties. By 5:20 p.m., all the protesters appeared to have been removed from the building. Those not detained were permitted to leave the campus.
According to a Police Department spokesman, the police received a 911 call about a bomb threat to the building at 4:22 p.m. Officers responded to clear the building, and those who resisted police orders were taken into custody. Charges were still pending as of Wednesday evening.
Columbia, and Barnard, its affiliated women's college, are already under scrutiny for their students' pro-Palestinian activism. On Monday, the Trump administration announced a comprehensive review of Columbia University's federal contracts and grants, and three investigations into allegations of antisemitism at Columbia are underway.
The protesters who gathered on Wednesday were demanding the reversal of the expulsions of two Barnard students who were punished for interrupting a 'History of Modern Israel' class on Jan. 21 and distributing fliers, including one that showed a jackboot squashing a Jewish star. They also called for the reinstatement of a student expelled for participating in the takeover of Hamilton Hall on the Columbia campus last spring, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student protest group.
This is the second such sit-in to take place at Barnard over the issue. A week ago, dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a sit-in at Milbank Hall. According to the Barnard administration, those protesters injured a security officer when they pushed into the building and graffitied the walls, causing about $30,000 of damage.
That sit-in ended without arrests after about seven hours, and protesters were promised in writing on Barnard letterhead that they would not face disciplinary action for their 'presence in the building' if they left by 10:30 p.m.
But on Monday, President Laura Rosenbury of Barnard appeared to counter that, publishing an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education that said that Barnard would 'vigorously pursue discipline and other remedies against those who forcibly and illegitimately entered the building, damaged or destroyed property, disregarded our community expectations and violated many policies and rules.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
4 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Trump's Assault on D.C. Is a Grave Threat to the District and Democracy
President Donald Trump is federalizing control of the local police and deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to further his authoritarian and anti-democratic agenda. As autocrats commonly do, Trump is seeking control over the national capital in order to intimidate and squelch dissent. Like despots around the world and throughout history, Trump is also relying on the pretextual deployment of military force to intimidate and project power, to suppress protest and undercut democracy. Across the nation, Americans should protest this move and what it means for our democracy. They should worry that Trump will misuse claims of national emergency to block peaceful protest and that he will deploy troops to deter demonstrators, or worse. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters after signing an executive order in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Aug. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters after signing an executive order in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Aug. 5, 2025, in Washington, is a move of dubious legality and no necessity. The Home Rule Act governing the District of Columbia gives the president authority to take control of the metropolitan police force when there are "special conditions of an emergency nature." There are no special conditions and there is no emergency. Like everyone, Washingtonians want to be secure in their person, but everyday street crime does not constitute an emergency—especially when the Justice Department's own statistics show the violent crime rate in the District is at its lowest point in decades. There is a major crime problem in Washington, D.C., but it's not the one Trump is talking about—and it's one the administration is making that far worse. Corporate crime and wrongdoing—pollution, dangerous products, financial fraud and scams, unsafe workplaces, and more—inflicts far more damage on people than street crime, whether measured by dollars, injuries, or lives. But Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi are epically weak on corporate crime enforcement—probably the weakest in American history. They are ending investigations and prosecutions into corporations, announcing no-prosecute policies against whole areas of corporate wrongdoing, and redirecting law enforcement resources away from corporate crime and toward its mass deportation agenda. Trump is also complaining about homelessness in D.C. There is, in fact, a significant housing problem in Washington, D.C., like there is throughout the nation. But on this score, Trump is doing nothing to help—and actively making things worse. Telling people without housing that they have to "move out" of the District, as Trump has done, does nothing to actually address that problem. Investing more in housing would help, but there were no such investments in Trump's tax and budget reconciliation bill—he was too busy conferring giant tax breaks on the super rich and corporations and stripping health care coverage from everyday Americans. Those health care cuts will significantly worsen homelessness—both because health care is key to help people without housing and because Medicaid is often used for supportive housing. Providing support to people with addiction issues would also help address the homelessness challenge; instead, the administration is considering withholding already appropriated funding for responding to fentanyl overdoses. Trump's actions have nothing to do with anything happening in Washington, D.C. Trump is motivated instead to advance his authoritarian agenda and to distract from his political weakness. This aligns perfectly with his other despotic tendencies, for example his enemies lists, his mantra of "loyalists only"—particularly those who support his election denialism—to key appointments, and Pam Biondi's recent move to deputize Ed Martin to investigate perceived opponents like Adam Schiff and Tish James. Washington, D.C. does not need National Guard members—who signed up to address genuine national security threats and actual emergencies, not to be political pawns—on our streets. Instead, what we in D.C. need is representation in Congress and more federal funding to mitigate the restrictions on the District's power of taxation. But this is an issue of import that goes far beyond the interests of the people of Washington, D.C.—and not just because D.C. is our nation's capital. Trump is now broadcasting that he hopes to militarize law enforcement in cities across the country. Whether the nation tolerates—or rises up to oppose—Trump's actions in Washington will very meaningfully impact whether the country goes down a democratic or authoritarian path. Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert are Public Citizen co-presidents. The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
New York Post
5 minutes ago
- New York Post
Moscow troops make massive advance in Ukraine just days before Trump set to meet with Putin
Moscow troops made one of their most dramatic advancements of the year Tuesday when they pushed deeper into the Donetsk region of Ukraine — just three days before President Trump is set to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Russia's invasion forces marched some six miles past the frontlines in Donetsk to encircle the towns of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk, advancing Moscow's goal of taking full control of the region, according to Ukraine's authoritative DeepState war map. 3 Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on August 8, 2025. POOL/AFP via Getty Images 3 Police explosives experts carry a fragment of Russian cruise missile outside a residential building in Kyiv on August 1, 2025. AFP via Getty Images 3 The wreckage of a Ukrainian military vehicle, bombed by a Russian FPV drone, sits at the train station on August 11, 2025 in Kostyantynivka, Ukraine. Getty Images 'The situation is quite chaotic, as the enemy, having found gaps in the defense, is infiltrating deeper, trying to quickly consolidate and accumulate forces for further advancement,' DeepState said in an update.
Chicago Tribune
5 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
President Donald Trump's rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has taken control of the District of Columbia's law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation's capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are in response to an urgent public safety crisis. Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a 'historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' His rhetoric echoed that used by conservative politicians going back decades who have denounced American cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressive politicians, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention. 'This is liberation day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back,' Trump promised Monday. As District of Columbia National Guard troops arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into the district's neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action. April Goggans, a longtime Washington resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump's actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in the district since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed National Guard troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd. 'We have to be vigilant,' said Goggans, who has coordinated protests and local civil liberties educational campaigns for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents' freedoms. 'Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,' she said. According to White House officials, National Guard troops will be deployed to protect federal assets in the district and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some local advocates. 'The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,' said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's D.C. chapter. 'We've seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,' Hopkins said. Conservative lawmakers have for generations used denigrating language to describe the condition of major American cities and called for greater law enforcement, often in response to changing demographics in those cities driven by nonwhite populations relocating in search of work or safety from racial discrimination and state violence. Republicans have called for greater police crackdowns in cities since at least the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles. President Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968 after campaigning on a 'law and order' agenda to appeal to white voters in northern cities alongside overtures to white Southerners as part of his 'Southern Strategy.' Ronald Reagan similarly won both his presidential elections after campaigning heavily on law and order politics. Politicians ranging from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to former President Bill Clinton have cited the need to tamp down crime as a reason to seize power from cities like Washington for decades. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump's takeover of the local police force 'unsettling' but not without precedent. The mayor kept a mostly measured tone during a Monday news conference following Trump's announcement but decried the president's reasoning as a 'so-called emergency' and said the district's residents 'know that access to our democracy is tenuous.' Trump threatened to 'take over' and 'beautify' the nation's capital on the campaign trail and claimed the district was 'a nightmare of murder and crime.' He also argued the city was 'horribly run' and said his team intended 'to take it away from the mayor.' The president repeated comments he'd previously made about some of the nation's largest cities during his news conference, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, California, and his hometown of New York City. All are currently run by Black mayors. 'You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad, New York is a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen,' he said. Civil rights advocates see the president's rhetoric as part of a broader political strategy. 'It's a playbook he's used in the past,' said Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The president's rhetoric 'paints a picture that crime is out of control, even when it is not true, then blames the policies of Democratic lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claims that you have to step in and violate people's rights or demand that reforms be reversed,' Wiley said. She added that the playbook has special potency in the capital because the district's local law enforcement can be directly placed under federal control, a power Trump invoked in his announcement. Trump's actions in Washington and comments about other major American cities sent shock waves across the country, as other cities prepare to respond to potential federal action. Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Trump's plan 'lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous' in a statement and pointed to a 30-year-low crime rate in Baltimore as a reason the administration should consult local leaders rather than antagonize them. In Oakland, Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump's characterization of the city 'fearmongering.' The administration already faced a major flashpoint between local control and federal power earlier in the summer, when Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell protests and support immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles despite opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Civil rights leaders have denounced Trump's action in Washington as an unjustified distraction. 'This president campaigned on 'law and order,' but he is the president of chaos and corruption,' said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. 'There's no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the National Guard? To distract us from his alleged inclusion in the Epstein files? To rid the city of unhoused people? D.C. has the right to govern itself. It doesn't need this federal coup.'
