NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dozens of protesters stood on tables, beat drums and unfurled pro-Palestinian banners in the reading room of Columbia University’s main library on Wednesday in one of the biggest campus demonstrations since last year’s student protest movement against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Videos and photographs on social media showed protesters, most wearing masks, with banners saying “Strike For Gaza” and “Liberated Zone” beneath the Lawrence A. Wein Reading Room’s chandeliers in the Butler Library.

U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed the protests last year were antisemitic and showed a failure to protect Jewish students. Columbia’s board of trustees has been negotiating with the administration, which in March canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of grants to the university for scientific research.

The university has said it has worked to combat antisemitism and other prejudice on its campus while fending off accusations from civil rights groups that it is letting the government erode academia’s free-speech protections.

On Wednesday, Columbia said in a statement its public safety staff asked students to show identification and ordered protesters to disperse. Those who did not comply would be disciplined for breaking school rules and face “possible arrest,” the school said.

A Reuters witness saw campus security escort people out a door and hand them over to police officers outside. It was not immediately clear if they were being taken into custody.

A New York Police Department spokesperson said the police department was monitoring the situation and its personnel were “within the vicinity of the university.”

At one point, more people were seen trying to enter the library, according to the Reuters witness. Public safety staff locked a door and shoving and pushing ensued.

One student organization representing the protesters said on social media that school security had assaulted demonstrators, and that the activists had refused to show their IDs to officials “under militarized arrest.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in an interview with the local NBC News affiliate channel that Columbia officials had asked for help and that the New York Police Department was sending officers to the campus.

Calls for University to Divest

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a collection of student groups, recirculated on social media on Wednesday long-standing demands that the university no longer invest its $14.8 billion endowment in weapons makers and other companies that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories.

Trump, a Republican, has called the pro-Palestinian student protests across college campuses last year antisemitic and anti-American. Student protesters at Columbia, Jewish organizers among them, say the government is unfairly conflating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism.

Columbia was at the forefront of a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that swept across U.S. campuses last year over Israel’s war in Gaza, which began in 2023.

Trump is also trying to deport some pro-Palestinian international students at U.S. schools, saying their presence could harm U.S. foreign policy interests.

The protesters in the library also demanded the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student who remains in a Louisiana immigrants jail after he was among the first to be arrested.

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(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh and Ryan Murphy; Editing by Sonali Paul and Cynthia Osterman)