Columbia library protesters sue university over arrests, suspensions
Nisreen Khokhar, Jessie Rubin and Courtland Buchanan, who were arrested as students at a May 7, 2025, anti-Israel takeover of Butler Library on Columbia University’s campus, sued Columbia on Sept. 18, alleging that guards unlawfully confined and assaulted them before having them arrested.
In the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the trio alleges that the three “participated in a brief teach-in demonstration at Butler Library” and that the university’s safety officers “kettled, confined and repeatedly and violently assaulted plaintiffs and hundreds of other students and bystanders for several hours” before the plaintiffs were arrested...
“The complaint describes May 7 as a ‘brief teach-in.’ That’s one way to put it,” Mark Goldfeder, CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS.
“It was reading week, and the room they took over was full of students studying for finals,” Goldfeder said. “The demonstrators came in masked, a crowd outside broke through the library’s front door and Columbia says two of its safety officers were hurt in the crush.”...
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