Jewish students chain themselves to St. Paul’s Chapel and Earl Gates, demand accountability from Columbia trustees

Protesters called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil from ICE custody and transparency from Columbia leadership.

Photo by Yuna Jeong/The Barnard Bulletin

By Giselle Bradshaw, Theresa Cullen, Fiona Hu, and Jaya Shankar

April 9, 2025

On Wednesday, April 2 around noon, four Jewish students affiliated with Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the Palestine Solidarity Coalition (PSC) chained themselves to the gate of St. Paul’s Chapel at 117th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The protest was organized in response to the recent ICE detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and a prominent activist during last year’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” In a joint Instagram post shortly following the onset of the protest, JVP and PSC announced their demand to “know the names of the Columbia trustees who gave Mahmoud Khalil to ICE.”

The four students — who identified themselves as Aharon (GS ’26), Tali (BC ’25), Shay (CC ’26), and Sarah (BC ’25) — stated that they chose the chapel’s gates specifically because it faces SIPA, where Khalil had been a student.

Public Safety taped off the area surrounding the chapel’s gates about twenty minutes after the protest began, but by 1 p.m., NYPD officers arrived and cordoned the area with blue tape, declaring it a “frozen zone.” Crowds of students and onlookers gathered along Amsterdam Avenue, Avery Plaza, and the Law Bridge. One of the chained students, Sarah, gestured to the crowd and said, “This isn’t just the four of us, this is the whole Columbia community.”

Photo by Yuna Jeong/The Barnard Bulletin

NYPD officers ordered protesters to disperse, prompting chants and speeches in response. “Currently, [Public Safety officers] are claiming we are blocking a University facility,” one chained protester said, referencing the locked gate. “This gate has been closed since last April.”

The same protester continued: “[The Trustees] put their students in danger, and they are refusing to name themselves. We demand to know as students which trustee is putting us in danger.” The comment echoed claims made by JVP and PSC in their aforementioned Instagram post, which cited an article by the independent Jewish newspaper The Forward. The article, citing pro-Israel activist Ross Glick, stated that “some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.”

At around 1:30 p.m., Public Safety officers warned demonstrators that they were violating three University policies, but did not specify which ones. Despite the warnings, the protest continued. Passersby appeared to have mixed reactions — some cars honked in support as they drove past, while other onlookers heckled, with one calling for CUAD’s expulsion.

Photo by Yuna Jeong/The Barnard Bulletin

Around 2 p.m., a protester outside the frozen zone said that Columbia had called in the NYPD Strategic Response Group (SRG) “to arrest students from peacefully protesting on the sidewalk.” With the four protesters still chained to the gate, the surrounding group began to disperse but promised to continue their advocacy for Khalil. Some marched south on Amsterdam Avenue chanting “Free, free Palestine,” but many protesters soon returned to the area.

Public Safety officers then opened the locked gate and cut through the students’ chains with bolt cutters. The four students were moved just beyond the gates, where they sat in protest, soon joined by four more students, and sang, “We shall not be moved.”

Minutes later, protesters dropped a banner over the Law Bridge reading “Free Mahmoud Khalil, name the trustees,” but Public Safety officers quickly removed it.

Photo by Yuna Jeong/The Barnard Bulletin

Throughout the demonstration, speakers linked Khalil’s detention to larger critiques of University policy. One student accused the administration of using “Jewish safety” as a shield for repression. “This is a direct attack on Mahmoud Khalil and all of his friends,” the protester said. Sarah, still seated near the Chapel, called out Trustee Vice Chair Abigail Elbaum for her donations to the NYPD, saying, “These are the people making decisions for this University.”

Another protester cited the recently released Sundial Report, which alleges that Columbia trustees, including current Acting President Claire Shipman, had pushed for NYPD involvement in last spring’s protests. “It shows that they were pushing for the brutality, and it shows that they were pushing, by name, for students to be hurt,” the student said. “They were directly violating our free speech.”

Around 3 p.m., protesters took a break as supporters brought food, water, and blankets, and distributed immigration red cards and blue cards listing campus resources for mental health support. An hour later, the NYPD reestablished the frozen zone, warning of potential arrests. In response, protesters relocated to the Earl Hall Gate on 117th Street and Broadway, where another small group of students, different from the original four, chained themselves to the fence using bike locks.

Addressing the crowd, one of the chained protesters said, “It would be foolish to not acknowledge that if we were Black and brown, we would have been arrested by now. We are here because ICE, because NYPD, because SRG, and because the new Columbia peace forces have decided that they are willing to invest in repression and fail to protect the students who are here to learn.”

By early evening, students in contact with Khalil reported that he had heard about the protest and was “very emotional.” One speaker announced, “He sees [the protesters], and he thanks them.”

Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin

As rain began to fall, supporters covered the chained students with a blue tarp, which Public Safety officers soon tore down. Protesters continued chanting, joined by members of Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian activist group not affiliated with Columbia or Barnard.

A self-identified Columbia alumna then addressed the crowd, reiterating the demand for transparency from the Board of Trustees, who she said were already “implicated by Congress.” Shipman and Board Chair David Greenwald had previously joined then-President Minouche Shafik in testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in April 2024, where Republican Representatives including Virginia Foxx and Elise Stefanik accused Columbia leadership of enabling antisemitism on campus. Stefanik also later criticized Shipman for calling the hearings “Capitol Hill nonsense.” 

Another protester criticized the prolonged closure of the chapel’s gates to students and alumni beginning last spring. “Columbia keeps us out, but they allow ICE agents on campus?” the student said. “The Board of Trustees has sold out our alma mater to a fascist regime.”

Around 7:30 p.m., another protester described recent attacks in Gaza, citing unannounced airstrikes on March 18 that reportedly killed more than 400 Palestinians in one day. According to the protester, recent attacks by the Israeli military on ambulances and aid workers have brought the official Palestinian death toll to more than 50,000, though they insisted the actual number was likely in the hundreds of thousands.

Two pro-Israel counter-protesters were also present outside Earl Gate. One held a sign reading “Deport Mahmoud Khalil,” while the other told the demonstrators, “One day you’ll find out you’re on the Nazi side.”

Photo by Abigail Rabbitt/The Barnard Bulletin

At around 10 p.m., Columbia’s Office of Public Affairs issued a statement saying it would follow University rules in responding to policy violations, but declined to provide specifics. It added that “no member of Columbia leadership or the board of trustees has ever requested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents on or near campus,” directly contradicting JVP and PSC’s claims that “members of Columbia’s Board of Trustees reported Khalil to federal authorities.”

Exactly two minutes later, Public Safety officials and a University delegate approached protesters, declaring the area around the gate closed. They warned that protesters attached to the fence were not currently violating rules, but would be if they did not vacate, citing Rule 9 of the University Conduct Policy, which states that a person involved in a demonstration is in violation of Conduct Policy if this person “enters or remains in a University facility without authorization at a time after the facility has been declared closed by the University.” A demonstrator responded that the protest was registered until midnight, and noted, “The University was notified of our demands. We asked administration to have a meeting, and only after that fact did they close this area.”

By just before 11 p.m., a few protesters had detached themselves from the fence and exited through the Earl Gates. About ten minutes later, one of the remaining three announced they would stay. Protesters outside reiterated that they had emailed the University requesting access to bathrooms and medical care, calling the response “clearly anti-Palestinian … and anti-Jewish.”

Public Safety soon after returned with another delegate, issuing a second warning that those still attached to the fence would be forcibly removed. Protesters asked why the protest was being “arbitrarily shut down.”

Just before 11:30 p.m., Public Safety removed the final three protesters — pushing one to the ground and dragging and carrying another off campus as the third walked away voluntarily. Protesters surrounding the gates resumed chanting, “We’ll be back.”

“This says a lot about Jewish safety on this campus,” one speaker said, claiming that, of the students Public Safety officers removed, “the one person they got the most brutal with was a Palestinian student.” The speaker continued: “If you have any doubt of how arbitrary, and how pernicious and dangerous these disciplinary processes are, how targeted they are to silence pro-Palestinian speech, this should be enough.”

Protesters began dispersing around 11:40 p.m.

Campus News Staff Writers Lydia Snyder and Kimberly Wing contributed to reporting for this article.