Bloomberg Reporter Arrested With Anti-Israel Group That Seized Columbia Library

A graphics reporter who was working for Bloomberg News and formerly worked at The New York Times was arrested when anti-Israel activists seized control of Columbia University’s Butler Library earlier this month.

Jason Kao, who graduated from Columbia in 2022, was charged with criminal trespass and given a desk appearance ticket as a result of his actions on May 7. Eighty-one activists were arrested.

Bloomberg reporter arrested during anti-Israel protesters’ takeover of Columbia University library — and is no longer employed by outlet https://t.co/flQD0VqrwR pic.twitter.com/VaavsjR8qp

— New York Post (@nypost) May 20, 2025

“During the unrest, rioters injured two, passed out pamphlets endorsing Hamas’s violence, vandalized and damaged the library, and renamed the building after Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian terrorist killed in a 2017 shootout with the Israel Defense Forces,” the Washington Free Beacon, which broke the news of Kao’s arrest, noted, adding, “Kao’s personal website is exclusively devoted to negative coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Bloomberg News told the Free Beacon that Kao is no longer employed at the outlet.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the campus coalition of leftists, released a video in which they stated, “BREAKING: THE BASEL AL-ARAJ POPULAR UNIVERSITY HAS JUST LAUNCHED, RECLAIMING BUTLER LIBRARY FOR THE PEOPLE … Over 100 people have just flooded Columbia University for Palestine.”

The group issued a list of demands, including: “Full financial divestment from zionist occupation, apartheid and genocide. Academic boycott of all complicit institutions, including the cancellation of the Tel Aviv Global Center. Cops and ICE off our campus. … Amnesty for all students, staff, faculty and workers targeted by Columbia University’s discipline.”

We reject an imperialist economy of knowledge. We evoke the legacy of liberation and the philosophy of direct action of Basel al-Araj.

OUR DEMANDS: pic.twitter.com/gwKVnowrXu

— CU Apartheid Divest (CUAD) (@ColumbiaBDS) May 7, 2025

Last year, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition publicly acknowledged a deeper truth: they are fighting to “eradicate” Western civilization. They joined with the university’s Bengali Student Association to post a statement on Instagram, as Campus Reform reported.

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” they stated. “We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one—we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.”

”As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order,” they continued.