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Christopher Holmes
Christopher Holmes was arrested at Barnard College (Barnard) in March 2025. Holmes was also arrested [slide 9] twice at the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. He has called for the “overthrow” of America. He also spoke at the encampment and participated on multiple occasions in April and May 2024. The encampment was in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
On March 5, 2025, Holmes was reportedly arrested along with other protesters for storming Millstein Library on the Barnard campus. He was charged with “disorderly conduct, trespassing, and obstructing governmental administration.”
On April 18, 2024, Holmes was arrested at Columbia, along with others, during the second day of the encampment. He was featured [slide 9] in an April 20, 2024 Instagram video, in which he was being led onto a police vehicle after the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested him. His hands were zip-tied behind his back.
On April 30, 2024, Holmes was arrested at Columbia again and this time charged with “third degree criminal trespass…punishable by up to three months in jail, a year of probation and/or up to a $500 fine.”
Holmes was one of 13 agitators who were arrested at Hamilton Hall and rejected a plea bargain agreement offered by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to dismiss his case. The agitators took over the campus building Hamilton Hall and also took hostages. Holmes was arraigned on May 1, 2024, and “Pled Not Guilty” to the charge. He was slated to appear in the New York Criminal Court on January 24, 2025.
Holmes was featured in an April 30, 2024 photo published by The New Vision, smoking a cigarette on the balcony of Hamilton Hall alongside masked protesters.
On April 30, 2024, participants in Columbia’s second pro-Hamas encampment forced their way into the university’s Hamilton Hall, barricading themselves in the building and taking three Columbia custodians hostage. Protesters also vandalized [00:00:55] and destroyed university property inside the hall. A police raid on Hamilton found knives, gas masks, ropes and literature that read: “...DESTROY zionist business interests everywhere!...DEATH TO AMERICA!...”
Columbia is located in New York, New York.
As of May 2024, Holmes was reportedly a graduate student at Union Theological Seminary (UTS), which is affiliated with Columbia. UTS is also located in New York, New York.
On September 4, 2024, Holmes was featured [00:00:02] in an X video at Columbia where the interviewer said Holmes was “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Holmes said [00:00:10] in agreement: “I call for the overthrow of the corporate totalitarian state.”
When Holmes was asked [00:00:15] about the core curriculum of Columbia, he said [00:00:17]: “The core curriculum of Columbia University? Largely imperial in nature.”
On April 19, 2024, Freedom News TV posted a video on YouTube featuring [00:00:01] Holmes speaking with a megaphone at the encampment, where he told activists that he had been “recently arrested.”
Holmes then said [00:00:20]: “Your organizers are returning. I ask you to please hold this line and continue to bring people out in support of Palestine to get our demands.” He concluded his speech by chanting [00:00:42]: “The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be!”
On April 26, 2024, Holmes was featured [slide 6] in an Instagram photo at the Columbia encampment. He sat on top of a wall behind four other encampment leaders who were participating in a press conference.
On April 29, 2024, Holmes appeared in a YouTube video participating [01:49:17] in the Columbia encampment.
On May 16, 2024, Holmes performed with the encampment band “The Liberated Zone” at the end of an anti-Israel ceremony organized by “The People’s Grad for Palestine.” The Columbia Spectator reported that the lyrics of the song “were printed in the programs distributed before the graduation began.”
Holmes and his band were featured in a video posted on Instagram on May 20, 2024 performing at “The People’s Graduation.” The post said the group sang “their song that they sat singing during the first round of arrests on April 18, and had people sing from outside campus facing Hind's Hall [Hamilton Hall] on April 30.”
The event, titled: “The People’s Graduation,” was planned by “an independent group of faculty [who] wanted to create a graduation ceremony for their students who have been excluded from campus for peacefully protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
The ceremony was organized “following the cancellation of Universitywide Commencement ceremonies and in the aftermath of the April 18 and April 30 police sweeps of the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ and occupied Hamilton [Hall].”
On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.
Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”
The action had reportedly been planned for months and was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. The encampment was also organized by Columbia’s banned pro-Hamas activist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the university chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Activists reportedly received training from National SJP and other anti-Israel organizations.
Among the encampment leaders was Columbia student Khymani James who had said [00:00:25]: “Zionists…They are nazis!... They’re supporters of genocide! Why would we want people who are supporters of genocide to live?... Be glad, be grateful that I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Aidan Parisi, another encampment leader, responded to Columbia’s demand to disband the encampment by declaring online that: “COLUMBIA WILL BURN.”
The encampment was forcibly dismantled at the directive of Columbia’s president and administration. The NYPD [New York Police Department] entered the area, cleared the encampment and arrested more than 100 protestors, approximately 80 of whom were Columbia students. The students were charged with trespassing and suspended from Columbia indefinitely.
The next day, activists created a new encampment. When divestment negotiations with Columbia failed, protesters illegally forced their way into the university’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, 2024. They smashed [00:00:55] through a glass-paneled door, broke security cameras, threw university property out of the windows and unfurled [00:00:01] a banner in the building’s wall that read: “INTIFADA,” a term in Arabic for uprising or insurrection that carries the connotation of violence.
While barricading themselves in the building, agitators kept three Columbia custodians hostage and stopped them from leaving. When the NYPD raided and dismantled the encampment a second time, they arrested more than 100 students, nearly half of whom were reportedly not affiliated with Columbia.
NYPD shared on Twitter photos of objects the police found in Hamilton Hall. These included knives, hammers, gas masks, ropes and a pamphlet that read [video 1]: “...DISRUPT/RECLAIM/DESTROY zionist business interests everywhere! DEATH TO ISRAELI REAL STATE! DEATH TO AMERICA!...LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA!”
Just outside the encampment area, Jewish students were called [slide 2]: “Uncultured a** b**ches!” and were told to “Go back to Europe!” Activists also said [slide 3] to them: “Yahoodim [Jews], yahoodi [Jew], f**k you!” and “Stop killing children!” as they walked from campus to their dorm rooms.
Also just outside the encampment area, anti-Israel activists chanted [slide 5]: “Ya Hamas, ya habib, odrob, odrob Tel Aviv! [Oh Hamas, oh loved one, strike, strike Tel Aviv!]”, a chant that celebrates Hamas rocket attacks against Israel.
An activist just outside the encampment area held [photo 4] a sign that said, referring to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing: “AL-QASAM’S NEXT TARGETS.” Her sign contained an arrow pointing to a pro-Israel crowd.
On May 31, 2024, Columbia SJP announced that its activists had set up a third encampment at the university. At the encampment, protesters reportedly displayed on a big screen a video that portrayed Hamas as a peace-seeking organization and made a sign that contained an inverted red triangle, a symbol in support of Hamas.
The Columbia encampment reportedly inspired a wave of protest encampments across North American campuses, where pro-Israel students were blocked or restricted from campus facilities. Jewish students were reportedly harassed in several other ways.
There were over 140 pro-Hamas and anti-Israel college encampments set up in North America, and over 20 more globally, in the spring of 2024. The first began on April 17, 2024, at Columbia University. The encampments were unofficially known as the “student intifada,” borrowing a term associated with terrorist violence.
Protesters harassed Jewish students, blocked Jews from campus facilities and shouted anti-Semitic slogans. They occupied campus grounds, in many cases illegally, caused property damage, violently took over buildings, celebrated terrorism and promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Activists set up encampments to oppose Israel’s right to wage war against the Hamas terror group following October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people, including 32 American and 8 Canadian citizens. Hamas also kidnapped 252 people, including 11 Americans and the bodies of 2 murdered Canadians.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents and pro-terror activism on campus.
