Gregory Pflugfelder had just finished the final class of his career at Columbia. In 28 years at the university, he achieved many accolades as a professor of history who taught a popular course on Japanese monsters – mostly focused on Godzilla and “the role of the monstrous in the cultural imagination.”

He didn’t know it, but a cultural monster of sorts would soon be at his door.

The next night, on Tuesday, the 64-year-old silver-haired scholar stepped outside his apartment building, located off campus across the street from Columbia. He wanted to record iPhone video of hundreds of police responding to historic student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Fifteen minutes later, the NYPD arrested him.