Protesters threw objects including milk toward Joe Biden and his family as they left Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday. Three adult males were arrested, NBC reported, citing a Garda statement. One man in his 50s “has since been charged and is due to appear before Court.” The other two were released without charge.
Biden, who served as U.S. president from 2021 to January 2025, had been in the Examination Hall on Front Square with the former first lady, Jill Biden, as their son, Hunter, received the College Historical Society’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse. The Hist is a student debating society at Trinity. Biden, 83, is being treated for aggressive prostate cancer diagnosed in May 2025. In December 2024 he issued a full pardon for his son after a federal gun conviction and a guilty plea to tax charges.
The family also met Taoiseach Micheál Martin at a Dublin hotel. “Very pleased to welcome former US President @JoeBiden and his family to Dublin,” Martin wrote on X, according to RTÉ and NBC.
Protesters pelted the Biden family with milk in Dublin yesterday, chanting: "Genocide Joe," "shame on you," and "blood on your hands".
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/OJoVvey4O1
— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) November 11, 2026
Trinity News said the Student Neutrality Front and the TCD Workers Party jointly organised the demonstration. “Today we initiated an emergency protest against the welcome given to Joe Biden, the former principle [sic] perpetrator of US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza,” their statement said, calling him “a heinous mass-murderer.” The Israel–Hamas war began on October 7, 2023, while Biden was president. Inside the hall, Hunter Biden, challenged over Gaza, called it “mass murder” and defended his father, the University Times reported.
Harper Alderson, editor of the University Times, told RTÉ’s Drivetime that the chants included “Genocide Joe,” “Shame on you,” and “guards off our campus.” TheJournal and NBC reported the chant “blood on your hands.” Some protesters were waving Palestinian flags, NBC said.
The same charge has followed other Biden-era officials. Hecklers interrupted Kamala Harris three times at a Southbank Centre book-tour event in London on October 23, 2025, the National Pulse reported, with protesters branding her a “war criminal” and “genocide enabler.” On January 14, 2025, days before Biden left office, demonstrators heckled Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he announced Gaza ceasefire terms, one shouting, “Bloody Blinken, Secretary of Genocide… blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on your hands.”
TCD Students’ Union president Amy Kennedy said at the protest “this is not what student-led societies are meant to do,” and claimed the Hist was “actively [invited] someone who has killed students across the globe,” the University Times reported. The paper said Joe Biden attended as a guest and had not been invited by the Hist. RTÉ described those present as “protesters and onlookers.”
RTÉ reported that some people moved forward and objects were thrown, including milk. NBC said “white liquid, believed to be milk, could also be seen flying through the air toward the group.”
RTÉ said footage showed a garda using a baton on one of the protesters being detained. TheJournal reported around six gardaí tackling two protesters, with one using a baton. The University Times said two protesters were “brought to the ground, beaten with batons, and arrested.” Alderson told Drivetime that gardaí used pepper spray on two protesters. Trinity News said one protester was handcuffed on the Reading Room steps, that up to five Public Order Unit vans attended, and that a further arrest appeared to be made about 10 minutes later.
Trinity spokeswoman Catherine O’Mahony told NBC that the protest escalated as the Bidens were leaving, and that the family “left without incident.”
In a joint statement, the students’ union and the national union AMLÉ said gardaí had been called on students in a “peaceful protest,” called it “the second time in the past month” they had been “called upon to break a peaceful student demonstration,” and called on Trinity to investigate and to “revoke the honorary doctorate granted to Joe Biden in 2016.” The Postgraduate Workers’ Organisation called for an investigation into the “violent responses of Gardí [sic].” The charged man is due to appear in court.
