Power & Pushback: The Barnard Suspensions
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In our first issue, we take you to Barnard. The women’s school is an official college of Columbia University, where the Gaza Solidarity Encampments kicked off last spring.
On February 21 two Barnard students were expelled for disrupting a class on the history of modern Israel. Mondoweiss spoke with a student activist and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) member about the suspensions and the current climate on campus. Shortly before we spoke, Barnard expelled a third student over their alleged participation in the occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April.
Barnard Interview: ‘Continuing to fight for Palestine‘
Can you talk about the action that led to the suspensions? Why was this class targeted?
The class that was disrupted is called History of Modern Israel. It is taught by Avi Shilon, an ex-IDF soldier.
The alleged disruptors read a speech that outlined why the class was disrupted. It legitimizes and normalizes the genocide that’s going on in Palestine, the occupation, and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The class itself attempts to take a “both sides” framework of the situation and that is reflected in the syllabus.
Those who disrupted the class wanted to point out, of course, that the class itself is part of a long legacy of academia being used, particularly at Columbia, to rewrite history and normalize ethnic cleansing.
In the eyes of CUAD’s Collective Defense Working Group, disrupting this class is morally correct as is fighting back against the Zionist entities’ tactics, their propaganda, and the fact that Columbia and Barnard are complicit in funding the genocide and spreading that propaganda.
I saw a statement from CUAD mentioning there wasn’t a hearing or investigation for the expulsions. Can you talk about that process, whether there is any sort of precedent, and the wider historical significance of these suspensions?
Let me contextualize this by pointing out that CUAD’s Collective Defense Working Group essentially encourages students who have been disciplined for their pro-Palestine activism to utilize collective strategy and work together to navigate the disciplinary processes at Barnard, Columbia, and Columbia’s affiliate schools.
So, those of us who are part of the working group have done a lot of research into past disciplinary cases related to protest. We essentially act as advisors, alongside faculty advisors, to help students who are going through the disciplinary process for pro-Palestine activities.
Based on that research and on working through the disciplinary process with other students, we have concluded that these expulsions lack precedent. We are of the opinion that these expulsions are totally unwarranted and unprecedented. According to our research, based on what’s available through the archives at Columbia, the last time there were expulsions for political activity was in 1968, when hundreds of students took over Hamilton Hall and a dean was held hostage for 24 hours.
On our Instagram, we list a long timeline of other political activities that resulted in lesser punishments. For example, in 1972, there was a multi-building takeover. All students were pardoned. In 1985, there was a three-week takeover Hamilton Hall. The students were given a one semester disciplinary warning. There were no expulsions. In 2016, there was an eight-day occupation of former President Bollinger’s office. Students were required to write apology letters, and there were no expulsions.
Barnard is Columbia’s sister school, but it’s very difficult to find information about Barnard’s specific disciplinary process. At this point, the school has removed information about its disciplinary office from its website.
The expulsions were actually issued by the Barnard Office for Student Success and Intervention, which is a new disciplinary body. It was established last fall. As far as we know, that office only has one employee. That one employee makes determinations about sanctions and from evidence gathered by Barnard’s public safety office, which is called Barnard CARES.
With just one employee, there seems to be no oversight, no checks or balances, and near total freedom to penalize students. That office penalizes students predominantly for political speech. At this point, Barnard has suspended over 50 students and evicted 46 undergraduates for pro-Palestine protest.
Students who are suspended immediately lose access to their housing, their healthcare, and their prepaid meal plans. Some students have been able to get refunds on things like their meal plan tuition, but others have not. The office definitely seems to treat each student on a case-by-case basis.
Columbia University’s disciplinary process, some of their bodies, like the University Judicial Board, have panels of judges to determine sanctions and hear cases. However, the Barnard Office for Student Success and Intervention essentially has no checks to prevent an abuse of power or protect students from the political pressure that’s rising.
Specifically, in terms of the first two students who were expelled, there were definitely some violations of disciplinary norms to target them. The two expelled students were interim suspended. They were banned from all campus facilities. All these interim suspensions are different from formal suspensions in that they do not require an investigation or a hearing, but they do eliminate students’ access to food, housing, medical care, and mental health services.
In these cases in particular, Barnard was really attempting to pressure the students. Gary Maroni, who is an ex-NYPD officer who works at the Barnard’s CARES office, and the Barnard Vice Dean, Leslie Grinage were essentially attempting to coerce students into private interrogations.
These students were given as little as an hour’s notice to come into these interrogations. They were framed as opportunities for the students to deny involvement in the disruptions, but, it was made clear to the students through emails, that anything they said in these meetings would be on the record and could be used in disciplinary proceedings. In these private meetings, the students were not allowed support people, legal counsel, or any sort of union representatives, all of which Columbia’s University Judicial Board has allowed students to have in the past.
Last week there was a sit-in at the school’s Milbank Hall to protest the suspensions. Can you talk about that action and what the specific demands were?
The sit-in took place on February 26. Students staged it in Milbank Hall, right outside Barnard’s Vice President and Dean, Leslie Grinage’s office. Milbank also holds a number of other administrative offices. Students stayed for over six hours.
The sit-in’s primary demands were for the two expelled students to be reinstated, an overhaul of the Barnard disciplinary process to be fairer to students, and amnesty for all students who had been disciplined for pro-Palestine protests.
Students attempted to negotiate with Leslie Grinage to accomplish their demands. Grinage recruited two or three faculty negotiators, some of whom offered to negotiate, some of whom were just present on the floor and seemed to have been tapped.
Initially, after about an hour or so, Dean Grinage agreed to meet with students but she requested a private meeting with only two to three Barnard students. She asked that the students unmask and identify themselves. She also asked for a public safety officer be present for her own safety, but she wanted all witnesses or legal observers to leave during the meeting.
Students rejected a number of these demands and were adamant about Grinage meeting the students in public. They wanted legal observers present for their own safety. Students wanted to be masked and to be able to refuse to identify themselves out of fear of doxing or discipline.
Students and the faculty negotiators went back and forth on the terms of the meeting until about 9:30 p.m. At that time a statement was put out by a Barnard University administrator that the college was considering other options to clear the hallway, which students took to mean that Barnard would be calling in the NYPD. At this point there were around 10 to 15 NYPD vans that had gathered outside of Barnard and there were several NYPD officers with zip ties who had been lining up. Students gathered this form scouts and cop watch groups that were sending them information.
Eventually, students came to an agreement on the terms of the meeting, but at around 10 p.m., a public safety officer came out from the office and ordered everyone to leave, saying that Dean Grinage would not be meeting with anyone that night, and implicitly threatened NYPD involvement.
Students held their ground, and eventually, students and Dean Grinage came to an agreement that the next day at 1 p.m., three Barnard students could meet with Dean Grinage and Laura Rosenbury, the school president, masked and without identifying themselves to discuss the students’ demands.
The next day 1 p.m., the students went in to meet with Grinage and Laura Rosenbury, but both reneged on the previously stated terms of the meeting and refused to meet unless the students unmasked.
The students refused and went back and forth for a bit. They provided updates to the picket that had gathered outside that day, but the negotiation fell through.
There’s obviously been a lot of campus activism over Palestine and we are seeing an increasing effort to stifle such protest. Can you talk about the current climate at the school? Have organizing efforts been impacted by these consistent crackdowns? What are you seeing? What are you feeling?
Columbia and Barnard have both taken extreme repressive measures after the encampments to stifle political protests around Palestine. If you come to Columbia or Barnard today, you’ll see security checkpoints. Often campuses are shut down, limited to people with Columbia or Barnard IDs.
Morningside Heights and Harlem residents have started organizing around Columbia’s closure of the gates on Broadway and 116th, as those gates are meant to be open to the public and provide a really vital walkway for folks to get from Broadway to Mount Sinai Hospital.
New security cameras have been put up on both campuses and obviously Columbia and Barnard are becoming increasingly comfortable weaponizing their disciplinary procedures in attempt to stifle protests.
Many of these measures seem to be coming from external pressures from billionaires, donors, and government officials. There have been multiple articles published recently that have exposed how billionaires and billionaire donors have pressured Columbia administrators to suppress campus activism for Palestine. Zionist networks, both on campus and off campus, have targeted activists for harassment, doxing, and school discipline.
Some of these measures have certainly stifled protest, but students and community members are increasingly coming together to brainstorm ways to continue fighting for Palestine. Students have really taken measures to reject the “outside agitators” narrative that was very prevalent during the encampments and come together with community members who are also organizing.
Obviously, with these expulsions, there’s been intense outrage at just how unprecedented they are and I believe that students are drawing a lot of strength from the fact that Columbia and Barnard refuse to divest from the genocide. Palestinians have been facing unfathomable conditions, including increasing ceasefire violations, infants dying due to extreme cold temperatures.
I still believe that there’s a strong feeling amongst student protesters and community protesters, that we need to continue to disrupt the Columbia and Barnard’s normalization of the genocide. CUAD as an organization has taken steps to make students feel more comfortable protesting, along with community members who may be facing any legal issues.
The Collective Defense Working Group consists of students, non-students, and law students, and like I mentioned before, we work together to make sure students and community members have the tools they need to protest safely and know that in the event of discipline, there’s a group of people who have studied the disciplinary system and can connect folks with resources. Those are some of the steps to mitigate some of the repression.
Zooming Out: Trump takes aim
The Barnard student interview above mentioned external pressures coming from billionaires and lawmakers.
The Justice Department recently announced that the newly-created Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will visit ten universities in the coming weeks where they will meet with “university leadership, local law enforcement, impacted students and staff, local law enforcement, and community members” to determine “whether remedial action is warranted.”
The schools include Columbia University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern California, all of which saw large campus protests over Gaza last spring.
The task force also says it’s considering stopping $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government. In a press release Secretary of Education Linda McMahon claimed that “unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled.”
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” wrote President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning. ““American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Movement Matters
💻 Tomorrow PARCEO and Haymarket Books will hold an online panel: “Responding to Repression: Executive Orders, Resistance, and Rights.” Speakers include Nyle Fort, Lara Kiswani, Darakshan Raja, Diala Shammas, Bina Ahmad, and Beth Miller.
🪧 At a protest outside the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) national conference, New York City Jewish Elders released a ‘report card’ failing the organization for its role in helping to criminalize free speech and falsely conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
“We are living in dangerous times, facing extremist forces in control of our government,” said group member Barbara Schulman. “Yet, while the ADL directs its resources toward attacking students and strong-arming universities and legislators, it is giving a pass to the Trump/Musk/MAGA movement. That Trump’s vision is to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and develop it as luxury real estate, while Christian Zionists in the MAGA coalition ultimately seek to capture the “Holy Land” for themselves, does not seem to matter to the ADL.”
🏫 More than 40 Harvard affiliates protested Israel’s deployment of tanks into the West Bank on Monday. It was organized by the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP).
“The same billionaire agenda that is attacking all of us here at home is the same imperialist agenda that is happening in Palestine,” said HOOP organizer Prince Williams. “We are going to continue to put Palestine at the front of our movement.”