Anti-Israel Protesters at Barnard College Seize Academic Building After Two Students Were Expelled David Zimmerman
Anti-Israel protesters at Barnard College seized an academic building Wednesday evening to protest the recent expulsions of two students who disrupted a Columbia University class about modern Israel’s history last month.
Video footage shows more than 50 protesters staging a sit-in outside the college dean’s office, where they beat drums and shouted through megaphones. The masked demonstrators chanted, “Every fascist state must fall.”
Columbia University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine are demanding that Barnard leadership immediately reverse the two expulsions, provide amnesty to all students disciplined for anti-Israel protests, give the group a public meeting with Dean Leslie Grinage and President Laura Rosenbury, and abolish the college’s disciplinary process.
Grinage agreed to meet with up to three protesters, according to a professor who tried to appease the crowd in the dean’s place. Before capitulating, Grinage apparently asked the mob permission to use the bathroom. The students then shamed her as she walked by the scene, according to a video.
Notably, Columbia suspended SJP in November 2023 after its members held unauthorized campus protests that made others feel threatened. The suspension was upheld by the New York state supreme court last fall, yet the group remains operational in practice.
The anti-Israel activists reportedly occupied Barnard’s Milbank Hall for several hours and assaulted security guards. The rowdy demonstration forced classes in that building to be cancelled, Jewish students posted on social media.
Columbia’s SJP cried victim, claiming Barnard security officers have “harassed and shoved several students” who were taking part in the unauthorized protest.
Columbia responded to the event, saying the “disruption of academic activities is not acceptable conduct.” Barnard is an independent women’s college affiliated with Columbia.
“Columbia is not responsible for security on Barnard’s campus,” the statement reads. “The disruption that is taking place at Barnard’s Milbank Hall is not on Columbia’s campus, and Barnard’s leadership and security team are addressing the current situation. We are committed to supporting our Columbia student body and our campus community during this challenging time.”
The protest came days after two unnamed Barnard students were expelled for storming an Israeli professor’s class and handing out Hamas propaganda at the start of the spring semester. The episode was caught on camera.
Columbia’s Apartheid Divest, an anti-Israel group, noted those were the first official expulsions at Columbia or Barnard that came in response to pro-Palestinian speech. Students on campus were previously suspended or evicted for political protest.
The House Education and Workforce Committee, which has launched numerous probes into campus antisemitism since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel in 2023, defended Barnard’s expulsions.
“Actions have consequences. Barnard was right to expel the students who disrupted class & distributed fliers calling for the death of Jews,” the committee posted on X. “Negotiating with pro-terror protestors who are breaking campus policies should be out of the question.”
The New York university was also the site of a similar anti-Israel protest, in which students forcibly seized an academic building for 17 hours before police moved in. The protest last spring led to dozens of arrests, although most of those charges were later dropped.
Wednesday marked the burial of Shiri Bibas and her two infant children, Ariel and Kfir, after their bodies were released by Hamas last week.
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