Columbia's Barnard College is first to expel students over Gaza war

Two students on Friday were expelled from Barnard College, which is part of Columbia University, for disrupting a class as an act of political protest.

The students were part of a group of four who walked into a "history of modern Israel" class on the first day of the spring semester on 21 January to “provide a discursive alternative” to a class they say “dodged questions of Palestinian self-determination and whitewashed the ongoing genocide” in Gaza.

The students distributed fliers, which interim president Katrina Armstrong says contained “violent imagery that is unacceptable on our campus”. 

Three days later, two of the students faced interim suspensions and were banned from all campus facilities, including dorms, libraries, health services, and dining halls. According to the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (Cuad) Collective Defense Working Group, all of this took place without an investigation or hearing.

On Friday, they were formally expelled less than a month after they were suspended.

Barnard is a women’s college that shares academic and extracurricular resources and is an official college of Columbia University. The students’ expulsions mark the first politically related ones at Columbia in 57 years and the first official expulsion over the Gaza war, according to Cuad.

Cuad criticised the new review process that led to the expulsions and is overseen by Barnard’s student success and intervention office. It says that to date, Barnard has suspended over 50 students and "evicted" 46 undergraduates for political protest.

In a comment shared with Middle East Eye, the working group said that the staff member for the department – who is new to Barnard - oversaw the entire process. They were concerned that the staff member was not consistent in their methods, saying they “altered interrogation protocol between meetings, and was found to change her tone and attitude with students depending on her mood”.  

The group expressed concern that no other Barnard staff, faculty or students were consulted “in stark contrast” to the process at Columbia.

Cuad says that students were not granted a representative during the investigative process and were left to prove their innocence instead of the authorities providing evidence they were guilty.

According to the group, the expulsions took place under the auspices of the Barnard Office for Student Intervention and Success, a "new disciplinary body" which issued "interim suspensions" which don't require investigations or hearings unlike formal suspensions. 

Cuad says the new office has been used "almost exclusively" to target pro-Palestine students. 

In response to MEE’s request for information as to why the students were expelled, Barnard College issued the following statement by president Laura Rosenbury.

"Under federal law, we cannot comment on the academic and disciplinary records of students. That said, as a matter of principle and policy, Barnard will always take decisive action to protect our community as a place where learning thrives, individuals feel safe, and higher education is celebrated. This means upholding the highest standards and acting when those standards are threatened.

“When rules are broken, when there is no remorse, no reflection, and no willingness to change, we must act. Expulsion is always an extraordinary measure, but so too is our commitment to respect, inclusion, and the integrity of the academic experience."

Columbia University released a statement on the incident, identifying one of the participants in the protest as a Columbia student and said that within 48 hours they identified, suspended and barred the Columbia student from campus pending a disciplinary process. 

"We condemn this unacceptable call to disrupt our academic mission. Disruptions to our classrooms and efforts to intimidate or harass our students are not acceptable, are an affront to our University community, and will not be tolerated."

Cuad is launching a series of actions this week to have the students reinstated, including a letter writing campaign, and say double standards exist for pro-Palestinian protest. 

"Barnard has consistently violated disciplinary norms to target pro-Palestine students," Cuad said in a statement.

In 1968, Students for a Democratic Society chairman Mark Rudd was expelled for his leadership of student-wide sit-ins in opposition to the Vietnam War and racial segregation of a Columbia University gym.