On February 21, Barnard College, a sister university of Columbia University, took the unprecedented step of expelling two students for their participation in a protest during the first session of the class History of Modern Israel. This marks a dangerous escalation in the repression of the student movement and an outright attack on basic democratic rights. It is the first time since 1968 that students have been expelled from Columbia or Barnard for political activism — an alarming precedent in an era of an intensifying offensive against students, workers, and community members in and around universities.
The repression of student activists at Columbia and Barnard is not happening in a vacuum. Trump and his allies have intensified their attacks on universities, demanding crackdowns on so-called “radical” activism to push institutions to take even harsher actions against those who challenge his administration’s policies. Trump’s measures have most recently targeted academic workers by cutting funding to federal grants. He is also promising to deport immigrant students and staff who participated in protests for Palestine at universities through a recent executive order.
University administrations, which fear losing federal funding and donor support, are now doubling down on repression, showing their willingness to act as enforcers for a reactionary agenda. Columbia and Barnard in particular have been leading the charge with these neo-McCarthyist attacks, due in part to their direct links to the U.S. regime. In fact, last April Barnard President Laura Rosenbury suspended 46 students and evicted at least 55 who participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, forcing them into an “Alternative Resolution” process that stripped them of their rights to due process and their ability to formally challenge these punitive measures.
By implementing this process, Barnard sought to set a dangerous precedent: conditioning students’ reinstatement on their willingness to surrender their rights. It was also an attempt to break the movement by forcing students into individual agreements, preventing them from organizing together to challenge the repression.
Columbia was also the first university to ban Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) on its campus. These moves have drawn national attention and made Columbia a symbol for both the movement for Palestine and in defense of academic freedom. Even university officials in other countries are taking notes from Columbia, as we can see with the expulsion of three students from the prestigious Sciences Po in France for simply participating in a mobilization in support of Palestine. That’s why Barnard’s decision to expel these students is not an isolated case of administrative discipline — it’s meant to give a blank check for universities across the country and around the world to do the same in their attempts to crush political organizing on campuses.
More recently, the appointment of Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former Secretary of State and CIA director, as a fellow at Columbia’s Institute of Global Politics is another sign of this rightward shift. Columbia, like other elite institutions, is bending under the pressure of right-wing donors and the Trump administration, who are seeking to stamp out dissent. The hiring of Pompeo — an architect of war, surveillance, and repression — demonstrates that the university is more than willing to platform reactionary figures while simultaneously silencing students who challenge its complicity in a genocide.
The contradiction between “free speech” for the Far Right but discipline for Pro-Palestininan students exposes the university’s true role: not a bastion of free thought and fundamental rights, but an enforcer of the status quo, ensuring that their students and employees do not become too radical or challenge the regime that they ultimately serve.
We Need a Broad Movement to Defend Democratic Rights
If the expulsions are allowed to stand, Columbia and Barnard, as well as the Trump administration, will only escalate their attacks against our democratic freedoms. But if we fight back now — if we mobilize the full power of students, workers, and community members — we can not only reinstate the expelled students but also set a precedent that repression will not go unanswered.
Just as Columbia students and faculty united last year to defend those who faced suspension and eviction, we must now come together to demand the immediate reinstatement of these expelled students and an end to the university’s infringement on the right to protest, to speak freely, and to organize without fear. We should also fight for amnesty for all the students across the country, including many at Columbia, who are still facing sanctions and disciplinary hearings due to their activism during the encampment movement.
Already students at Columbia and Barnard College are launching a week of actions to demand Barnard reverse its decision. This week — including petition drives, phone zaps, letter-writing campaigns, and direct action like pickets and sickouts — must be expanded and allow for democratic spaces for debate and organizing among everyone who participates in the struggle.
We can also broaden this fight by breaking the isolation of students and calling on faculty, university staff, and local unions to take action. Community members can also be key in expanding the struggle, which is exactly why Columbia University has continued to keep its gates closed to the wider community and cut it off from students and workers since the encampments.
The labor movement, in particular, has the power to disrupt university operations. During the encampments, solidarity between students and campus workers was a crucial force against repression and for rank-and-file organizing, as we saw with the University of California strikes and the rank-and-file assembly of CUNY workers. Important unions like Student Workers of Columbia, which are at the nexus of student and worker organizing, have the ability to turn these escalating attacks on their head and give students and workers the confidence to unite and fight for their shared interests.
