On Wednesday night, Columbia students staged a sit-in at the administrative offices of Barnard College in New York City. This comes as part of a week of action to protest Barnard College’s move to expel two students for engaging in pro-Palestine activism.

Barnard College is part of Columbia University, the Ivy League university which has been an epicenter of the student movement for Palestine in the United States. The current protest comes after months of more subdued activity from the student movement, following the brutal repression that universities deployed against Gaza solidarity encampments last spring under Biden’s presidency. Since the violent crackdown on student encampments, universities across the country have continued to find new ways to try to suppress pro-Palestine student activism, including disciplinary measures against protesters. Several student protesters are even facing felony charges for participating in protests last year.

Along with repressing pro-Palestine activism, many universities have quickly capitulated to the Trump administration. Just one month into Trump’s return to the presidency, many universities are already scrapping DEI programs to appease the emboldened Far Right. Columbia and Barnard have been at the forefront of trying to silence student activism since protests broke out to denounce Israel’s genocide in Gaza in 2023. As Maryam Alaniz recently explained: 

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 … 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.

But the Barnard students who took a stand against the university’s attempts to quash pro-Palestine activism show that the spirit of progressive forces organizing at universities will not be silenced. The amount of energy packed into a thirteen second video of the protest, posted by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, is moving. The protesters are demanding that Barnard College reverse the expulsion of the two students who were punished for protesting. They are also demanding amnesty for all students disciplined for pro-Palestine activism, “abolition” of the Barnard disciplinary process and transparency for “past and future disciplinary proceedings.”

Eager to stop the protest from growing, Barnard College offered to meet with student representatives on Thursday. After taking a vote amongst themselves, protesters accepted the meeting and marched out of Milbank Hall, ending the sit-in. Protesters will continue the protest with a picket tomorrow.

By now it is undeniable that the Right wants to further crack down on free speech at universities, and make colleges as inhospitable as possible to oppressed communities and people who engage in protest against state violence. Biden and Harris gave Israel unshakable support in its genocidal offensive in Gaza. Not to be outdone, Trump is doubling down on claims that the the United States should take control of Gaza — after undertaking the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — following the shaky ceasefire that took effect earlier this year. This has enabled further violence by the state of Israel in the West Bank, which has led to the displacement of at least 40,000 Palestinians fleeing the attacks.

In the United States, the Trump administration has put pro-Palestine protesters — and by extension the right to protest — in the crosshairs. In addition to taking further steps to legally equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, Trump ordered the creation of a task force to target pro-Palestinian speech and organizing on university campuses. He also signed an executive order to deport international students who participate in pro-Palestine activism. On Wednesday night, the House Committee on Workforce and Education — which is overseeing university and school administrators repression of pro-Palestine activism — put out a statement celebrating the expulsions of the two students.

The entire Palestine movement should be in solidarity with the struggle at Barnard College, and so must all movements of the oppressed including immigrant rights activists, Black Lives Matter, those fighting for trans rights and abortion rights, and everyone who has a stake in preventing the advance of the Far Right. Standing up against the McCarthyist offensive in American universities is a question of defending the fight against U.S. imperialism and the right to protest itself. 

It will be important for workers, especially academic workers, to use the firepower of collective labor to defend the movement for Palestine. Examples of this have already been demonstrated by UC workers who went on strike against attacks of the encampment movement, and CUNY workers who organized a democratic assembly where hundreds of workers voted to support the demands of their school’s Gaza solidarity encampment.

This is a key moment in shaping the fights to come against the Far Right which wants to decimate basic democratic rights. Solidarity with protesters at Barnard College and the student movement for Palestine! Reinstate the expelled students! Drop all retaliatory measures and charges against those fighting against the genocide!