Activists say the expulsions lacked due process, leaving students with little time to retain legal counsel
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. (more...)
Columbia's Barnard College is first to expel students over Gaza war
Barnard college EXPELS two students for pro-Palestinian activism under pressure from billionaire donors
— CU Apartheid Divest (CUAD) (@ColumbiaBDS) February 23, 2025
Follow @ColumbiaBDS for details on an upcoming WEEK OF ACTION demanding Barnard reverse the expulsions! pic.twitter.com/sngbcSpYc8
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