The two young women expelled from Barnard College, both seniors in their last semester, are learning the hard lesson that actions have consequences, in this case interrupting a Columbia University class, the “History of Modern Israel,” with vicious anti-Israeli and antisemitic flyers and banging on drums while chanting “free Palestine.”
Barnard President Laura Rosenbury must hold firm that college is over this pair of hateful hooligans, no degree, no nothing. Mom and Dad are sure to be proud of their daughters who thought it was just fine to invade a classroom taught by a Israeli professor and hand out leaflets with showing the Star of David, the universal symbol of the Jewish people, being stomped on by a black jackboot (an image horribly reminiscent of Nazi propaganda) and the slogan “Crush Zionism.” The other flyer shows an Israeli flag in flames saying, “Burn Zionism to the Ground.”
The anti-Israel movement that sprang up after the Hamas Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent Israeli response fails to understand or respect the line between legitimately protesting the actions of the Israeli government and engaging in hateful displays of antisemitism. And since the latter cannot be accepted on a college campus, that sort of overt racism and hate speech merits expulsion.
There is a difference between civilized criticism and hate speech and the pro-Palestinian movement has blurred that line, often without consequences from colleges that will lighting quick take a hard line about other hates like racism and sexism.
That the protesters also disrupted a class is another sound reason for expulsion. These students knew what they were doing, and they need to suffer the consequences.
But they don’t want to take their deserved punishment, as a masked mob supporting the expelled pair occupied a Barnard building on Wednesday and injured a Barnard employee who had to be taken to the hospital. If there are Barnard or Columbia students identified in that gang who engaged in violence, get ready for more expulsions from schools.
Barnard’s annual tuition and fees come to $69,888. Room and board make for another $21,714 (or $29,972 for a single room), bringing the grand total to $91,602 to $99,860. The families, Jewish or not, who are paying all that money to educate their daughters have a right to experience classrooms free of antisemitism and for professors to not have their lectures disturbed.
If students can’t abide those simple guidelines of common decency, they should no longer be students.
The Barnard president, Rosenbury, has been strong on the matter, saying that “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.”
Clearly, Rosenbury doesn’t expel students lightly, but in this case such a harsh sanction is fitting for the two expelled students and the entire Barnard/Columbia community who will see that hate has no place on campus.
