Barnard College ignited a powder keg of outrage when it expelled two students for a January 21 protest. Their action? Disrupting a History of Modern Israel class at Columbia by distributing flyers. Barnard’s decision to expel the student protestors and silence their anti-Zionist and anti-genocide message drew inevitable backlash. Protests organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) then led to a sit-in at Barnard College’s Manhattan campus on Wednesday. This is far from the first pro-Palestinian action the college has seen, and it likely won’t be the last under Trump.
Expulsion of Anti-Zionist Students Ignites NYC Resistance
Floyd Mayweather may think Trump is the best president, but the students demonstrating at Barnard College would probably disagree. While Trump didn’t start the Palestinian genocide, he (like the presidents before him) directly enabled it. Without U.S. funding and support, Israel’s violent occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza would have been impossible, at least at the present scale. There’s a reason “Disruption until Divestment” is a pillar of the Barnard College protests. Many students don’t want their tuition to fund the bombing of children.
Though students and other demonstrators cleared the area after the college threatened police intervention, protests on behalf of the expelled students and the Palestinian people continue elsewhere. A TikTok by @rafeeqmcn compiled a collection of images from the protest, featuring the Palestinian flag along with the protestors and signs bearing their demands. One commenter invoked John Lewis’s famous civil rights quote, saying,
Keep making good trouble✊🏼
Trump and his allies often intentionally conflate anti-Zionism (opposition to the State of Israel) with anti-Semitism (discrimination against Jewish people). It’s a tactic designed both to mislead people and to tarnish the legitimacy of anti-genocide advocacy. Apparent college censorship efforts like the expulsion of the Barnard students are just one fruit of this ongoing propaganda campaign within the U.S. That hasn’t stopped CUAD and the Bernard College protests or others from speaking up.
