Anti-Israel activists at Barnard College invade campus building, injure employee

NEW YORK — Anti-Israel protesters at Barnard College, an affiliate of New York’s Columbia University, invaded a campus building on Wednesday to protest the expulsion of two students who disrupted an Israeli professor’s class at the start of the semester.

Barnard said the students injured a college employee, who required treatment at a hospital.

The protesters shared footage showing dozens of activists, mostly masked by keffiyehs, chanting and beating a drum in a hallway beneath several Palestinian flags.

The demonstrators chanted, “Every fascist state must fall,” and “Palestine is Arab,” in Arabic, according to the footage.

The students said they were outside the college dean’s office.

The campus coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest, led by Columbia’s branches of Students for Justice in Palestine and the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, said in a statement that students were staging an “emergency sit-in” outside the dean’s office.

BREAKING: 50+ COLUMBIA STUDENTS FLOOD ADMIN OFFICE OF BARNARD COLLEGE DEMANDING

1. Immediate reversal of the two Barnard students’ expulsions.
2. Amnesty for all students disciplined for pro-Palestine action or thought. Drop all the charges now!
3. A public meeting with Dean… pic.twitter.com/QKSBQ6jIUg

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— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) February 26, 2025

The group demanded that the university reverse the expulsions, give amnesty to all students disciplined for anti-Israel protests, grant the activists a meeting with Barnard leadership, and abolish the college’s disciplinary system.

“When two students are expelled, hundreds more rise up,” the statement said. “The repression cannot stand! We will not rest until full amnesty.”

The protest group told participants to wear a mask and avoid swiping their university IDs. The protesters shared photos showing graffiti that said, “Fuck Barnard.”

Unity of Fields, an off-campus activist group, posted footage of activists shoving their way into a building and chanting “intifada revolution” and “free Palestine.”

Jewish students posted online that they were blocked from entering the building and attending classes.

????@jonny_led has class in the @BarnardCollege building that protestors now occupy. But Public Safety blocked him from entering, saying: “you have to wait until this is over.”

The disruption of academics couldn’t be more clear cut. pic.twitter.com/gb89WaVLCR

— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) February 26, 2025

Barnard said a small group of activists “forcibly entered” Milbank Hall, a campus building.

“They encouraged others to enter campus without identification, showing blatant disregard for the safety of our community,” Robin Levine, Barnard College’s vice president for strategic communications, said in a statement to The Times of Israel. “Barnard is a place of learning. Respect, inclusivity, and safety are non-negotiable. Violence and intimidation have no place here.”

Levine said the college made “multiple good-faith efforts to de-escalate,” and that the college’s leadership offered to meet with the protesters if they removed their masks.

“They refused,” Levine said, adding that it was unclear if all of the protesters were affiliated with the college.

The college warned of “additional, necessary measures to protect our campus” if the students did not leave the building.

Columbia said in a statement that “the disruption of academic activities is not acceptable conduct.”

“Barnard College is a separate institution from Columbia University, although it is affiliated. Columbia is not responsible for security on Barnard’s campus. The disruption that is taking place at Barnard’s Milbank Hall is not on Columbia’s campus, and Barnard’s leadership and security team are addressing the current situation,” the statement said.

Anti-Israel protesters forcibly occupied a building on the Columbia campus last year, leading to a police raid to clear them out and dozens of arrests.

At the same time as Wednesday’s protest, Jewish and Israeli students lit up the campus’s Alma Mater sculpture orange in memory of the Bibas family, who were murdered after being abducted to Gaza and buried in Israel on Wednesday.