Pro-Palestinian demonstrators stage sit-in at Barnard over expulsions

New York: Dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators barged into Milbank Hall on Barnard College's Manhattan campus on Wednesday and staged a sit-in over the expulsion of two students who interrupted a class on Israel, sparking a showdown with Barnard's administration.

The masked protesters pushed past a security guard as they entered the building at about 4 pm, video that they shot showed, with the goal of occupying the area outside Dean Leslie Grinage's office.

A college spokesperson said in a statement that the protesters had "physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them to the hospital" as they entered the building. A Police Department spokesperson said that a 41-year-old man had been taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital at 4:08 p.m. complaining of "pain about the body" and was in stable condition.

The sit-in ended Wednesday night after Barnard set a deadline and threatened to take further action, such as calling in the New York Police Department.

Chanting "there is only one solution, intifada revolution" and beating drums, the masked students began their sit-in. Their demands included the immediate reversal of the student suspensions and amnesty for all other students disciplined for pro-Palestinian activism. They also requested a public meeting with Grinage, who they said could decide on appeals of the student suspensions, and with the Barnard president, Laura Rosenbury.

"Disruption until Divestment, Resistance Until Return, Agitation until Amnesty," Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, a banned group on campus, posted on the social platform X with images of the sit-in. "We will not stop until our demands are met."

After several hours, a faculty intermediary, Kristina Milnor, the chair of the Barnard classics department, told the students that Grinage had offered to meet with up to three protesters, but only if they came in unmasked, according to video posted by the protesters.

The students rejected the terms. Rosenbury was in Florida, Milnor told the students.

About 8:30 p.m., Robin Levine, a Barnard spokesperson, issued a statement saying that if the students did not agree to leave the building by 9:30 p.m., "Barnard will be forced to consider additional, necessary measures to protect our campus."

She said that the college did not know if all of the protesters were Barnard students, and that there had been violence entering the hall.

"We have made multiple good-faith efforts to de-escalate. Barnard leadership offered to meet with the protesters -- just as we meet with all members of our community -- on one simple condition: remove their masks. They refused. We have also offered mediation," Levine said in the statement.

The deadline was relayed to the protesters by another faculty member, who told them they had an hour more to talk, before officers from the Police Department might come. Several students were seen escaping out a first-floor window as the deadline came and went.

At 10:40 p.m., the protesters, chanting and beating a drum, marched out peacefully without confrontation with police. According to the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, at least nine Police Department vans were parked on Riverside Drive near the campus at around 10 p.m.

The students were protesting the expulsion of two students who had been accused of participating in a disruption of professor Avi Shilon's "History of Modern Israel" class at Columbia University on Jan. 21.

Shilon, a visiting history professor from Israel, had been reviewing the course syllabus with students when four masked pro-Palestinian demonstrators entered the classroom. The protesters filmed themselves, saying they were disrupting a "Zionist class" from "intellectualizing and normalizing a genocide." They handed out antisemitic flyers, including one of a Jewish star being stomped by a jackboot.

Shilon, after recovering from his initial shock, asked the protesters if they wanted to stay to study instead of disrupting the class, he said in an interview. They refused. After about five minutes, they left.

The expulsions of the two students were disclosed by the student protest group Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Barnard officials declined to discuss the status of the students, who have not been identified, citing confidentiality concerns.

Expulsion is a rare punishment, and the speed and severity of Barnard's discipline surprised many students. A third protester from the classroom disruption is a Columbia student who has been suspended while an investigation continues; a fourth protester has not been identified.

Rosenbury, in a statement Sunday, said that student privacy rules prevented her from commenting directly on the expulsions. "That said, as a matter of principle and policy," she wrote, "Barnard will always take decisive action to protect our community as a place where learning thrives, individuals feel safe and higher education is celebrated."

She indicated that the students had not displayed remorse for their actions and had shown "no reflection, and no willingness to change." Indeed, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which posted video of the disruption, celebrated it, writing, "STUDENTS DISRUPTED A ZIONIST CLASS, YOU SHOULD TOO!"