On Wednesday at 1 pm, University faculty members gathered on Low Steps to protest the recent suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine and BC/CU Jewish Voice for Peace, and to demand the University affirm its commitment to free speech.

Content warning: mentions of violence.

At 1 pm on Wednesday, around 140 faculty members from Columbia, Barnard, and Teacher’s College gathered on Low Steps to demonstrate support for academic freedom following the suspension of BC/CU Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Listening to them was a crowd of about 200 students, Columbia affiliates, and a handful of unaffiliated members of the press, including ABC 7 News. Additionally, a group of about 15 to 20 counter protesters gathered near the demonstration, some wearing the Israeli flag and others holding large “kidnapped” posters.

A number of faculty spoke at the demonstration, including members of the departments of History, Women’s Studies, Sociology, and Classics at Columbia and Barnard. The main sentiment conveyed by the speakers was one of concern for the health of free speech on campus. A poster displayed by the protesters listed five demands for the three institutions, while a volunteer distributed flyers. It stated:

We, the faculty, demand that Columbia, Barnard, & Teachers College

1. Affirm their commitment to freedom of speech and to the right to assembly, and reverse actions that involve unlawful censorship of or discrimination against students, faculty, or staff.
2. Overturn the suspension or sanction of student groups and the censorship of faculty-run websites, and roll back on-campus policing and surveillance, all of which have taken place outside normal procedural rules.
3. Withdraw recent policies that circumvent faculty consultation and oversight regarding student protests, events, student suspensions, and disciplinary actions against student group activities.
4. Recognize, publicly, that academic freedom protects all forms of political speech including critiques of Israeli state policies and Zionist political ideology and that such speech must not be reductively equated with antisemitism.
5. Create a JOINT commission for antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab faculty who are scholars and researchers across these fields.

Speaking to Bwog later that day, two professors, including Columbia Professor of Mathematics Michael Thaddeus, commented on why they joined the protest, separately reiterating the same belief: despite the political opinions of the students on campus, their First Amendment right must remain protected.

First, a Barnard Sociology professor read an excerpt from “From Jewish Students: Protecting the Free Speech of Our Peers,” an open letter circulated by Barnard and Columbia students last week.​​ The letter, which echoed the concerns of the faculty protesters, read, “As concerned Jewish students at Columbia and Barnard, our points of view are wildly diverse… where our vast array of perspectives coincide is the knowledge that Columbia University’s and Barnard College’s vilification of some beliefs—but not others—not only threatens the safety of students holding these beliefs, but the sanctity of University life as a whole.” 

Similarly, a Barnard professor in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department, told the crowd, “I want to remind the University that they do not speak on behalf of all Jews, and the state of Israel does not represent all Jews.” Another speaker read from an open letter written by students at Harvard University. 

In between speakers, faculty led chants including “Our voices can’t be banned, academic freedom is what we demand,” “Columbia, Barnard, you can’t hide, history is on our side,” “Columbia, Barnard, don’t you see, we are all JVP,” and “Columbia, Barnard, don’t you see, we are all SJP.”

Wednesday’s faculty protest came just weeks after coalitions of Barnard and Columbia faculty wrote two separate open letters to University administration. On October 30, a group of Barnard and Columbia faculty released an open letter titled “Academic Freedom Under Attack at Barnard College.” The letter, which received over 650 signatures from faculty, students, and other community members, was written in response to an October 26 email from Barnard President Laura Rosenbury announcing policy updates after the appearance of doxing trucks in front of Barnard’s campus. In her email, Rosenbury wrote that she was “appalled and saddened to see antisemitism and anti-Zionism spreading throughout Barnard and Columbia,” before saying she was also “appalled and saddened to see the anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim rhetoric on our campus.”  

In this open letter, faculty members wrote that Rosenbury’s conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism “endangers Barnard students, faculty, staff and alumni,” and is “not sustainable on any serious, critical intellectual grounds,” ultimately calling Rosenbury’s email an “act of suppression of political perspectives.” The letter also accused Barnard College of “overt censorship,” claiming that a statement written by Barnard faculty in solidarity with Palestine was removed from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department website.

A separate letter, titled, “An Open Letter from Columbia University, Barnard College and Teachers College Faculty on the Campus Conversation About Hamas’s Atrocities and the War in Israel and Gaza,” was published around the same time. This letter, which gathered just under 500 signatures from faculty, students, and community members, described instances of antisemitism on campus since October 7, and wrote, “in the same way that the University defends other groups from this sort of disgusting conduct, it is essential to do the same for Jewish and Israeli students.” While the authors of this letter wrote that they believe “the University must foster an environment where debate on these important issues can proceed without intimidation or harassment,” they also wrote that “the University cannot tolerate violence, speech that incites it, or hate speech.” 

At 1:13 pm, the faculty speakers were interrupted by counter-protesters, who chanted, “Bring them home.” In a comment, one faculty counter-protester said, “They [the faculty] are supporting SJP and the other organization [JVP] which were banned, and they were banned for good reasons. They are supporting Jihad, if you look at their statement from October 7.” The counter-protester appeared to be referring to SJP’s October 9 statement on Palestine, in which the group wrote it “stands in full solidarity with Palestinian resistance against over 75 years of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid.” 

The counter-protester continued by stating that SJP and JVP “basically supported hate” and “kidnapping babies.” He also said that the counter-protesters aimed to protest the possible reinstallation of SJP and JVP, adding, “And these guys, which are unfortunately my colleagues, want to bring them back. We want to bring back the babies, which I think is much more important.” The counter-protester subsequently stated, “They are claiming that it is all free speech, but it is quite clear that if someone were to stand here and say ‘I support the KKK,’ no one would let free speech happen.”

Editors note: This article was updated at 4:46 pm on November 17 to reflect corrected spelling errors.

Low via Flickr