0 CommentsOn Monday, September 23, an independent group of Barnard faculty members organized a teach-in outside Barnard Hall, claiming instances of violations of freedom of expression and shared governance.
At 4 pm on Monday, September 23, dozens of faculty members gathered on the steps of Barnard Hall to hold a teach-in responding to Barnard’s new Expectations For Community Conduct. The Expectations, published on Barnard’s website on September 11, outline example scenarios that elaborate on several College policies.
A full transcription of the faculty-teach in and Bwog’s interview with Barnard alum Cynthia Nixon can be found below, along with fact-checking for both transcriptions.
Africana Studies Professor Celia Naylor and Classics and Comparative Literature Professor Nancy Worman hosted the teach-in. In her opening remark, Naylor claimed that the teach-in’s goal was “to elucidate the problematic nature of these so-called Expectations.” She attested that the Expectations “threaten academic freedom and freedom of expression, violate basic norms of democratic and shared campus governance, and set up the campus for yet another disciplinary crackdown on students, staff, and faculty.” Naylor emphasized that the participating members were organized informally and that many of her colleagues, especially untenured faculty, were unable to participate due to fears of retribution from the College.
Professors gather to begin the teach-in.
Throughout the teach-in, faculty members distributed various printed documents amongst the crowd. One document contained a QR code for AAUP articles referenced during the teach-in, while another was a printed pamphlet of an August 20 article from the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) newsletter. The faculty also passed around a “Barnard Student Suspension Fact Sheet” listing information on Barnard students currently suspended or interim suspended and the various impacts of suspensions on students’ housing, job status, financial aid, and academics.
Another document listed various votes conducted between September 9 and 11 amongst “large majorities of full-time Barnard faculty.” It stated that 85% of participating faculty members, comprising 60% of the total full-time faculty, voted to urge Barnard to restore all privileges for students who are not able to access campus, attend class, or receive housing or meal services while their cases are being adjudicated. Additionally, 80% of participating faculty members, comprising 57% of the total full-time faculty, voted that they “strongly oppose the enforcement of new and changed policies” and “condemn the administration’s lack of transparency regarding those policies.”
Documents passed around the crowd.
Naylor recalled how teach-ins have been used in the past for “gathering, learning, teaching and also strategizing about future actions; in resistance, in refusal, to acts of power against the people, against our Barnard community.” According to Naylor, faculty held the teach-in to reject the curtailing of academic freedom and free speech, and to ask Barnard’s administration, “How do you create community expectations without the full involvement and full participation of significant numbers of members of that community?”
Maria Hinojosa, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Barnard alum, and Barnard’s first Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence, spoke next. She began by commenting on the context of the new policies, stating, “You cannot have a campus of the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters and tell us to be strong, independent, thinking, brilliant women, and then expect us to just take anything that you tell us as fact.” Hinojosa described how there is not always a valid opposition to every claim. She rhetorically asked, “Does that mean that as a journalist or as a Barnard professor, I’m going to have to talk about both sides of cannibalism?”
Hinojosa also reflected on her experience speaking with students after the student arrests. “In all of my years being here teaching so many different students… never, ever have my students felt fear on this campus. Until they told me when the administration called the NYPD,” she said.
Philosophy and German Professor Frederick Neuhouser spoke next on the research included in his recently published article “Barnard and Columbia in Crisis: 1968/2024.” Neuhouser, also the President of the Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), commented that he was “very surprised by the results” of his research on the differences between the 1968 and 2024 protests. He explained that the protests of 1968 “lasted much longer and were significantly more disruptive than those of 2024.” He also noted the “enormous hostility” between students of differing viewpoints during the 1968 protests.
Neuhouser then drew parallels between specific events in 1968 and in 2023–2024, drawing connections between an anti-racist walk-out at a memorial service for Martin Luther King Jr. and a walk-out of a lecture by Hillary Clinton. Neuhouser stated that while walk-out participants in 1968 faced no disciplinary action, those who walked out of the Clinton lecture were. Later in 1968, several University buildings were occupied by over 1,000 students, resulting in the arrest of 524 students after six days of demonstration.
Neuhouser stated, “…In ‘68, like in 2024, the disciplining of students was haphazard, inconsistent, arbitrary. That much is like 2024. Certain students were picked up to be disciplined. Others weren’t.” In general, however, he described the disciplinary actions taken in 1968 as less intense. “Students weren’t given interim suspensions immediately and without a hearing, and they weren’t given 15 minutes to clear their items from the dormitories,” he said.
Neuhouser then shifted to describing the Cox Report, a report commissioned in 1968 to give recommendations to the University. The report concluded that University governance requires rules, stating that “in their absence, arbitrary power flourishes. Power in turn, encourages improvisation under pressure.” He emphasized the modern relevance of this quote, claiming that rules cannot be made by President Rosenbury and her “shadow cabinet” and that collaboration between faculty and students is essential.
Neuhouser examined the disciplinary actions taken on both occasions, with the 1968 student suspensions and hearings occurring in rapid succession after the initial incidents. In 2024, “people still do not know where their cases are and what their punishments are going to be,” he said. Barnard students in 1968 had the full support of administration and the Board of Trustees, who offered to pay fines incurred and fought to have criminal charges dropped.
In his concluding call to action, he urged the University to revive the “now-defunct Judicial Council,” which comprised students, faculty, and administrators and gave different Barnard affiliates more of a voice in decisions like student disciplinary procedures. He also called to “invalidate all recent College policy changes not put into place with meaningful faculty and student input.” His third recommendation was to grant full amnesty to all disciplined students. Finally, he called for the restoration of normal campus access.
Next to speak was Professor Najam Haider from the Religion department at Barnard. Haider recalled when he first joined Barnard’s faculty 15 years ago and his excitement at becoming part of “a place where you had boldness and activism and we had amazing students that were able to articulate themselves.” He mentioned, “We had difficult conversations and sometimes you got to the end of that conversation and you felt great and sometimes you didn’t feel so great, but you were pushed and you were challenged. And that was the idea. That was the entire basis of a liberal arts education, of higher education in general.”
With regard to the new Expectations, Haider emphasized that the kind of community he found when he first arrived at Barnard “comes in conversation. [The community] doesn’t come through an edict from up above telling us what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot say. I’ve spoken to people… That again is not freedom of expression. That is not the community that we want.”
Haider then introduced the next two speakers, Professor Gale Kenny from the Religion department and Professor Shayoni Mitra from the Theater department. Together, Kenny and Mitra described Barnard’s student discipline procedures in the spring and the strain that students and professors alike experienced through the interim suspensions of student protestors. Kenny explained the role some faculty took on to mediate between students and administration, saying, “Some faculty found themselves temporarily housing students and advising students on how to navigate the last few weeks of the semester. Other faculty took on the work of responding to emails and phone calls from parents who worried about their children’s safety and their future.”
According to Professor Mitra, Barnard amended its Student Code of Conduct in the Fall 2023 semester without notifying students or faculty “to specifically make it so students couldn’t bring a practicing attorney to their conduct hearings.” She further described her and Kenny’s experiences accompanying students to disciplinary hearings and quoted a student suspended in May who shared the following statement about their disciplinary hearing: “During the hearing, I was shown the evidence the University had compiled against me including over three weeks of surveillance information Columbia and Barnard gathered of me on and off campus, which I was not allowed to document. CU Public Safety and Barnard CARES monitored me for over three weeks, stalking my every move around campus and college properties.”
Regarding Barnard’s process of monitoring students before their hearings, Mitra argued that “this shaky evidentiary standard” makes it clear that the College insists on suspending its students based on surveillance that does not actually prove disruptive behavior, disorderly conduct, or failure to disperse. “As anti-carceral feminists who have before us decades of work on restorative justice and community healing, we must ask ourselves, why is the College pursuing this model of punishment in a process it insists is educational?” she questioned.
After Kenny and Mitra spoke, Barnard alum and actress Cynthia Nixon, BC ’88, spoke to the crowd.Nixon enthusiastic applause from the crowd before reading aloud a statement from a suspended Barnard student. The statement detailed the student’s arrest, their time in jail, and their resulting disillusionment with Barnard. The student elucidated in the statement, “The only reason that I’m okay right now is because I’ve been able to fully rely on my community when the institution has not only failed me, but is actively trying to harm me. They offer deals of lesser punishment and amnesty to students they deem nonviolent while they target and punish others… Everyone needs to wake the fuck up and realize that the institution will never love you back.”
In response to the student’s description of their experience, Nixon said, “It hurts my heart to know that a student at Barnard, and more than just one, feels that this is how their institution feels about them.” She said, “The more I hear about how students protesting on behalf of Palestinians are being treated, the sadder and the angrier I get.” She stated that the suspended students did nothing wrong and only “listen[ed] to their own consciences and act[ed] accordingly.” She concluded that the teach-in attendees should be proud of the affected students.. “I know I am,” she concluded.
Cynthia Nixon speaking.
After Nixon’s remarks, Philosophy Professor Taylor Carman took the stage. Carman reminded the crowd of the Political Activity Policy that Barnard imposed 10 months ago. According to the policy—which Carman described as “shocking”—political statements include statements about any political events at the local, federal, and international levels.
Carman argued that Barnard protest policies are a violation of the Chicago Statement of Free Expression (also called the Chicago Principles), which Barnard faculty voted to adopt in December 2023. Carman mentioned Barnard’s Temporary Policy for Safe Campus Demonstrations regarding when students are allowed to demonstrate and read aloud the section from the Chicago Principles stating, “The University may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University… But these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with the University’s commitment to a completely free and open discussion of ideas.”
According to Carman, the Chicago Principles state, “Yes, you can limit according to time, place, and manner, but only when you absolutely have to to protect, say, other people’s free expression and the functioning of the University. So if somebody tells you that you are violating a time, place, or manner rule in some other policy, tell them to read the Chicago statement.”
Carman continued to detail some of the points of Section Eight of the College’s Expectations for Community Conduct. According to the Expectations, messaging from a College department supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective violates the policy. “What’s shocking about that is that is not just a limitation of free speech, that is dictating speech. That is dictating content,” Carman said. “The College likes to take pride in the fact that it’s content neutral in its demonstration policies. That is not content neutral.” At the time of his speech, this statement had been removed from the Expectations.10
Carman noted that Chicago is committed to institutional neutrality, a principle that Barnard has also recently put into writing which applies to both administration and faculty. “If this administration would like it to govern everybody, everybody should be neutral about everything, and that means being silent,” Carman said. “We need to push back on this.”
After Carman’s speech, Naylor updated the crowd on a request for feedback on recent policy changes that Barnard President Laura Rosenbury sent earlier in the day. She mentioned that the restrictions on the time, place, and manner in which students protest, while they have been amended, contain language that “remains problematic.”
Worman then introduced special guest “Both Sides Bozo,” whom Carman interviewed in a satirical skit on “bothsidesism” or the idea that for every opinion, the opposite should receive the same degree of validity and representation. Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Professor Rebecca Jordan-Young played Both Sides Bozo, wearing a pink clown wig with face paint dividing her face into two distinct sides.
Carman and Both Sides Bozo debated the events of Trojan War in the Iliad, which Carman is teaching in one of his classes. In the skit, Carman explained that at the end of the war, Achilles kills Hector and drags his body behind his chariot. “That was really awful, right?” Carman asked. “That’s the Trojan view,” Both Sides Bozo responded. “I mean, the Greek view—that was tough and cool. That was so cool.”
When Carman argued that the American Civil War was about slavery (not “states’ rights,” like Both Sides Bozo said) in another sketch argument, Both Sides Bozo said that slavery being cruel and inhumane is just one side of the debate. She reminded the crowd that Europeans believed that “God had ordained that Africans be slaves and they get to be their masters. And so if you’re gonna be fair, you gotta [talk about] both sides.”
In a line meant to be representative of the campus climate in light of the new policies, Both Sides Bozo argued that “presenting both sides is great because it keeps you from having to take a stance.” The University, she said, is all about “facts and objectivity and established things and not, like, ethics, which really has no place in a university or college.”
On the issue of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, Both Sides Bozo suggested that “the best approach to be neutral is to present all the words. Like the internet!” When discussing “bombing civilian populations,” Both Sides Bozo concluded that “our department wouldn’t want to take a side about something so important as that or, you know, anything really.”
Professor Carman interviewing Both Sides Bozo.
Next, Worman introduced Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Sociology Professor Elizabeth Bernstein who finished the teach-in. Bernstein is on the Executive Committee of the Barnard chapter of the Association of American University Professors and gave her speech on behalf of the AAUP.
Bernstein attested that the Expectations were issued with “no warning” and “no community input whatsoever,” which she said was “rather ironic for community expectations.” She claimed that this lack of input, in addition to the vagueness and frequent changing of policies, “has made it very easy for almost anyone to be in violation of them at any time.” It has been difficult for the AAUP to keep up with the policy changes, Bernstein noted.
Bernstein also attested that Barnard is a part of a wider conversation about higher education being “under assault nationally from right-wing forces.” She claimed the College’s situation illustrates a national pattern of “crackdowns on higher education in many states and in many institutions beyond Barnard.”
Bernstein described the work of political scientist Isaac Kamola, who published an AAUP paper detailing far-right “political attacks” on higher education, specifically highlighting Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis. She described how far-right movements have taken aim at Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, critical race theory, and “so-called gender ideology,” and that the far right is now “weaponizing the issue of antisemitism on college campuses.” According to Bernstein, this “conveniently puts administrators, politicians, trustees, donors, and think tanks in charge” of academic institutions. She cited Florida’s New College as a “cautionary tale,” detailing it as a once-progressive liberal arts college whose DEI programs and Gender Studies department were dismantled.
Bernstein then discussed the findings of an AAUP report on Florida’s higher education system, specifically touching on the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She stated that when Barnard President Laura Rosenbury was the Dean of the Law School, she prohibited law faculty from serving as experts in a case against restrictions on felony voting rights. After faculty filed a lawsuit in opposition, Judge Mark Walker ruled in their favor and deemed the University’s actions as “pre-emptive subservience to political pressure from Florida’s right-wing.”
Bernstein also discussed the now-removed Barnard policy of departments maintaining neutrality on geopolitical viewpoints, stating that this policy was common under Ron DeSantis’ Florida. She mentioned objections in 2023 to a high school African American Studies course’s depiction of slavery, which officials stated “may lead to a viewpoint of an oppressor versus oppressed based solely on race or ethnicity.”
After Bernstein’s speech, the faculty members invited the crowd to come up to speak to individual faculty members and speakers. Bwog spoke to Cynthia Nixon about her time at Barnard and thoughts on recent disciplinary action of pro-Palestine protesters. Nixon stated she was “shocked” at the College’s recent policies, recalling that the 1985 protests that took place during her time at Barnard “didn’t seem to bother anyone.”
Nixon told Bwog, “I was just really shocked how the NYPD was brought in and how incredibly violent they were with students who were not doing anything wrong, who were literally sitting on lawns, eating, singing, praying, talking. They posed no threat to anyone.” She attested that the goal of the Expectations for Community Conduct were to “chill speech” and “quell protests.” She emphasized that the students and faculty advocating for free speech have different political views, but merely want free expression of opinions.
When asked how she considers herself now as a Barnard alum, Nixon stated that she has always been proud of attending Barnard due to its feminist history and “pioneering nature.” She stated, “If we’re just going to be subservient and quiet, I don’t know who we are anymore.”
Below are full transcripts of the faculty teach-in and an interview Bwog conducted with Cynthia Nixon. The transcripts have been edited for clarity.
Transcription Of Faculty Teach-In
Celia Naylor: Thank you again for your willingness to be here today, to come together, to listen, to learn, to teach. This teach-in is a response to the new Expectations for Community Conduct announced by Laura Rosenbury on September 11. Our aim today is to elucidate the problematic nature of those so-called Expectations, both in broad principle and specifically including the fact that these community Expectations were developed with no meaningful input from all of us—the community here at Barnard.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: Part of the purpose for this teach-in is to create a space for us to learn how these recently handed down Expectations by the administration threaten academic freedom and freedom of expression, violate basic norms of democratic and shared campus governance, and set up the campus for yet another disciplinary crackdown on students, staff, and faculty.
*Crowd claps and yells “Shame”*
Celia Naylor: We want to be very clear that no formal organization or Barnard College committee organized this teaching. Instead, faculty members at Barnard who were individually and collectively disheartened, disappointed, and angered by these few Expectations, voiced our concerns and came together to hold space—this space for our community—for us to reflect on the ramifications related to these new Expectations.
Many of our colleagues, who are devoted staff members of our community could not participate due to being threatened about and/or subjected to disciplinary actions. Some faculty, too, also felt a sense of trepidation about being identified as part of this teach-in. We are grateful for the support of those who are with us, even in absentia, and we recognize that we are all in this together.
So I’m a historian, so here’s a little history here. Teach-ins have a long history in the US. Some mark the beginning of teach-ins in this country with the overnight teach-in at the University of Michigan in March 1965 to protest the US government’s military engagement in the Vietnam War and the Vietnam War draft. And still, all over the world, for countless generations, small and large community gatherings have been organized against oppression, to resist injustice, and, as Bayard Rustin and others have implored, to speak truth to power.1 No matter what their form. Teach-ins, sit-ins, freedom schools, they focus on gathering, learning, teaching, and also strategizing about future actions in resistance, in refusal. To acts of power against the people, against our Barnard community. We are in this together.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: As Frederick Douglass reminds us in his August 1857 speech, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” That was true in 1857 and it remains true right now in 2024 and right here on this college campus and in our Barnard community. And of course, Barnard alumna, Zora Neale Hurston, Class of 1928, also reminds us, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Killing freedom has many expressions. Killing freedom happens in restricting freedom of expression. Killing freedom occurs when punitive measures are created in an unethical manner. Killing freedom happens when implementing unjust policies. Killing freedom is also about establishing, wielding and weaponizing policies. And yes, Expectations for Community Conduct to curtail academic freedom and free speech. Instead, these new Expectations compromise the integrity of the mission of Barnard College, which states, “Barnard is a community of accessible teachers and engaged students who participate together in intellectual risk-taking and discovery… They graduate prepared to lead lives that are professionally satisfying and successful, personally fulfilling and enriched by a love of learning.” Not a fear of learning. A love of learning.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: It is the undemocratic undoing of all this College represents that is at stake. This is why our community is in crisis, right here at Barnard and also at so many other colleges and universities. Barnard is a community that prides itself on being brave and bold and fearless with these new policies and Expectations, we are becoming feckless, fractured and fearful.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Celia Naylor: How do you create community expectations without the full involvement and full participation of significant numbers of members of that community? Well, in some nations around the world, there is a particular term that is used to describe this kind of structure. The word begins with a “dic” and it ends with “ships.”
*Crowd laughs*
Celia Naylor: Dictatorships. We simply cannot allow it. This is our community. Remember, we are in this together. Thank you.
*Crowd cheers*
Nancy Worman: I’m very happy to see you all here. It’s amazing… So first order of business is to introduce somebody that is known to very many of you, probably most of you, maybe all of you. And that is the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, who is the anchor and executive producer of Latino USA on National Public Radio. She is also a Barnard alumna and a Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at Barnard College. She’s speaking on the problem of both sides.
*Crowd cheers*
Maria Hinojosa: What am I doing here? This is not where I’m supposed to be. I’m a journalist. I’m supposed to be on the other side, reporting on this. But when I heard about what was happening with these so-called community guidelines, and the issue of us as Barnard professors being forced to do the bothsidesism, I knew I had to be here.
You know, when I was a student here at Barnard in 1984, ‘83, I can’t remember, I led—myself and Laura Flanders—we led a protest on this campus because Barnard administration wanted to give a Medal of Honor to United Nations Representative Jeane Kirkpatrick at the time when she was helping to fund a war against the people in El Salvador. When we did that protest, there were no police that were called, no one was arrested, no one was suspended, and Barnard administration rescinded the Medal of Honor to Jeane Kirkpatrick because of our peaceful protest.2
*Crowd cheers*
Maria Hinojosa: The point is that you cannot have a campus of the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters and tell us to be strong, independent-thinking, brilliant women, and then expect us to just take anything that you tell us as fact, i.e. we have to give both sides of everything. So excuse me, let me be clear. Does that mean that as a journalist or as a Barnard professor, I’m going to have to talk about both sides of cannibalism? Does it mean that the sign that I have on my office door right upstairs, that says, “Please unsuspend our students,” does that mean that I have to have another sign below it that says, “Suspend our students”?
*Crowd laughs*
Maria Hinojosa: This is a campus. Our campuses should be the place where brilliant minds come together. Where we think of creative, fabulous solutions to the problems that we face in dialogue… In all of my years being here teaching so many different students, we have had open conversations and never, ever have my students felt fear on this campus. Until they told me when the administration called the NYPD. That was the first time my students told me—my Jewish students, my Muslim students, my atheist students, my Buddhist students, my Yoruba students—all of them said the only time they felt fear was when the NYPD was called onto our campus.
We have to be the brilliant minds that we are… The guidelines do not force anything on Barnard women, because we won’t take it sitting down. Because we’re Barnard women.
*Crowd cheers*
Maria Hinojosa: I’ll just leave it there. I actually can’t stay, I’m in the middle of recording several shows, but I wanted to be here. I’m sorry. I wanted to be here to say to you that I was not born in this country, but when I was holding a green card on this campus, I was participating in protest. I learned as a little girl that protest and teach-ins were part of American democracy. And so this is what democracy looks like. We’re not asking for anything except for our voices to be heard and respected. And so as a Barnard alum, a distinguished—well they said I was distinguished—Barnard alum and as the first ever journalist-in-residence here at Barnard, I ask for our community to be included. We are this community, and I’m so proud of all of my students and my colleagues, my professor, faculty colleagues, I’m so proud of you for bringing this teach-in together, and count on me. Muchas gracias y no te vayas.
*Crowd cheers*
Nancy Worman: Our next speaker is a professor of Philosophy here at Barnard, Fred Neuhouser, and he’s going to speak to you on the protest from 1968, which will be very eye-opening.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: I’m going to report very briefly on some research I did over the summer, just reading some books about what happened in 1968 and comparing them—or you’ll do some of the comparing yourselves—to what went on in 2024. And I have to say, I was very surprised by the results I found. And I think you will be too if you don’t already know.
So there are two related issues I want to talk about. One is student discipline, and one is shared governance, by which I mean both faculty and student shared governance. Both of these are important things… So the first thing I want to say is that the protests of ‘68 lasted much longer and were significantly more disruptive than those of 2024. Protests then began already in 1965 and the police were even called in already in 1965, the first time probably that was ever done on Columbia campus.
The second thing that surprised me is that there was enormous hostility among Columbia students back then that more than once broke out into violent confrontations between the pro-war right-wing “jocks” and the anti-war left-wing “pukes.” Don’t ask me how they got the name of pukes. I don’t think they gave it to them themselves. I also want to just add the Vietnam War was not the only issue in ‘68. Black students had also organized somewhat independently for issues concerning racial inequality.
Along the lines of things being larger than they were in 2024 there was, among other things, a sit-in in Dodge Hall to protest the presence on campus of Dow Chemical. Dow Chemical was the firm who manufactured the napalm that the United States used on Vietnamese civilians in the war. There was an occupation of Low Library to protest Columbia’s cooperation with the Defense Department. 40 students disrupted and walked out of the University’s memorial service for Martin Luther King. That’s comparable to the thing that happened with Hillary Clinton over at SIPA.
The difference being, no one at Columbia that time in ‘68 got any kind of discipline at all. For six days—this is the big event—in April, more than 700 students and 300 Barnard students among them occupied five buildings in Columbia’s campus, during which they held a dean captive. They rummaged through the president’s files. There were violent altercations on campus between the pukes and the jocks, and then finally 1,000 police were called in, employing what one impartial observer called “harrowing violence,” and they evacuated and arrested 524 students, including 115 Barnard students.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Frederick Neuhouser: That was “hey,” right? Not “shame”?
*Crowd laughs*
Frederick Neuhouser: In May, there was a strike for a month in which classes were not held. And then finally, there was a sit-in in Hamilton Hall protesting the disciplining of students. The police were called in once again. There was more brutal violence this time, though—not between the police and the occupiers, but the police and the bystanders, those who had come to protect and support the students who had occupied the buildings. In ‘68, like in 2024, the disciplining of students was haphazard, inconsistent, arbitrary. That much is like 2024. Certain students were picked up to be disciplined. Others weren’t.
But the difference, the big difference, is that in general, punishments handed out to students in ‘68 were far milder and far less vindictive. Students weren’t given interim suspensions immediately and without a hearing, and they weren’t given 15 minutes to clear their items from the dormitories.
I would refer to now the Cox Report. The Cox Report is a report that was commissioned in ‘68 to explain what happened in ‘68 and to give recommendations to the University. It was headed up by Archibald Cox. Anybody in my generation knows who Archibald Cox was. Most of you probably don’t. He was the special prosecutor in Watergate. He was an attorney general under John F. Kennedy. He is a mainstream figure. He is not a radical.
One thing that the Cox Report says that I think we need to keep in mind today: “The governance of… Columbia University requires… uniform rules and established organs and agencies. In their absence, arbitrary power flourishes. Power, in turn, encourages improvisation under pressure. Columbia University gives ample example of this malady,” they wrote. I might add that we, in 2024 at Barnard, need uniform rules that are made not one-sidedly by the President and her shadow cabinet (that mysterious, aloof body called the Senior Staff).
*Crowd laughs*
Frederick Neuhouser: Rules made with the meaningful participation of both faculty and students. In fact, in 1968 the President of Columbia made an effort to respect the ideal of shared governance that far exceeds anything our administrations have done in 2024. He appointed a committee composed of administrators, faculty, and students to devise guidelines for establishing regular disciplinary procedures. They recommended that all trespassing charges against demonstrators be dropped, and the trustees were eventually convinced to do so.
So regarding the milder disciplinary punishments—after the sit-in in Dodge Hall, no disciplinary actions were taken for the 300 students involved, despite having violated a University rule prohibiting indoor demonstrations. After marching in Low Lbrary in March, only six of the more than 100 participants were disciplined. All that happened to be SDS leaders—Students for Democratic Society. The Dean claimed, I think very implausibly, that those were the only six students they recognized as being there. Many other students then signed statements saying that they had participated too and they wanted the same punishments, but that was denied.
All known participants in the April occupations were placed on disciplinary procedure for one year. Four members of SDS were suspended, but they were suspended not for evacuating buildings but for failing to adhere to their hearing before the dean. Later, 73 students were suspended for participating in the demonstrations, but listen to this—the alleged violations occurred in April, and the punishments were already meted out by May. We have a system where people still do not know where their cases are and what their punishments are going to be.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Frederick Neuhouser: Also, the suspensions that were given took place after the spring semester ended, allowing those who were suspended to finish their term. Also not something we’re familiar with. And no students were expelled. Regarding Barnard now—this is perhaps the more interesting part—115 Barnard students were arrested in ‘68. None were suspended or expelled. Even more surprising, Barnard’s own lawyers sought to have the students’ criminal charges dropped. Some trustees offered to pay any fines imposed on Barnard demonstrators, and one trustee often offered to post bail for students who couldn’t come up with the money. Even more surprising, on the very day of the police raids in April, the then-President of Barnard College convened a meeting of the entire campus in order for them to discuss about how the College should go forward. The then-President obviously did not fear talking face-to-face in an uncontrolled environment with faculty and students.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: The President did also not put a security guard in front of her office.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: That’s never happened before. The most important recommendation of the Cox Report was a call for a fundamental democratization of the University. This is mainstream Archibald Cox here speaking. I quoted, “The government of the University depends, even more than that of the political community, upon the consent of the governed to accept decisions reached by its constitutional processes. The consent of the dissenters depends partly upon their knowing that their views… entered into the process of consensus.”
In at least one respect, Barnard in 2024 has less faculty and student governance than in ‘68. In ‘65, some people say ‘64, a Judicial Council was established. It was composed of two faculty members, two members of the administration, and five students. And it was established to consider all disciplinary cases involving suspension and expulsion of students. That’s still on the books. You can find it in the website, but it hasn’t been active for at least 10 years.3 I have other things to say about the security measures that have been put in place here on campus that were not done in ‘68, but let me just finish by suggesting four things that we need to fight for in the upcoming months.
One is just to revive the now-defunct Judicial Council, which because it contains students, faculty, and administrators, worked against the very widespread perception that punishments here have been arbitrary, overly punitive and vindictive.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: Number two is to invalidate all the recent College policy changes that were not put into place with meaningful faculty and student input.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: Number three, grant full amnesty to all students disciplined according to recently changed policies that were done.
*Crowd cheers*
Frederick Neuhouser: Number four, right here in front of us. Restore normal campus access and abolish the new severe constraints on campus events. Thanks a lot for listening.
*Crowd cheers*
Nancy Worman: Hold a meeting with the entire campus of all students, all faculty, and I guess some administrators too. Pretty wild, right? Pretty different from what we’re doing now, what we’re seeing now. I want to take them a moment to ask, to invite anybody who is a professor at Barnard or Columbia or affiliated institutions to come up here and stand with us. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, we completely understand, but if you do, please come.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: We have one more request, and just think about this just as form. CARES has asked, there have been some complaints about the clapping and the expressions of joy, gratitude. They’re asking, you know, whether you do this or snap your fingers or something, but just for us to lower the volume of our expression and just form, that’s all it is.
*Crowd laughs*
Celia Naylor: So we’re going to try to do that as much as possible. So just to mention, in terms of Fred’s piece, he went through fairly quickly some of the major parts of that essay. For those who want to read the more detailed and really quite comprehensive essay that he wrote, it’s available on the Barnard chapter AAUP’s website. So next another esteemed colleague, Najam Haider, who is a professor in Religion and Religious Studies. He’s going to be speaking on freedom of expression.
*Crowd cheers*
Najam Haider: I have thoughts, not facts, but I think the thoughts are factual. It’s interesting that I have to go next because we’ve been told to dampen down our expression to some degree. So what I want to talk about a little bit is just expression. What does it mean to have freedom of expression? What does it mean on our campus to have freedom of expression?
I was born in New York City. I was raised in this city and when I, 15 years ago, came to Barnard, I was super excited because I was told this was a place where you had boldness and activism and we had amazing students that were able to articulate themselves. And I enjoyed that. I mean, 15 years ago. In my classes, we had complicated conversations. Not everybody agreed, not everybody agreed. We had difficult conversations and sometimes you got to the end of that conversation and you felt great and sometimes you didn’t feel so great, but you were pushed and you were challenged. And that was the idea. That was the entire basis of a liberal arts education, of higher education in general. This idea that you came together and you had a conversation and that conversation mattered and that conversation was difficult. And, you know, we did it. We did it in the classroom, we had conversations in dorms, we had conversations on campus, in campus spaces. That’s what freedom of expression was and is, and that’s what it should mean to us.
It’s not the same everywhere in this country. There are places where diversity of opinion or difficult conversations are silenced. We’re told that you shouldn’t articulate what you feel. We’re told that diversity means that some of us have to remain silent. That we can’t speak at all. That is not what Barnard was. That is not what Barnard is, right? That’s not the community that we want because it cuts against the very idea of freedom of expression. We’ve heard this many, many times. Is that famous phrase from Louis Brandeis where he says that if you don’t like speech—I’m paraphrasing, don’t quote me—“If you don’t like speech, the solution is more speech.”4 It’s definitely not silence. That’s the one thing we know for a fact.
About a week ago, we had these community Expectations that came out. Let’s talk about them for a second. I want to quote them. So I want you to understand what they are are supposed to be doing. Now, according to the email we received, they wanted to help create a “robust living and learning community” of “caring for each other” in a way that “fosters open exchange and dialogue.”
Now, many of us have read these community Expectations. And I think what actually happens here, what we should think about in terms of freedom of expression, is what these expectations actually do. I think in general they do two things: they silence and they silo. Those are the two things that they do. They silence because they tell you that the only way to have diversity on campus is for us to not say anything. Sit in your room, don’t put anything on the dorm door, don’t do that, right? Don’t say anything in public. Stay quiet and sit where you are and be alone, right? That’s one type of silencing, completely cutting against the idea of expression.
The second thing they do is they tell you to be afraid because if you do anything that violates any of these specific rules—and not just rules, hypotheticals—then you can be brought up for disciplinary action.5 And it’s not a theory. We know students are being brought up for disciplinary hearings. Everybody knows someone who’s been called in in that way. It’s the second thing they do.
Third thing they do is they make sure that we don’t work together as a community. We are not figuring this out together. These edicts are coming from above. They’re telling us what we can and cannot do. They’re telling us to be quiet. They’re telling us in the interest of having difficult conversations. The way we do that is we don’t talk at all. And on some level that feels Orwellian. The best way to have diversity and speech is to not talk. Non-speech is speech.
The last thing I want to talk about is siloing. This is not just faculty. This is a way of dividing faculty and students and staff. Staff can’t talk, students can’t talk, but maybe they can talk. Faculty, depends on your privilege. I can, I have tenure, but maybe my colleagues can’t, right? So what we have is the siloing of opinion. Some of us have privilege and freedom of expression, Some of us don’t. Now is that the community that we want?
*Crowd yells “No”*
Najam Haider: So then the question is how do we develop that community? That comes together, that comes in conversation. That doesn’t come through an edict from up above telling us what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot say. I’ve spoken to people. I’ve spoken to students, I’ve heard from staff, I’ve heard from faculty who aren’t even coming here today because they’re afraid that they’re going to be called up for disciplinary hearings. That again is not freedom of expression. That is not the community that we want. We want to build towards something else. We want to have everybody in that conversation. This isn’t about a political viewpoint. This is about us coming together, having a difficult conversation, and figuring out what the college is that we want, the college that we want to exist and that comes through our own conversation. It does not come from above.
*Crowd cheers*
Nancy Worman: We have two professors who are going to speak about student discipline. Our first speaker is Gale Kenny who is another professor from the Religion department. The second speaker is Shayoni Mitra who is a professor in the Department of Theater.
Gale Kenny: I’m going to talk a little bit about some disciplinary cases that happened last year. Since the fall of 2024, at least 86 Barnard students have been subjected to the disciplinary process. But we need to look beyond these statistics and think about the ways that these affected not only these particular students, but also their friends and roommates, as well as our ability as faculty to do our job as teachers and advisors.
So after the first Encampment in mid-April, which many of you will remember, 55 Barnard students were arrested. Barnard declared these students to be an active threat and put them on interim suspension while Columbia permitted its interim suspended students to stay on campus, kind of under house arrest in their dorms. Until their hearings, Barnard barred students from campus and classes and evicted them from their dorms, giving them infamously only 15 minutes to pack.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Gale Kenny: The interim suspensions affected everyone on campus. Students were missing from our classrooms, we didn’t know if the seniors would graduate. Students found it impossible to concentrate on the final approach. As one roommate of a suspended student said, “Our friend’s ordeal was not only painful to witness but also left us with disappointment and frustration towards the administration. Focusing on our school became difficult as we watched the administration who we expected to protect us turn against our roommates and friends.”
Some faculty found themselves temporarily housing students and advising students on how to navigate the last few weeks of the semester. Other faculty took on the work of responding to emails and phone calls from parents who worried about their children’s safety and their future.
As one mother told me, “We spent endless hours writing emails and trying to contact anyone who could shed light on what seemed like a chaotic and unfair response from the institution that we had worked so hard to afford and had trusted with our daughter’s well being.”
As of now, most of these 86 students were or are on probation, meaning that any additional conduct violation will likely result or potentially could result in suspension. Several students have been suspended and a few students remain on interim suspension, where they’ve been since May, as they continue to await their disciplinary hearings. As my colleagues have explained and we continue to explain today, Barnard’s new policy or new kind of community Expectations limits free speech because it expands the list of possible violations that might result in interim suspension or even in expulsion.
*Crowd cheers*
Shayoni Mitra: Barnard College amended its Student Code of Conduct without notifying students or faculty sometime in the Fall of 2023 to specifically make it so students couldn’t bring a practicing attorney to their conduct hearings.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Shayoni Mitra: Since then, faculty have served as a support person, accompanying them to hearings where we are not allowed to speak nor advocate for our students and can only take notes. Gale and I are here today to share some of our observations from attending these administration-led interrogations that have now led to suspensions. The College has appointed itself prosecutor, judge, and appellate court in this new process that it holds to the new Office of Conduct. Students do not see the evidence the College has amassed against them until the hearings, so they do not have time to prepare. They’re not allowed to record or take photographs during the hearings and are emailed the evidence only afterwards. All of the evidence we have reviewed thus far is surveillance data shared by Columbia Public Safety with Barnard.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Shayoni Mitra: They comprise swipe access data to Morningside campus and often blurry, obstructed, or group photos. Students are shown these photos and asked, “Do you recognize yourself in them?” A student suspended in May shared, “During the hearing, I was shown the evidence the University had compiled against me including over three weeks of surveillance information Columbia and Barnard gathered of me on and off campus, which I was not allowed to document. CU Public Safety and Barnard CARES monitored me for over three weeks, stalking my every move around campus and college properties.”
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Shayoni Mitra: What is clear from this shaky evidentiary standard is that they do not prove disruptive behavior, disorderly conduct, failure to disperse, or any of the charges Barnard is bringing against them, and yet the College persists in sanctioning and suspending its students based on surveillance. As anti-carceral feminists who have before us decades of work on restorative justice and community healing, we must ask ourselves, why is the College pursuing this model of punishment in a process it insists is educational?
*Crowd yells “Boo”*
Shayoni Mitra: Since when have we problematized he very presence of students sitting on a lawn or walking past it as disruptive or disorderly? When the College rules based on swipe access that a student is “more likely than not” to have participated in what they call the three unauthorized Encampments, we have to ask—what happened to our rights to peacefully protest?
*Crowd cheers*
Shayoni Mitra: The seven students currently suspended or interim suspended by the College have already been punished enough by being denied due process in their disciplinary hearings. The trauma, uncertainty, and anxiety these hearings have produced are already scarring. They and us faculty have already dedicated dozens of hours through the summer attending hearings scheduled on short notice, reviewing charges, drafting statements, and writing appeals.
A student suspended in September shared, “While I waited for that decision, I moved into my house, decorated my dorm, started classes, and got excited for my junior year. I was allowed to start the semester under false pretenses that I would be able to finish it. On September 5, two days after classes started, I was suspended, evicted from housing that I had already paid for, barred from campus and forced to find new means of living and work.”
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Shayoni Mitra: These disciplinary outcomes have catastrophically contributed to the material precarity of our students. Every one of these suspended students is queer, non-binary, first-generation low-income, Muslim, Palestinian, and/or students of color. While Barnard tracked out charging and scheduling cases from April and May, students lost access to summer housing, research labs, financial aid scholarships for underrepresented minorities in STEM, internships, jobs on campus, or to Access Barnard.
Even while interim suspended, they were told they could register for classes. They cannot step foot on campus, cannot attend classes on Zoom, cannot do class assignments. Their professors have not been notified and Coursewroks still sends them notifications for missing work or their assignments are graded as zero. These students have also lost access to their student health insurance, counseling, and mental health services. And in the case of one student on probation, had their request for CARDS accommodations denied.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Shayoni Mitra: These new community agreements that are offered as suggestions, but list a series of violations, will only expand the disciplinary [inaudible] the College has already applied to these students. We are here today to say enough. Overhaul the process, vacate the sanctions, and reinstate our students in their fullest capacity. That is the Barnard way.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: Our next speaker really needs no introduction and I will say this. She is a Barnard alum. She is somebody who certainly is known for a popular show. But I would say even though that was very impressive and all, that I have been most impressed when I have seen her around New York City being there, speaking out, speaking truth to power and really for the greater good. And I’ve been so impressed. This is part of the reason why we’re here as faculty members, right? We’re here because we want to encourage curiosity and risking-taking, not intellectual imprisonment. And she has demonstrated this in so many different ways. And we’re just grateful to have you here, Cynthia Nixon.
*Crowd cheering*
Cynthia Nixon: I am really grateful to be here right now with all of you and I am so grateful to see everyone, students, faculty and others. It really warms my heart. I’m gonna read two things. The first is the testimony of a suspended student because obviously that student is not able to be here and read it for themselves. And then I have just written a few remarks of my own.
“I am one of the students currently on interim suspension facing 11 charges at the University Judicial Board. I have been organizing on campus for Palestine since October. So this means I along with my comrades have been surveilled and harassed by Barnard this entire school year. I have been to jail twice in one semester. And what I got from that is that jails attempt to strip you of your humanity, your possessions, and your autonomy. They isolate you when you don’t comply. Barnard College functions in the same way.”
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Cynthia Nixon: “In these disciplinary meetings, they pull out files with our names on them, filled with time stamps and surveillance footage. They punish students by following the surveillance camera footage for hours all the way to their homes. They’ve harassed me through email, trying to threaten me into ratting out my friends. When I refuse, they slap on another “Failure to Comply” charge, whatever that means.
After getting out of jail during the first arrest, I received an email saying that I was suspended for participating in the Encampment. I’m an FLI student that was evicted from my dorm and had a total of 15 minutes to pack all of my belongings fully monitored by a CARES officer of course. They offered no resources after leaving me without my job or my housing.
Following the liberation of Hind’s Hall, the University called the NYPD to physically brutalize us. After shots were fired in the building and police came charging in, I was beaten on the ground and kicked in the face. Specifically after putting my body in front of my comrades, I saw the anger and bloodlust boil over their faces. What threatens them most is our love for each other. That’s failure to comply.”
*Crowd cheers*
Cynthia Nixon: “They cursed at me and held me down to the ground, barely able to breathe, as they mocked me saying, ‘Get the fuck up, get the fuck up.’ We were held in jail for over 24 hours, held in isolation cages, denied food, water, and phone calls. It’s safe to say I was in a horrible mental state after getting out. To welcome us back home, Barnard changed the policies so that no one could sign guests in. To ensure that I could not enter any of the dorms, they had my picture behind the security desk with a note saying not to let me in. Because me having a place to sleep is definitely a threat to campus safety. Right?
The only reason that I’m okay right now is because I’ve been able to fully rely on my community when the institution has not only failed me, but is actively trying to harm me. They offer deals of lesser punishment and amnesty to students they deem nonviolent while they target and punish others. In jail, hey literally try to break us telling us, “No one knows you’re here. You aren’t getting out anytime soon. No one cares about you.” But the thing is, even though we couldn’t see it, jail support was right outside waiting the entire time.”
*Crowd cheers*
Cynthia Nixon: “They don’t understand that the more they try to divide us, the tighter we grip on to each other. Each time without fail, Barnard has shown me that behind that white woman liberal bullshit, they are a tool of the carceral state. Instead of providing us with any resources, they took it upon themselves to work harder to exhaust us, literally trying to divide us and beat us while we’re down. Just like the cops. Every time I would get out of jail, I’d return to campus and feel like I never fucking left. Why? Because it’s the same entity. Everyone needs to wake the fuck up and realize that the institution will never love you back.”
*Crowd cheers*
Cynthia Nixon: It hurts my heart to know that a student at Barnard, and more than just one, feels that this is how their institution feels about them. So I am Cynthia Nixon and I am an alum from the class of ‘88. And the more I hear about how students protesting on behalf of Palestinians are being treated, the sadder and the angrier I get.
During my time here, there were widespread anti-apartheid protests and encampments by students advocating for divestment from South Africa. None of the students who participated in these protests or occupations were punished.6 In 1968, there were civil rights protests and occupations of campus buildings that went on far longer than we saw this spring and during which a not inconsiderable amount of damage was done to school property. None of the students who participated in these protests or occupations were punished.7
Our college, all colleges, exist ostensibly for the benefit of their students. That is what I believe anyway. It is a college’s job to teach its students, to nurture them, to respect them, and to support them. That doesn’t seem to be happening here. Barnard suspended students have done nothing wrong. What they have done is listen to their own consciences and act accordingly. What more could we ask from this generation of young leaders? We should be grateful for the impact they will surely make, by the impact they are already making, in building a more just world. We should not punish them for what they are doing. We should be proud of them. I know I am.
Nancy Worman: We have a few more teaching moments of the various sorts. The first will be conducted by Taylor Carman who is a Philosophy professor at Barnard.
Taylor Carman: This is a teaching moment. I want to give you a little bit of history, recent history in the past 10 months. And I want to tell you about why the crisis at Barnard—maybe you’ve heard that expression, is that still our slogan here? There’s a crisis at Barnard. I want to explain to you why it is actually technically a constitutional crisis. So I’m gonna do what philosophers do. I’m gonna tell you some history. I’m gonna draw some distinctions. I’m gonna point out a contradiction, or some contradictions, and I’ll give you a few names to remember of documents that you should keep in mind.
So here’s the history. 10 months ago, the College unilaterally imposed, it was a kind of executive order, a new Political Activity Policy. That new activity policy is shocking if you read it, I encourage you to read it. It redefines political statements to mean any statements about anything political at all. At the local, federal, and international level. I mean, the old policy was specifically about politics in the campaign and financing campaigns and election laws. The new policy says political can be me commenting on North Korea, right? And then it says there can be no visible written political statements, which means about anything, on the grounds of the College.8 That’s shocking. Think about what that means. That was a new policy. Of course, people were outraged at the time and I naively thought surely they will amend this or fix it or take it down. It’s still there, have a look at it. People were outraged.
That was last November, that’s the Political Activity Policy. It’s still on the Barnard website. So in December, the faculty took a vote to have some interim free expression policy, because Barnard has never had its own. And so the administration wanted us to adopt a policy that would include institutional neutrality. Now, let me explain a little bit about this. There are these two important documents, one is called the Chicago Statement of Free Expression. And the principles expressed in it are often referred to as the Chicago Principles. And we wanted that and we’ve got it. That is now official Barnard policy. It didn’t go up on the website until May. So it took some months and frankly, it’s not easy to find, but I will give you the link and you can look at it. It is official policy of Barnard College.9
The Chicago Principles are pretty robust guarantees of freedom of expression. And I just want to read you a little bit of what the Chicago Principles are. This is what Barnard College is officially committed to. “The University may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University.” Okay, fair enough, right? “But these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with the University’s commitment to a completely free and open discussion of ideas.”
So in other words, yes, you can limit according to time, place, and manner, but only when you absolutely have to to protect, say, other people’s free expression and the functioning of the University. So if somebody tells you that you are violating a time, place, or manner rule in some other policy, tell them to read the Chicago Statement. If somebody tells you that you are demonstrating at 11:30 instead of 12 when it’s allowed, tell them to read the Chicago Statement. If you are demonstrating at 6:30, after 6, and that’s against the rules, tell them that the rules are violating the Chicago Principles.
So you may think that Chicago Statement is sitting there doing nothing. And in a way it is, because the College keeps violating their own principles. But that’s a potentially useful tool we have in our toolbox. It’s a very important principle of law generally, that if you break the law and somebody tells you you’re breaking the law—if that law is criminal, you can say no. You aren’t breaking the law, because the law is criminal. International law shows you that a lot of what the United States does is criminal and you’ve got the law on your side, even if it doesn’t have power that it should have. So that’s the situation we’re in.
So far, that’s how it went until very recently, two weeks ago. And I think in response to some faculty actions, we got this strange document which is Expectations for Community Conduct. I find that a very strange choice of words. I mean, if somebody tells me what their expectations are, what do I care?
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: I mean, is this just kind of friendly advice to me because it says here’s what’s gonna violate my expectations and here’s what’s gonna satisfy them. So if it’s just friendly advice, you can ignore it, but it’s not. Because what the administration said is this is explaining and expanding and articulating the policies that are already on the books, right. I have to read it because otherwise it’s almost bleak.
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: So, at the very end in Section Eight, and everybody knows this now, but I’m gonna remind you of Section Eight, some examples of activities that violate community Expectations are messaging from a department of the College supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective. Notice the breadth of that, a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective. While denigrating or remaining silent about an opposing geopolitical viewpoint of perspective. That violates expectations.10
What’s shocking about that is that is not just a limitation of free speech, that is dictating speech. That is dictating content. And the College likes to take pride in the fact that it’s content neutral in its demonstration policies. That is not content neutral. That is dictating content. If you say X, you’re gonna be required either to say Y or to stop saying X.
And the other thing is employees. This is a shocking one too. Employees. Now, I think I’m an employee. I have tenure, but I’m an employee. Employees posting signs on their office doors that are supporting, again, geopolitical viewpoints or perspectives—that’s against their expectations.10 And that means it’s against their policies. And that means you can expect discipline. So that is quite shocking. It’s in violation of the Chicago Principles. And that’s why I think the crisis at Barnard is a crisis that’s built into the incoherence of the policies, the College’s policies, as they stand. New policies that have been imposed are in direct violation of the principles they’ve already espoused. And that’s gonna bring a certain amount of chaos, no doubt. But it has to be fixed.
So again, if somebody tells you that when you say X, you have to support or you have to express the opposing viewpoint, tell them, “Don’t tell me what to say,” right? And if they say that you are violating a technicality about the existing time, place, and manner restrictions, tell them to read the Chicago Principles because the whole point of having principles is that you don’t get tripped up on technicalities. It has to be the case, although I think the administration would love it if the time and place restrictions constantly trump the principles of free expression. If those principles mean anything, they also have to be able to push back and trump restrictions on time, place, and manner. And so the neutrality idea. One last thing I want to give you these names, the Chicago Statement of Free Expression. It was written in the committee on the University of Chicago not too long ago, I think eight or 10 years ago, something like that.
Chicago is also committed to a thing called institutional neutrality. And that dates back to 1967. And that’s a very different thing. The Kalven Report was written in 1967 so that the University of Chicago would not have to take a position on the Vietnam War. And Barnard has recently instituted, as you can see, a new certain kind of idea of neutrality.11 But what’s really insidious about this one is that, as I said, it applies to departments. That’s faculty. It doesn’t just apply to administrators. So this is not just a matter of, as someone said, the University of Wisconsin doesn’t have a foreign policy. That’s probably appropriate. But it’s supposed to just govern the neutrality of the institution or the college. If this administration would like it to govern everybody, everybody should be neutral about everything, and that means being silent. So we need to push back on this. I’ll end it there.
*Crowd cheers*
Celia Naylor: We have a special guest here. Just very quickly because some of you may not have read this yet. There was an email that was sent out by Laura Rosenbury… today regarding these Expectations and what you just read Taylor, there is a change to that. The email is a request for feedback almost two weeks after the September 11 doctrine.12
Taylor Carman: They’ve got mine now!
*Crowd laughs*
Celia Naylor: So just so you know, you have though, until October 14. There is a time, place, and manner restriction based upon the feedback. But read that as well, I don’t know if there are other parts, I was kind of rushing. But I did notice that had been changed and it’s mentioned in the email as well. The language that’s included to replace that remains problematic. So I’ll say that. I just wanted to make sure people look for that.
Nancy Worman: And so this here is our feedback, right? We do have another special guest. Both Sides Bozo. Right here among us, right now, interviewed by Professor Taylor Carman.
*Crowd cheers*
Taylor Carman: For this segment, I am the professor and I’ve got Both Sides Bozo here. I talked about bothsidesism and I want to just first ask you—so, why are you here?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Well, professor I’m here because I’ve been hearing a whole lot of onesidesism going on here denouncing things like arbitrary changes of community policy without the community. Wa wa wa wa wa. And I’m here to talk about what’s good about bothsidesism! That’s right. Put on a happy face!
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: All right. So both sides, but you’re Both Sides Bozo?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): That’s right!
Taylor Carman: I’m glad I ran into you because I’m teaching the Iliad in a class of mine this semester. That Trojan War, that was a hell of a thing, wasn’t it?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Well, that depends on your perspective, professor.
Taylor Carman: You mean like there was different perspectives on the Trojan War? I mean, one part of it that really struck me is when Achilles—those of you who have read the Iliad—Achilles kills Hector at the end. And then he strips the armor off of him and he drags him with his dead corpse around the walls of Troy behind his chariot. That was really awful, right?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Oh, well, yeah, that’s the Trojan view. I mean, the Greek view—that was tough and cool. That was so cool. I’m sure a Achilles’ friends were just yapping it up at the bar later.
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: I never thought about it that way. I guess you’re right. I guess maybe I better tell my students that maybe that was okay after all. Yeah, okay. You don’t want to be biased, right.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Nope.
Taylor Carman: So later on in the class we’re gonna be talking about the American Civil War. Wow, American Civil War, another doozy, eh? It’s all about slavery, I guess. Is that right?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): And states’ rights.
*Crowd yells in shock*
Taylor Carman: But mostly about slavery.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): And states’ rights.
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: But when it comes to the slavery stuff, which is really what the phrase states’ rights was referring to frankly, right? It’s just appalling to me, remember how cruel and inhuman it was?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Well, I mean, you could look at it that way, but there was a lot of free labor! And you know, the white Europeans really believed—I mean, a lot of them, some of them it was convenient—a lot of them really believed that God had ordained that African be slaves and they get to be their masters. And so if you’re gonna be fair, you gotta, you know, both sides.
Taylor Carman: So you’re saying that argument was really being made, it was actually an argument.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Sure, look, look. This is what I don’t like. You’re just getting narrow about things. There are a lot of words out there that go against some of the things you’re saying. I think it’s well-established there are two, and only two, sides to everything.
*Crowd laughs*
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): The best way to be neutral is to present both sides of, ideally both sides, of the same coin. Right? So I’m thinking, I’d like to note that presenting both sides saves you A, saves you a lot of time, B, because you don’t have to think! Because you just get one side, wait, no, on the other hand it could take a lot of thinking because when there are both—
*Crowd laughs*
Taylor Carman: What’s the alternative to the both sides view? Are there both sides of the both sides view?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Wait, wait. See, I mean—because there is the problem of which other both side is the side that you have to say to not get in trouble with the people who want you to say the other side, but that’s more than one side and that’s just not allowed. And the fact that presenting both sides is great because it keeps you from having to take a stance.
Taylor Carman: Oh!
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): And the University is all about facts and objectivity and established things and not like, ethics, which really has no place in a university or college.
*Crowd laughs*
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Right, professor?
Taylor Carman: Uh… yeah, you kind of lost me in there. I don’t know how many sides there are now. But I guess I’m just gonna try to cover all the bases so I can keep my head down and cover all the sides. All the sides are equal, right?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Well, yeah, absolutely. So let me give you some examples. Let’s think about reproductive justice or bodily autonomy. Is that good for women or bad for women? People have written a whole—or people, all people, people have written many words on both of those. So I think the best approach to be neutral is to present all the words. Like the internet!
*Crowd laughs*
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): It’s just great. Just give a lot of fantastic words.
Taylor Carman: That sounds good. The more words the better.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): And another example. So, bombing civilian populations could be considered war crimes. Or like sending little bombs out into a population where people are carrying around—is that terrorism, or is that keeping people safe and free? Right? So I think there are words on both sides. I know that our department wouldn’t want to take a side about something so important as that or you know, anything really.
Taylor Carman: Too important to present just one side.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Absolutely. Absolutely. So this way you’re not choosing. You allow the people out there to choose from all the words that are available in the free marketplace of ideas and that both sides of the same coin and that’s what’s great about bothsidesism!
Taylor Carman: I love that! Both Sides Bozo, all sides, both sides, whatever. Fair and balanced.
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Only two.
Taylor Carman: You never have the same. Very good. But the Earth is round, Earth is flat, both sides?
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Both Sides Bozo): Both sides. It looks like a horizon to me.
Taylor Carman: There you go. Thank you very much. Let’s have a big round of applause for Both Sides Bozo for enlightening us about the community Expectations.
Nancy Worman: We have one more wonderful speaker here and that is Elizabeth Bernstein, who is a professor in WGSS, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and also in Sociology, who is going to be talking about some of the implications in terms of these Expectations, these policies, in a number of different ways. So she will be closing it out for us.
Elizabeth Bernstein: So I’m gonna close this out. And on a more serious note, because I want to connect some of the issues that we’ve been talking about at Barnard to a broader context in which higher education is really under assault nationally from from right-wing forces and other forces. And so I wanna wanna situate our struggle in terms of that. As Nancy mentioned, I’m a professor and chair in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. I’m also a professor of Sociology and I am also on the Executive Committee of the Barnard chapter of the AAUP, which stands for the Association of American University Professors. And in the comments that I’m about to make, I’m going to be speaking on behalf of the latter.
So as many of the speakers before me have already said and demonstrated, the new community Expectations that were issued with no warning had no community input whatsoever. Rather ironic for community Expectations. There was no meaningful faculty or student input and the Expectations are indeed, and probably by design, so vast and vague that the administration has made it very easy for almost anyone to be in violation of them at any time. Notably, in the past year, college policies have been changing on an almost daily basis and now it seems a minute-by-minute basis too. And they’ve been accompanied by a whole set of other surprises, including new disciplinary procedures, the hiring of new staff members to oversee these processes, and endless administrative restructuring.
Now, even for those paying careful attention, as we on the AAUP are tasked with doing, it’s been very, very hard to keep up with the speed and extent of these policy changes. While it’s indeed true that the administration has issued these new rules in response to the recent wave of campus protests, there’s also a broader and very important context to consider here, one which I think can help us to better situate the current moment that we’re facing. It’s important to keep in mind that in the past three years, in particular, there’s been a wave of crackdowns on higher education in many states and in many institutions beyond Barnard.
In December of last year, the AAUP published a special report outlining how political interference has increasingly infringed upon academic freedom, free speech and shared governance. These attacks began in places like Ron DeSantis’ Florida, but they’ve now spread far beyond. This past, May, Isaac Kamola, who is a political scientist who studies the political economy of higher education, published a very important AAUP paper. It was titled “Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think-Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education.” Kamola’s research shows how these political attacks originated in far-right think tanks that have spent millions of dollars trying to make higher education the next big ___ in our nation’s culture wars. While these think tanks previously took aim at DEI, so-called gender ideology, and critical race theory, they’re now weaponizing the issue of antisemitism on college campuses as well. And so doing, they’ve achieved mainstream buy-in for what were previously fringe right-wing ideas. And this includes the argument that campus crises can only be solved through stricter student discipline and the curtailment of academic freedom, an agenda that conveniently puts administrators, politicians, trustees, donors, and think tanks in charge. Now, I can’t go into the details of all the details of these two papers, but I do hope that you’ll read them and you can find them at the top of the Barnard AAUP website… So please do take a look.
But what I’d like to do in the time I have left is to quickly tell you about the one example that keeps coming up over and over again in these papers under related news articles. And that’s the fate of a small, formerly progressive, LGBTQ-friendly liberal arts college called the New College of Florida. Some of you may have heard of it. Under Ron DeSantis’ administration, new college’s Board of Trustees was overhauled, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs were banned. As for the teaching, the College also shut down the Gender Studies program because it was supposedly antithetical to the mission of the College and antithetical to a classical liberal arts education.
Six months after the restructuring began, 36 faculty members had left, as for almost a third of the student body. New College can seem like an extreme case with little bearing on what’s happening here in New York. But the AAUP special report stresses over and over again that the New College model should serve as a cautionary tale for us all, A canary in the coal mine, if you will. A kind of takeover of higher education that can be implemented elsewhere, even if for some it may still seem like a distant possibility.
Now, the same AAUP report had an important section on the University of Florida, so pay attention here. The University of Florida tried to prevent individual faculty members from serving as experts in cases that the University feared would be a conflict of interest with the state. The then-Dean of the Law School… initially denied law faculty permission to serve as experts in a case against Florida’s restrictions on the ability of felons to vote. Even though this kind of public service had been common practice for years. Later, the dean did give them permission to testify, but only on the condition that they not present their affiliation with the University.
When a group of faculty filed a lawsuit challenging the University, Judge Mark Walker ruled in their favor, calling the University’s actions an act of, remember these words, “pre-emptive subservience to political pressure from Florida’s right-wing.” This anecdote is especially important for us gathered here today because of the identity of that Law School Dean. It was none other than Laura Rosenbury.
*Crowd yells “Shame”*
Elizabeth Bernstein: At Barnard, the state of the policies that have been instituted are designed to restrict speech. Now we see in both familiar and in new ways. But for example, the rule that Taylor mentioned which stipulates that departments must maintain neutrality on geopolitical viewpoints. Now, although that was scrubbed from the web a few minutes ago, it’s important to understand where it came from, right? It came again from Ron DeSantis’ Florida. Right under Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida had mandated that opposing viewpoints be included in all university programming and in high school curriculum. The requirement that in classes amounted to censorship. A year ago, for example, the state banned an AP African American Studies course. They objected to its branding of slavery, which they said, “May lead to a viewpoint of an oppressor versus oppressed based solely on race or ethnicity.” And that it only represents one side of the issue without offering any other viewpoints or perspectives on the subject. Even Both Sides Bozo could not come up with this.
Another bill, Florida’s HB 931, requires that multiple divergent and opposing perspectives be represented in all college programming. It calls for an Office of Public Policy Events to organize and publicize those opposing viewpoint debates on college websites. These policies create an administrative apparatus that exerts direct control over the intellectual and political life of the state’s academic institution. Over and over again, the same playbook that’s previously been used to to restrict the speech of faculty and students has also served to weaken the system by which we should all rightly have a say in what gets said and what gets taught. We see how restricting the ability of faculty and students to speak for ourselves makes room for others to speak for us. And it helps to perpetuate a narrative in which faculty and students at places like Barnard are uncivil actors. And this is directly from the quote from one right wing think tank, right? We’re uncivil actors who administrators need to crack down on.
But the organized effort to silence faculty, students, and staff also allows us to see how crucial our work and our stories and our voices are and how important it is to fight collectively. You have the right to keep talking just like we’re doing today at this teach-in. Thank you so much for joining us.
Interview With Cynthia Nixon
Madeline Douglas: What was your initial reaction to the recent changes of the Code of Conduct and just the protest policies about Barnard in general? I know you said that it was disheartening—could you elaborate on that a little?
Cynthia Nixon: I was really shocked because, you know, when I was here, there were all these anti-apartheid protests and advocating for divestment—by both Barnard and Columbia—of South Africa. And I mean, it didn’t seem to bother anyone. I mean, we had shanty towns built and I don’t know if people were brought in and questioned or anything, but I know at least in the final analysis, nothing negative happened to anyone.6
So I was really, really shocked that not only do we have students suspended and brought up on charges, students who[se] charges have been dropped now, but if they do one more thing, they might be suspended. People living in a state of fear. But also I was just really shocked how the NYPD was brought in and how incredibly violent they were with students who were not doing anything wrong, who were literally sitting on lawns, eating, singing, praying, talking. They posed no threat to anyone.
I read the testimony of a suspended student, and that student talked about being kicked in the face and having many cops on top of them and being really brutalized and then thrown in jail in an isolation cage for 24 hours with no food, water, phone call. This is crazy. This is something that you would do with someone who was violent and who posed a real threat. All these people are saying is stop the bombing and starvation of civilians in Palestine as they sit on the lawn. You know, Christians, Jews, and Muslims altogether talking about this. Isn’t that what college is supposed to be?
Madeline Douglas: Speaking a little bit on what college is supposed to be, how do you think these new limitations—such as there’s only certain times for protests between certain hours, they are limited to certain areas—how do you think these limitations affect student activism on campus and the ability to voice concerns on campus?
Cynthia Nixon: Yes, again, I think these things are changing so quickly. It’s very confusing but I think the desire of them, the goal of them, is to chill speech and to chill protest and to chill congregation. Some of the restrictions that I looked at said if you wanted to have a gathering, not even of a political nature of any kind, a student-activated gathering, you had to ask for permission four weeks in advance. Including a vigil, like if someone died or if there was a rape and you wanted to have a candlelight vigil about this thing. You have to wait a month.13 I mean, that doesn’t make any sense. Things unfold in real time. And as students and faculty and as a college community, you want to be able to respond to it in real time, not say, “Mother, may I in a month have a gathering about this?”
Madeline Douglas: As someone who was a student, especially during the protests, what do you think are the long-term implications of these policies? Not even for this generation of protests but for future protests.
Cynthia Nixon: I think the long-term implications, if things continue as they are, is to quell protests, to quell free speech. But I think equally important is to make sure that both students and faculty who want a robust exchange of ideas and as one of the professors was saying, difficult conversations. It’s not like the people advocating for free speech want everybody to be against the war or against the bombing. There are a lot of students who feel that way and other students who don’t. The point is that everybody is able to express their opinion and that one of these opinions or the other opinions doesn’t mean that you have to be silent.
Madeline Douglas: What does it mean for you now to consider yourself a Barnard alum?
Cynthia Nixon: I’ve always been very proud of attending Barnard because it’s such a feminist institution. That other Seven Sisters schools back in the day were a little more about educating women who were maybe not going to work outside the home, but were going to be married and hostesses. Barnard has always been about career women and women who are pioneers in their field, whether you’re talking about literature, whether you’re talking about science or anthropology or the arts. And that’s why it’s really important and that’s what’s beautiful about it and that’s why it attracts such interesting, diverse women and people. We want to keep it that way. It’s a jewel. The fact that so many of the other women’s colleges have just been subsumed by their male counterparts. Barnard has not because of its really strong individual personality and its pioneering nature. If we’re just going to be subservient and quiet, I don’t know who we are anymore.
Quote Clarification And Fact-Checking
1 The origin of the phrase “speak truth to power” has been attributed to civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
2 Barnard did not rescind the Medal of Honor to Jeane Kirkpatrick. According to The Washington Post, Kirkpatrick denied the award due to the student protests. “I feel deeply that a university or college is in the most basic sense defined by its faculty and students,” she wrote to Barnard officials.
3 According to the Barnard Archives, the Judicial Council was founded in 1964 and is no longer active as of April 24. The Archives state “the exact end date is unknown.” However, the Barnard 2023-2024 Catalogue lists the Judicial Council as composing of “undergraduates, faculty, and administrators” that “recommends disciplinary action for non-academic offenses and acts on appeals of academic disciplinary sanctions determined by the Honor Board.” Bwog has reached out to the College for clarification.
4 In the concurring opinion of the Supreme Court case Whitney v. California, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
5 The Expectations for Community Conduct do not state that students, faculty, or staff can be disciplined for violating the examples provided in the Expectations. Barnard’s website states, “Many in the Barnard community have requested examples and explanations of community expectations flowing from the College’s policies and rules.” It states that the Expectations are intended to “provide additional clarity and confirmation of the College’s core values of inclusion and continuous learning” and are not exhaustive. However, individuals are still subject to the policies the Expectations are derived from.
6 According to the Global Nonviolent Action Database, the 1985 Hamilton Hall blockade resulted in Coalition for a Free South Africa (CFSA) leaders receiving threats of expulsion, with “dozens more” receiving other disciplinary notices. It is unclear what forms these disciplinary notices took nor whether the actions were carried through.
7 According to Columbia Law School, “over 700 students were arrested and subject to discipline” during the 1968 protests. The New York Times states that 73 students were suspended for participation in these protests, while Forbes reports that “most of these students were reinstated and only 30 suspensions were upheld.”
8 Barnard’s Political Activity Policy, published on November 13, 2023, states that “No member of the College may post signs containing political statements on the grounds of the College.” Political statements are defined as “all written communications that comment on specific actions, statements, or positions taken by public officials or governmental bodies at local, state, federal, and international levels; attempt to influence legislation; or otherwise advocate for an outcome related to actions by legislative, executive, judicial, or administrative bodies at local, state, federal, and international levels.”
9 Barnard lists its adoption of the Chicago Principles on the Service & Governance page under the Provost website. The Chicago Principles are not listed on Barnard’s College Policies & Procedures website, which includes every other College policy and procedure. The Provost Service & Governance page states that “a committee will be appointed by President Laura Rosenbury to articulate Barnard’s commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression.” No information on this committee has been released.
10 Barnard previously listed “Messaging from the president of Barnard College or from any division or department of the College supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective while denigrating or remaining silent about an opposing geopolitical viewpoint or perspective” and “Employees posting signs on their office doors supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective” as two violations of the Expectations for Community Conduct. These violations have since been removed.
11 Section Eight of the Expectations for Community Conduct state that Barnard is committed to institutional neutrality. The section states, “The College limits collective statements to those topics that directly affect the College and our mission. The College refrains from taking official positions or issuing statements on matters of public concern except to offer sentiments of support for those who are directly affected or grieving.”
12 On Monday, September 23, President Rosenbury invited community members to share feedback in a form, which will be open until October 14.
13 Students intending to demonstrate must submit a request at least 36 hours in advance of the requested date and time; they are not required to wait a month.
Bwog Publisher Ava Slocum, News Editor Emma Burris, Deputy News Editor Khushi Chhaya, and Staff Writer Gina Brown contributed to the writing and reporting of this article. Science Editor Madeline Douglas and Staff Writer Riley Stacy contributed to interviewing Cynthia Nixon.
Teach-in photos via Emma Burris
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