Barnard College has mandated that students remove any and all decorations featuring messages from their dorm rooms as a way to avoid “isolating those who have different views and beliefs” — just days after it was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of allowing antisemitism to run rampant.
Students at the New York City campus have until Wednesday to remove dry-erase boards, decorations, or messaging affixed to their doors, according to a letter sent out on Friday by Barnard College Dean Leslie Grinage, the Columbia Spectator school newspaper reports.
“The goal is to be as clear as possible about the guardrails, and, meeting the current moment, do what we can to support and foster the respect, empathy and kindness that must guide all of our behavior on campus,” Grinage wrote.
The school did not state what repercussions students could face if they don’t adhere to the new policy. Bernard had previously cracked down on two students who hung a Pro-Palestinian banner outside the quad in December, with a disciplinary proceeding underway.
Barnard officials did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment on the specifics of the policy and if it was spurred by debates over the war in Gaza.
The embattled Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group has suggested as much and condemned the new decoration policy as a way for the school to censor students’ freedom of speech.
“This sets a dangerous precedent for the suppression of any academic political discourse in which it is acceptable to silence dissent using the excuse that it can upset someone with a differing view,” the group said in a statement Sunday.
“It is beyond absurd to send out a notice to Barnard students demanding we take down ‘decor’ from our own dorm doors that we are paying to live in,” the Columbia SJP added.
The sentiment was echoed by the schools’ Faculty SJP, which claimed that posters listing the names of Palestinian academics killed in Gaza have started to be taken down from doors across the Barnard campus.
The crackdown at the school comes as the trustees at both Columbia University and Barnard College were named in a lawsuit filed by Jewish Students last week claiming they allowed “rampant antisemitism” to thrive amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The suit — filed by five students and two nonprofits — alleges that Columbia has not substantially intervened as Jewish hate intensified on campus over protests against the war.
“Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people — including infants, children, and the elderly — antisemitism at Columbia has been particularly severe and pervasive,” documents filed in Manhattan federal court states.
Last November, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into antisemitism or Islamophobia at three New York Schools — Columbia, Cornell and Cooper Union.