A takeover of the Dean’s Office at prestigious Barnard University by a raucous pro-Hamas group last Wednesday has become a key test of whether President Trump’s executive orders, aimed at combatting antisemitism on American campuses, carry real enforcement power.
Universities receive billions of dollars annually from the federal government, and in light of recent executive orders by Trump, stand at increased risk of losing funding if they are found to have violated the civil and legal rights of Jewish students.
In Wednesday’s incident, surveillance footage showed the pro-Hamas student rioters assaulting security guards as they broke into Barnard’s Milibank Hall. Once inside, they blockaded the dean’s office—holding Dean Grinage a virtual captive.
The occupiers put tape across security cameras; chanted anti-Israel slurs over a megaphone accompanied by the banging of drums; and demanded a reversal of the expulsions of Barnard students last month, a Fox News article said.
In that earlier incident, student radicals had stormed an Israeli history class at Columbia, targeting Jewish students with antisemitic flyers depicting a truck full of Hamas terrorists brandishing RPGs and machine guns. The flyers called for “crushing” and “burning down” the “Zionist regime.”
During Wednesday’s takeover of the Barnard building, student Shoshana Aufzien was inside at the time, reported the article. “It was really frightening,” she told a news correspondent. “I think they should have called NYPD the second it got violent.”
According to student reports quoted in the Washington Free Beacon, campus public safety officials did in fact sound the alarm, and NY police came to remove the rioters. The officers just stood by, however, after the university refused them entry; they were “hesitant to do anything that could lead to physical confrontation,” the NYPD reported.
Barnard Surrenders to Radicals
A picture obtained by the Free Beacon shows nearly 20 students standing outside Milbank Hall, having been locked out by security officials. Video shows one student with a yarmulka knocking on the door and telling a Barnard security officer, “You have to get them out! We all need to go to class.”
The officer replied, “You have to stand by until we clear it.”
As the stalemate dragged on, students gave up and left. Their accounts to the press reveal that security officers took no action against the rioters who, apparently smelling surrender, exploited the management’s inaction to the hilt.
“For hours, demonstrators sat in rows outside the office of Barnard dean Leslie Grinage, demanding amnesty for the two expelled students,” wrote the Free Beacon. They also “demanded a public meeting with Dean Grinage and the ‘abolition of the Barnard Disciplinary System.’”
Not only did the students ignore an order to vacate the premises, they continued pressing their demands, including amnesty for themselves, until the university buckled.
First, Barnard’s anthropology department head Severin Fowles promised the pro-Hamas crowd that the university administration would engage in mediation with them, and that “NYPD won’t come for the next hour while these conversations are happening.”
“We’ll hang out to make sure you all are okay,” the faculty member assured the rioters. But it’s really important to say that, you know, for the next hour, we’re just going to have a conversation.”
Conversation instead of consequences. Really important.
The mob now understood that they could freely break the law and pour contempt on the university, its faculty and students, with Barnard faculty playing interference so they’d be shielded from the NYPD.
Rioters Humiliate University Dean
Millions of Americans watched the shocking scenes that played out after this capitulation from the administration.
As the standoff continued, with drums beating and megaphones blaring, Dean Grinage asked if she’d be allowed to use the bathroom. Her request was conveyed by a faculty staff member. The mob at first yelled “No!” but eventually allowed her to do so, booing and shaming her on the way to the restroom.
The humiliation of a university dean begging the mob for permission to use the restroom captures in one appalling image how leftwing liberals are willing to debase themselves to kowtow to pro-terror elements.
With the NYPD right outside the campus grounds, this spectacle could have been avoided but Grinage continued to refuse them entry.
The university then sent another faculty member, Kristina Milnor, the chair of Barnard’s Classics Department, to try to reason with the students, according to the Free Beacon article. “Milnor told the occupiers that Grinage requested to meet with only three students, to which a protester responded, ‘She’s scared of us!”
Milnor nodded and said, “Yes. I would not dispute that.”
For millions of Americans watching the footage and reading the reports on social media or news outlets, these scenes of surrender were shocking. The radicals proudly celebrated their victories on social media, with two of the lawbreakers posing with their feet on the desk of the Barnard office they were occupying.
“Anti-Israel protesters covered administrator’s office intercom cameras in blue tape,” the rioters boasted online. “Masked radicals vandalized building walls, writing “We will burn it all down for Gaza!”
“After protesting for SIX HOURS, Dean Grinage conceded to amnesty and negotiations. This afternoon, students will meet with Dean Grinage AND President Rosenbury for negotiations,” the pro-Hamas agitator posted.
A Barnard official disputed the claim, saying the masked protesters left Milbank Hall after receiving final written deadline and the threat of “necessary measures” if they did not leave on their own.
“No promises of amnesty were made, and no concessions were negotiated,” the official told the Free Beacon.
A glance at the wording of her message to the students, however, suggests just the opposite—amnesty was indeed guaranteed.
“If you are a Barnard student, and you do not adhere to this final request by 10:30 p.m. today, February 26, 2025, you will be subject to disciplinary action. If you leave before that time, we will not pursue disciplinary action for your presence in the building,” the notice to students said.
In addition, Dean Grinage appears to have conceded to meeting with the occupiers Thursday afternoon for negotiations, the Free Beacon writes. That meeting was called off only because “the students refused to remove their masks.”
A Page Out of Last Year’s Playbook
The chaos at Barnard came straight out of the pro-Hamas playbook on display last spring, when agitators flooded college campuses nationwide in support of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacres, as attacks on Jewish students spiked.
Barnard’s affiliate school, Columbia University, came under national scrutiny after student riots erupted there, with a violent group breaking into Hamilton Hall in April 2024 and taking over the campus building. Jewish students were advised to leave the campus and to return home, and to continue classes remotely.
Pro-Hamas students and outside agitators at Columbia started the first of what would become a wave of anti-Israel tent encampments on college campuses across the country. UCLA, Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools quickly followed suit, with pro-Hamas groups bullying and intimidating Jewish students.
The rioters forced classes to be cancelled, fomented raucous demonstrations calling for “intifada revolution” and disrupted daily life at their universities.
Participants in the tent encampments demanded their respective universities divest from Israel and from companies supporting Israel. Some university presidents buckled to pressure. Even those that did not cave sought to appease the rioters and engage them in negotiations.
At Columbia, one of the worst offenders, not one student was expelled. A dozen were suspended during the immediate fallout, but they were eventually reinstated, the NY Post attested.
Jewish leaders bashed the university administration for allowing antisemitism to infect the campus and student life.
“Despite our pleas, the University’s administration and Trustees continue issuing empty statements and ignoring antisemitism on campus,” Ari Shrage, a member of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, told the NY Post in a statement.
“It’s no surprise that the Department of Education is investigating Columbia because of the university’s failure to address these issues. What’s more alarming is their letter highlighting the faculty’s participation in violating Jewish student’s rights.”
Executive Order Cracking Down on Antisemitism
An executive order signed in late January by President Trump outlines a broad federal crackdown on “the explosion of antisemitism” in the U.S., especially on college campuses. The order says the president will cancel visas of foreign students who are “Hamas sympathizers” and deport “pro-jihadist” protesters.
“We put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and will deport you,” read a White House fact sheet about the order posted online Thursday.
The order cites “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism and violence” and states that U.S. policy “shall be” to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
It also directs all U.S. department and agency heads to come up with new means they could employ to combat antisemitism within 60 days.
The order also lays out how some student protests could be considered a violation of existing federal law that bars individuals from supporting terrorism.
It directs government officials to encourage schools to monitor and report any such activities by foreign students so they can be investigated and possibly deported.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has echoed Trump’s determination to root out antisemitic agitators from American campuses.
Anti-Israel student protesters who are in the United States on visas and threatening American students “need to be kicked out of the country,” Bondi said in an interview with Newsmax back in Oct. 2023,
In a discussion about the spike in anti-Israel protests on American campuses following Hamas’ Oct. 7 vicious attacks on Israel, the then attorney general of Florida said, “The thing that really was troubling to me, these university students — whether they’re here as Americans or here on student visas — and they’re out there saying, ‘I support Hamas’–Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country.
“I support Hamas” is not the same as saying “I support poor Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza,” Bondi said. “The FBI needs to be interviewing them over those statements.”
“All of our students deserve to be safe,” the AG said this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington, D.C. She reiterated her zero tolerance policy for antisemitic harassment and bullying, particularly from foreign students.
“Students who are here on visas, who are threatening our American students, need to be expelled from this country.”
DOE Investigating Colleges Over “Widespread Antisemitic Harassment”
Under President Trump’s Direction, The US Department of Education is launching an investigation into a number colleges over alleged “widespread” antisemitic harassment following last year’s tumultuous spring term, when anti-Israel protests escalated on campuses countrywide, a NY Post article reported.
The anti-Israel demonstrations stretched from colleges in Maine all the way to Alaska and sometimes turned into violent clashes with pro-Israel supporters in the schools under investigation. At the top of the list is Columbia, Columbia, where the student encampment protests first sparked after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
In addition, the DOE will be investigating Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Sarah Lawrence, Berkley and the University of Minnesota, institutions allegedly plagued with antisemitism, the article said.
“Too many universities have tolerated widespread anti-Semitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” said Craig Trainor, the Trump-appointed assistant secretary for civil rights at the DOE.
“Today, the Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses.”
“Nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates,” Trainor added in a statement.
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights is opening the investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects students from harassment based on their national origin and shared ancestry, according to a press release, a NY Post article said.
The probe follows through on an executive order Trump signed in January instructing federal agencies to identify “all civil and criminal authorities” available to combat antisemitism — including finding ways to deport alleged anti-Jewish students on visas and others who violated laws.
One month into President Trump’s term, information has surfaced about State Department bureaucrats that during the Biden Administration were able to undermine efforts to curb antisemitic eruptions at American universities by holding Jew-baiters and cowardly administrations accountable.
“The Biden Administration’s toothless resolutions and hollow agreements did shamefully little to hold those individuals and institutions accountable,” the Trump-appointed secretary for civil rights said.
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Trump Steers Federal Money Toward Private-School Vouchers
As part of his plan to wholly revamp if not abolish the Department of Education, President Trump signed an executive order in late January that would steer large amounts of federal money away from public schools and toward private-school vouchers and other “educational alternatives.”
The executive order cites shockingly low national test scores, saying families need options outside the public system.
“We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list,” Trump said, alluding to recent findings that revealed a third of eighth graders in the United States lacked “basic reading skills.”
The order claims that “a growing body of rigorous research” supports the idea that school choice improves academic outcomes.
The directive was hailed by supporters of school vouchers (including yeshiva parents) who have long sought federal funding which families can tap to pay for private education. Until now, with the exception of a voucher program in Washington, D.C., legislation to apply federal tax credits to fund private school scholarships has not succeeded in Congress.
The president’s executive order sidesteps Congress. It directs the U.S. Department of Education and the HHS to find ways to take existing money that goes to public schools and give it to families to use at private schools or for homeschooling expenses.
The order was one of several education-related directives Trump issued at the same time. Another directive ordered the defunding schools that teach “discriminatory DEI ideology” or “gender ideology.”
Within 60 days, the Dept. of Education secretary is to provide guidance “regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” the order says. Formula funds include programs such as Title I, which sends billions of dollars each year to schools in poverty-designated areas, based on population formulas.
Like other executive orders, Trump’s directive promoting school choice is likely to face opposition from critics. The extent of his authority to reallocate funds without Congressional approval remains uncertain—a key issue that applies to many of Trump’s unprecedented orders and may soon reach the Supreme Court.
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Trump Seeks to Dismantle Department of Education
Prior to his election to the presidency, Donald Trump vowed to shutter the DOE altogether and to give educational responsibility and power back to the states. The federal government, he said, should not have control over schools as it was staffed with “people that do not want the best for our children.”
Trump believes that the federal government is force-feeding children “woke,” anti-American ideologies on race and gender, by promoting curricula that he says encourage children to “hate” their country, and to see themselves as either oppressed or on the side of the oppressor.
This position aligned with the 2024 platform of the Republican Party, which pledged to “close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run.”
Trump has pledged to come up with alternate, more aggressive means of fighting campus antisemitism, accusing the previous administration of neglecting its duty to fight antisemitism, and leaving more than 100 cases open.
He has called for a review of all antisemitism cases opened since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, including those resolved under Biden.
Earlier this month, he reiterated his desire to fulfill this campaign pledge, saying he wanted the federal education department “to be closed immediately,” but acknowledging he would need support from Congress and teachers’ unions to fulfill his campaign pledge to do so.
Trump’s recently established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, has campaigned to cut spending across the executive branch and recently began to access the voluminous data at the education department.
“Pres. Reagan campaigned on ending the Department of Education, which was created by Carter in 1979, but it was bigger when Reagan left office than when he started!” Musk recently posted online. “Not this time. President Donald Trump will succeed.”
