New York City’s Ivy League campus, Columbia University, has become a place where Jewish students are not welcome. It’s time for the leadership of Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, to step up and protect all of their students by providing severe discipline for lawbreakers and structural reforms to ensure they cannot run rampant again. If the schools cannot take these steps, they must face serious consequences. If you are a Jewish student, your safety is at stake. If you are a parent, your children are under siege. If you are an American, these forces will come for you next. We have seen this before. We know where it leads. And we must not let it happen again.
During the spring 2024 semester, masked radicals took over Columbia’s campus. As a result, classes and year-end commencement ceremonies were canceled, and Jewish students fled from the campus. Now, as the 2025 spring semester is underway, masked hooligans have launched an assault on Barnard. First, on Feb. 26, anti-Israel extremists stormed and occupied Milbank Hall, prevented students from attending classes, vandalized property, and assaulted a public safety officer so severely that he was hospitalized.
Then, on March 5, the mob seized control of Milstein Library, disrupting regular academic activities in this sacred space of learning. The radicals occupying the building wore masks to disguise their identities, chanted anti-Israel slogans, prevented regular academic use of the building, renamed it after a Hamas hospital director in Gaza, and demanded that the university engage in economic warfare against the state of Israel. Protesters handed out Hamas pamphlets and photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and, in the library guest book, wrote “Death to America,” the genocidal slogan of the terrorist-sponsoring regime currently in control of Iran.
One change that must be made immediately is for the Barnard administration to demand that the extremists running roughshod over its campus remove their masks. Shortly before the seizure of Milbank Hall, a Barnard official said anyone entering campus wearing a mask may be asked to temporarily remove it “unless the covering is included in their Barnard of Columbia ID photo.” It boggles the mind that this is not a standing policy, given the way that supporters of terrorism have made a mockery of the campus environment.
In the second place, there must be zero tolerance for harassment, discrimination, or “Jewish-free zones.” Last April, as Columbia fell under the control of avowed enemies of Israel and the United States — explicitly supporting terrorist groups such as Gaza’s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Yemen’s Houthis — Rabbi Elie Buechler was forced to send a message to hundreds of Jewish students “strongly” recommending they return home and remain there.
During the Barnard crisis, campus administrators coddled the hoodlums. Barnard representatives offered to negotiate and provide concessions to the forces occupying campus buildings. The most extreme moment of absurdity occurred when Barnard’s Dean Leslie Grinage, who had been inside Milbank Hall, had to ask the radicals for permission to use the bathroom in her own building. The occupying forces allowed her to use the bathroom, but only while booing her as she took care of her business. Ultimately, Barnard made a written promise of amnesty and immunity from disciplinary action for students who left the building by a given deadline; a week later, Barnard President Laura Rosenbury refused to say whether representatives of the Milstein Library seizure whom she met with would be granted amnesty. Whether or not such a promise was made, these lawbreakers should not be allowed to get off scot-free.
Allowing these enemies of civilization immunity to harass innocent students and destroy school property is worse than madness; it is aiding and abetting evil. Following a firestorm of criticism, Columbia and Barnard suspended a few of the ringleaders of the campus violence. This response is far from sufficient. Columbia also announced that it had expelled an unknown number of the students involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall last year. Importantly, these expulsions only happened after significant federal pressure was applied. All of the students involved in activities supportive of terrorist organizations on their campuses must be immediately and permanently expelled from those institutions.
Many of the leaders involved in the ugly activities at these schools are not even citizens. The U.S. government has taken a key step by apprehending Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian who helped lead the 2024 Columbia encampment, and revoking his green card and student visa, an essential step to his being removed and barred from entry to the U.S. This step should be repeated with all non-U.S. students who have been involved in pro-terrorism and antisemitic activities on U.S. campuses. Studying at an American university is a privilege, not a right, particularly for noncitizens, and those involved in heinous actions such as seizing and defacing school property and harassing law-abiding Jewish students have forfeited that privilege forever.
Just as critically, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, including the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and the U.S. General Services Administration, canceled approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” This is an important first step, but it is still just a drop in the bucket.
Columbia and its affiliated institutions still hold an astonishing $5 billion in federal grant commitments. Unless Columbia immediately expels all of the fanatics it has allowed to disrupt the last two spring semesters, it should be immediately starved of this remaining federal funding. On Friday, Columbia agreed to Trump administration preconditions to restore the suspended funding, which include banning masks, completing disciplinary proceedings for protest ringleaders, formalizing a definition for antisemitism, reforming its admissions process, and placing its troubled Middle East department under academic review.
COLUMBIA AGREES TO TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DEMANDS AFTER FEDERAL FUNDING WAS PULLED
Now is not a moment for weakness; the wages of negotiating with these terrorists over the last two years are already chillingly clear. It took a suspension in federal funding to force Columbia and Barnard to expel some of the ringleaders, showing that federal pressure can have a significant positive effect. If Columbia and Barnard want to save themselves, they must immediately take action and end the reign of terror that these militants have imposed over their schools. If they lack the will to do so, the U.S. government must take action to deport the foreign ringleaders and end the flow of federal money to these fallen institutions.
Either way, action must be swift and focused if higher education in the U.S. is to have a future. Stopping the malign forces that hold these schools hostage will pave the way for a renewal, a rebirth of the old American ideal of free inquiry and academic excellence under the banner of democracy.
Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician who regularly appears on Fox @ Night with Trace Gallagher. Her family escaped to the U.S. from Iran.