Cut Federal Funding to Barnard
by Alan M. Dershowitz • March 7, 2025 at 5:00 am
[Barnard's] radical "studies" departments are propaganda mills that teach students what to think rather than how to think. Consider, for example, the "Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Department". Its website calls for students to "smash the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy."
In other words, this women's studies department has little to do with scholarship, teaching or learning. It has everything to do with advocacy. That is true of many other specialized studies departments at Barnard.
Signs at these protests call for "war" and "intifada". Nor is the war limited to Israel. It is directed against Americans as well. The protests involve masked students, faculty and non-students who occupy buildings, prevent Jewish students from attending classes and threaten to close down the college unless it divests from Israel and takes other bigoted actions.
The college administration, instead of disciplining students who break the rules and the law, negotiated with them. Cutting off funding from Barnard will not hurt students who want a real education, because Barnard students can enroll in courses at Columbia, which is affiliated with Barnard. It will put an end to the propaganda "courses", and "studies" "programs" in which Barnard seems to specialize.
It is imperative that freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment, not be compromised by the government. Barnard is a private institution not bound by that amendment. Moreover, those activities that would cause a shutdown of federal funding are not covered by freedom of speech. They consist largely of physical actions, such as trespassing, blocking access, harassment and other forms of intimidation. Pure protests consisting of speech should not be a basis for defunding.
President Donald Trump has pledged to cut federal funding to schools that do not protect Jewish students from anti-semitic harassment and violence. The best place to begin this process is Barnard College in New York City. Cutting funding to major research universities threatens cutbacks on grants for medical and other important scientific research. Barnard College, on the other hand, is not a university. It does not have a medical school. Its faculty does little or no research that would affect Americans on a day-to-day basis. Cutting off federal aid to Barnard would have few negative impacts on issues that legitimately concern Americans, especially if it focuses on discriminatory actions and does not interfere with protected free speech
