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Barnard Prez's NYT Op-Ed Is Height of Hypocrisy Ari Paul ([link removed])


NYT: Barnard President: Now Is the Time for Colleges to Host Difficult Speakers

"Host difficult speakers," Barnard president Laura Rosenbury (New York Times, 9/11/25 ([link removed]) ) urged—but don't screen difficult films ([link removed]) about Zionism.

The definition of the Yiddish concept of chutzpah, or unbelievable audacity, often goes like this: A child murders his parents, and then asks the judge to take pity on him because he’s an orphan. Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury’s op-ed in the New York Times (9/17/25 ([link removed]) ) about free speech on campus might be a fitting contemporary version of this old joke.

In print, her piece was headlined, “Barnard President: Charlie Kirk Challenged College Students. We Need More Like Him.” (It echoed liberal Times columnist Ezra Klein’s piece, “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way”—9/11/25 ([link removed]) .) In the wake of the right-wing organizer’s murder on a Utah campus where he was debating with students, Rosenbury said she wants more openness to speech on campuses:

A commitment to nonviolent disagreement should be an obvious part of the fabric of our campuses, just as it is obvious that students need oxygen to breathe. Colleges and universities need to reconfirm our commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement — even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews. This is also a time to foster more disagreement, not less….

College campuses must remain places where students are able to ask and grapple with hard questions, especially those that are uncomfortable and even hurtful. Higher education’s role is not to erase conflict but to channel it into dialogue, debate and learning. To do so, educators and students must face ideas we find offensive and speakers whose words cause pain….

We must have the courage to explore ideas that diverge greatly from our own. That will mean inviting a diverse range of outside speakers to campus. We do not need to create a specific balance of views; we must simply engage with the widest possible spectrum of views respectfully, without disruption or violence.

Put plainly, this would be like an op-ed promoting ethical veganism written by Jeffrey Dahmer. In the nationwide repression of anti-genocide protests on campuses, Barnard (the women’s college at Columbia University) has been under the spotlight ([link removed]) , and Rosenbury has been a chief villain when it comes not just to the repression of protests, but the policing of thought and censoring ideas. She also completely disregarded Kirk’s signature achievement of building a movement to intimidate faculty to stifle political expression and thought.


** 'Hostile environment'
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Columbia Spectator: Rosenbury follow-up email on violence in Gaza and Israel denounces ‘anti-Zionism,’ draws criticism for ‘biased rhetoric’

“You could not have made more apparent who you consider to be valued members of the Barnard community, and who you are willing to sacrifice,” professor Nadia Abu El-Haj told Rosenbury (Columbia Spectator, 10/31/23 ([link removed]) ).

The Columbia Spectator (10/31/23 ([link removed]) ) wrote about one of Rosenbury’s dispatches to the campus community, falsely equating anti-Zionism as antisemitism:

“The war is also taking a toll on our campus,” Rosenbury wrote. “I am appalled and saddened to see antisemitism and anti-Zionism spreading throughout Barnard and Columbia.”

The Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine together published a letter addressed to Barnard faculty and administration on Instagram calling for a retraction of Rosenbury’s statement and an apology from the Barnard administration.

And as Alex Kane ([link removed]) wrote at Jewish Currents (11/15/24 ([link removed]) ):

Laura Rosenbury, the president of Barnard College, called sociology professor Debbie Becher into her office to discuss an event Becher was helping plan alongside several Jewish students: a screening and discussion of the documentary Israelism ([link removed]) , which chronicles young American Jews’ disaffection with Zionism. Joined by provost and dean of the faculty Linda Bell, Rosenbury told Becher to “pause” the screening, according to notes of the meeting Becher kept. Rosenbury acknowledged at the outset that it was “hard to think of [Israelism] as an antisemitic film.” Nevertheless, she wanted the screening indefinitely postponed due to fears that it would trigger legal action against the school under Title VI ([link removed]) of the Civil Rights Act, which bars schools receiving federal funding from creating or permitting a “hostile environment” for students on the basis of race or national origin—and mandates that colleges
found to have violated the statute must come to an agreement with the federal government to change policies or risk being stripped of their federal funding.

The question here isn’t whether or not one agrees with anti-Zionism, or likes the film Israelism. Anti-Zionism—like Irish republicanism or the anti-apartheid movement—is an idea that exists in the world, and according to Rosenbury’s op-ed, we should debate and discuss those ideas, even if that makes us uncomfortable. Obviously, the unsaid message of her piece is that there is a “Palestine exception” to free speech and academic freedom.

She is also falsely equating ([link removed]) anti-Zionism, a position held by many since Jews for more than a century ([link removed]) , with Jew-hatred. The irony, of course, is that Israelism, the movie too hot to watch on campus, is about Jewish criticism of Israel.


** A ban on door decorations
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NYT: Barnard College’s Restrictions on Political Speech Prompt Outcry

Maybe a college president whose policies will "inevitably serve as a license for censorship” (New York Times, 1/24/24 ([link removed]) ) is not the person the Times should be turning to as an expert on free speech?

Rosenbury also lost a faculty vote of “no confidence” for her mishandling of the protests (The Hill, 4/30/24 ([link removed]) ). “The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Barnard and Columbia last and second to last, respectively, in its 2026 College Free Speech Rankings,” reports the Columbia Spectator (9/10/25 ([link removed]) ).

After Barnard censored a faculty statement in support of the Palestinian people, the New York Times (1/24/24 ([link removed]) ) reported that the school's administration

rewrote its policies on political activity, website governance and campus events, giving itself wide latitude to decide what was and was not permissible political speech on campus, as well as final say over everything posted on Barnard’s website.

The moves caught the attention of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which wrote a letter ([link removed]) to Barnard’s new president, Laura Rosenbury, in December, warning that the website and political speech policies violated fundamental free speech principles and were “incompatible with a sound understanding of academic freedom.”

“Such a regime will inevitably serve as a license for censorship,” the letter said.

And in an act of almost comical pettiness, after Barnard students “posted stickers and slogans supporting the Palestinian cause and naming the war in Gaza as a genocide” on their dorm room doors, the school’s administration “decided to enforce a ban on dorm door decorations altogether” (New York Times, 3/1/24 ([link removed]) ).


** 'Act of intimidation'
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Chronicle of Higher Ed: When Student Protest Goes Too Far

Rosenbury (Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/3/25 ([link removed]) ) called for "removing from our community those who refuse to share our values of respect, inclusion and academic excellence"—which is hard to square with wanting more Charlie Kirks.

Rosenbury’s name, needless to say, rings out in any discussion about the repression of free speech and academic freedom in the United States. Pro-Israel critics of the protests often say anti-genocide protesters were too disruptive ([link removed]) . Rosenbury tried to justify her actions against student protesters in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece (3/3/25 ([link removed]) ) headlined “When Student Protest Goes Too Far" (subhead: "I’m the president of Barnard. This is my line in the sand”). "Too far," apparently, is when protest is a "calculated act of intimidation" that poses "an ongoing threat to our community.”

It’s bad enough that Rosenbury could look the public in the face with this record and pontificate about academic freedom. But she should also know that while no faculty members, staff or student in these anti-genocide protests around the country were gunned down like Kirk, protesters and their supporters have been threatened with firearms (The City, 10/13/23 ([link removed]) ), and they’ve faced rubber bullets (Democracy Now!, 5/6/25 ([link removed]) ). Protesters were assaulted (Common Dreams, 4/26/24 ([link removed]) ; CNN, 5/16/24 ([link removed]) ). Many have been expelled or disciplined (AP News, 7/22/25
([link removed]) ).

The piece also fails to name President Donald Trump’s administration, which has used Kirk’s killing as justification to ramp up repression on speech and activity it deems offensive to the regime (New York Times, 9/16/25 ([link removed]) ). And many educators, including at institutions of higher education, have lost their jobs over their comments—again, speech–about Kirk (Guardian, 9/15/25 ([link removed]) ).

Kirk was actually a crusader against free speech and academic freedom, with his movement working hard to target faculty members who fell out of the right’s ideological favor. As the Chronicle of Higher Education (9/15/25 ([link removed]) ) said in a headline, “Charlie Kirk’s Watchlist Made Some Professors’ Lives a ‘Living Hell.’” His group’s Professor Watchlist sparked crippling fear on campuses nationwide (Guardian, 9/17/21 ([link removed]) ; WBUR, 9/12/25 ([link removed]) ; KRCR, 9/15/25 ([link removed]) ; WBFF, 9/15/25 ([link removed]) ; Ms., 9/15/25
([link removed]) ; LGBTQ Nation, 9/16/25 ([link removed]) ).

As journalist Jeff Sharlet (Democracy Now!, 9/11/25 ([link removed]) ) put it:

You’re seeing some people saying, “Well, you know, I disagree with what he said, but he was a champion of free speech. He died debating.” Look, the fact that he was murdered doesn’t change the fact that he also…was an opponent of free speech. There’s no other way to cut it, for a man who created something called Professor Watchlist, School Board Watchlist, to name and frighten people from teaching, who advocated restrictions on what school teachers could teach.

He punctuated his point, “That is not a champion of free speech.”

One might think that all this would be worth mentioning in a piece about maintaining freedom of speech in the wake of Kirk’s killing. But Rosenbury thinks “we need more like him.”

Perhaps Rosenbury thinks this is a good way to whitewash her image. But New York Times editors aren’t forced to publish something so hypocritical. The fact that the paper has shown hostility toward speech on campus that sullies Israel’s name (FAIR.org, 10/11/24 ([link removed]) , 3/21/25 ([link removed]) ) shows that the paper is actively joining the college president in her display of chutzpah.
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