Barnard College faces backlash for deleting post of student holding ArabLit Quarterly

Barnard College is facing heat online for deleting a post on their Instagram account featuring a Barnard student who is seen holding up the latest issue of ArabLit Quarterly. The issue's front cover shows a flower-filled map of occupied Palestine, with flowers blooming out of Gaza. 

The post was intended to praise the student for her internship at ArabLit Quarterly this past summer. The quarterly issue in her hands is a collection of "poems, testimonies, articles and reflections on the ongoing state of war inside Gaza", according to an introduction of the spring 2024 issue. 

This is the image. The cover of Arab Lit Quarterly that covers the violence in Palestine. Don’t look for resistance to genocide from academia. https://t.co/LXxaSniwyR pic.twitter.com/IWbhvTZnXm

— Ambereen Dadabhoy 🪬 (@DrDadabhoy) August 12, 2024

A pro-Israel user commented on the post, stating that the college should “be ashamed” for allowing the Middle East “to infiltrate our schools and student ideology”. 

The Columbia Jewish Alumni Association demanded the post be taken down, stating that the "smiling student" holding "an image with map of Israel completely erased" had "genocidal implications".

A 48-hour story on @BarnardCollege socials...
1. Friday Barnard posts image with map of Israel completely erased, help up by smiling student.👇

2. Sunday, alums begin commenting their concern with the map's genocidal implications.

3. Barnard deletes all concerned alum comments,… https://t.co/P9w5inGSWh

— Columbia Jewish Alumni Assoc. (@CU_JewishAlumni) August 11, 2024

Barnard took the post down from all of its platforms, followed by a statement on the social media platform X that read, “We removed a post highlighting a student’s summer internship that included an image that was offensive to some in our community.”

Yesterday, we removed a post highlighting a student’s summer internship that included an image that was offensive to some in our community. Out of respect for those views and for the safety of the student, the post has been removed from all Barnard social media.

— Barnard College (@BarnardCollege) August 12, 2024

Current students and alumni immediately slammed Barnard for backtracking.

This comes just a few months after the college received flack for the treatment of its students who participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment at its sister school, Columbia University. 

More than 53 Barnard students were suspended for their involvement in pro-Palestinian organising and joining the encampment. The encampment was cleared by police in riot gear after a group of students took over a campus building, "de-occupying" it and renaming it "Hind's Hall" (after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza). The encampment was up for two weeks in April and sparked the global Gaza solidarity encampment movement.

Maryam Iqbal, a Barnard student who was given only 15 minutes to evacuate her dorm after being suspended for participating in the Columbia encampment, took to X to post about her frustration: “i’m so frustrated that an arab woman who goes to @BarnardCollege can’t even be proud of her accomplishments at her internship without facing absolutely insane zionist attacks. Can you imagine if any other alumni association talked like this about a student?” 

I hate how Barnard pretends to care about uplifting women’s voices. I hate how the slogan is “Bold Beautiful Barnard” as if they haven’t been silencing the most bold voices for Palestinian liberation since October. I’m so incredibly fed up with the hypocrisy.

— maryam مريم🇵🇸🍁 (@bluepashminas) August 12, 2024

An alumna also expressed her disappointment in her alma mater’s decision, writing, “Is a student not supposed to be Arab? To not work on Arab literature?”

As an alum, I find this disgraceful. Is a student not supposed to be Arab? To not work on Arab literature? Abhorrent racism and Islamophobia from a school that always taught us to be fierce, open and accepting feminists. I want you to choose better than fascism.

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) August 12, 2024

Parents of both students and prospective applicants to Barnard also took to social media to criticise their decision.

A friend’s daughter visited @BarnardCollege this summer and liked it enough to apply. I’ll have to show this to her. Maybe she should reconsider.

— N (@nadstar3) August 12, 2024

I am the Jewish parent of a Jewish Barnard-alum and I stand in utter horror at the way you have let yourself be manipulated by a very small but vocal group of Zionist alums. Utterly shameful abdication of your responsibility to ALL students.

— Jeff Melnick (@melnickjeffrey1) August 12, 2024

As the fall semester arrives, tensions remain high between Barnard and Columbia and their students. This weekend, Columbia administrators announced that the institution would move to “orange” status during the fall semester, which only allows students and staff with university ID cards on campus and places limits on entrances and exits. This will be a continuation of the lockdown that was in response to the encampment back in April.