Cut Federal Funding to Barnard

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

Barnard has become the poster child for anti-American, anti-semitic and anti-decent activities. Its 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." Its mission is described as follows:

"WGSS is dedicated to linking inquiry and action, theory and practice, scholarship and feminism. We work with our colleagues in Africana Studies, American Studies, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women to develop analyses and practices that address the current moment, including scholarly discussions, student projects with local communities, videos on transformative justice...."

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.

It is not surprising therefore that Barnard has become the incubator for anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-semitic protests. 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.

When two Barnard students were expelled for disturbing a class at Columbia University taught by an Israeli professor, protesters occupied Barnard's Milstein Hall — named after a Jewish donor — and demanded that these expulsions be rescinded. 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 may also eventually cause the closing down of Barnard, because colleges depend on federal funding to supplement tuition and contributions from alumni. Donations from alumni are down recently, for understandable reasons.

Barnard's closure would be no great loss. Qualified students could transfer to Columbia or other universities, with no real negative implications. If federal funding is what is keeping Barnard afloat, it deserves to sink.

Higher education needs a shot across the bow and there is no better target than Barnard. Others may follow if they persist in destroying objective education and substituting ideological propaganda. Taxpayers should not be funding such bigoted enterprises.

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.

Federal funding is not a right. Every institution that seeks taxpayer funding must earn that privilege by what it is contributing to our nation. Barnard no longer deserves our financial or other support. Neither do other colleges and universities that do not protect Jewish students and faculty from harassment and intimidation on campus.

Most university administrators have failed to provide such protection because they are fearful of the reaction from radical students and faculty in their midst. There must be external pressures to incentivize cowardly administrators to do the right thing. Cutting off federal funding from the worst offenders, such as Barnard, would be a good beginning.