When a bomb threat coincided with a pro-Palestine student protest at Barnard College last month, the New York City Police Department arrested nine demonstrators. By the next day, local and national media had picked up the story. Some outlets suggested that the protesters were responsible for the threat. “Several Barnard College protesters in custody after bomb threat made during sit-in,” read one headline.

That headline, as well as statements from Barnard College and the NYPD, overlooked a key fact: The Palestine solidarity protesters were actually the targets of the bomb threat.

This revelation has alarmed faculty and students, who are now being interrogated by school officials about the threat during inquiries over alleged student code of conduct violations. Faculty and attorneys working with the protesters are also concerned that information from those interrogations could be shared with the government, as Barnard faces pressure to hand over information about students to Congress — where Republicans have repeatedly painted student protesters as terrorists — as part of its investigation into antisemitism on college campuses.

When asked by The Intercept whether the school had made public that the bomb threat targeted pro-Palestine students, a Barnard spokesperson pointed to a tweet from the NYPD.

“The NYPD is responding to a bomb threat at the Milstein Center at Barnard College and is evacuating the building. Anyone who refuses to leave the location is subject to arrest. Please stay away from the area,” the post on X states.

“The fact that these students were targets does not seem to have been made clear.”

Barnard, which is Columbia University’s affiliated women’s college, did not respond to detailed questions about the timeline of when it called police onto campus, why students were being asked about the threat, what information it planned to share with Congress, or why it had not made public that protesters were the target of the threat.

“The fact that these students were targets does not seem to have been made clear,” said Homa Zarghamee, an economics professor at Barnard.

Zarghamee noted she has not seen the kind of support for students who were the target of a threat of violence that she would have expected from the administration “in this era of safety concerns.”

“What we have never heard from the administration — this time, or truthfully any time in the past — is anything about the fact that this was a threat made to our students, who we need to remember, again and again, are being disciplined for peaceful protest against the Israeli war on Gaza,” said Thea Abu El-Haj, a professor of education at Barnard.

“The language from the administration seems to consistently be about the protesters as threatening.”

Though the school itself never explicitly blamed the bomb threat on students, Abu El-Haj said everyone she has spoken with outside of Barnard had assumed that the protesters were responsible.

“The language from the administration seems to consistently be about the protesters as threatening. And it seems very much addressed to a broader public audience,” she said. “I can say for myself, but also for the students I teach, they are really upset that no one is expressing concern for them and for the threats that have been brought against them.”

According to a screenshot of the bomb threat obtained by The Intercept, the sender emailed school administrators at 4:01 p.m. on March 5 saying they had placed a bomb “in the Barnard College library.” The sender, who used the email address, pardonderek@mail2tor.com, wrote that they intended to attack the “anti-white faggot terrorists/communists that are protesting.”

In an email sent that evening to the coalition of protesters Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury said students, faculty, and staff had been ordered to clear the building so the NYPD and its........

© The Intercept