Barnard at a crossroads: AAUP negotiates governance reforms, sounds alarm on federal attacks on higher education and academic freedom
The Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors has been advocating for reforms of college governance amid a rapidly-evolving national policy landscape.
Photography by Sherry Chen/The Barnard Bulletin
By Arithra Das and Serena DiDio
March 1, 2025
The atmosphere was charged during the last faculty meeting of the fall semester on December 12, as nearly 70 professors — a large turnout so late in the semester — gathered for the third time in eight days to tackle what many are calling a pivotal moment for Barnard College.
Earlier that semester, the Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) presented a ten-part “Resolution for a Return to Shared Governance” to the administration. Prompted by over a year of “top-down” decision-making at the College by a small group of Senior Staff, none of whom are faculty, as well as crises with the budget and student disciplinary procedures, the resolution is a move towards a more democratic Barnard that calls for a broad restructuring of the College’s policy-making and enforcement.
Faculty discussion on December 12 centered on the administration’s first response to the resolution, delivered by Provost Rebecca Walkowitz via email earlier that day, according to AAUP Executive Board member and Chair of the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies department, Elizabeth Bernstein. While this initial response expressed willingness to work together, the absence of and clear commitments and logistical details left faculty uncertain. They voted in favor of continuing negotiations, which did not conclude for the semester until December 23.
“It is remarkable to me how much consensus there is among faculty about the fundamental fact that we are in a crisis and that it is not sustainable, and that something really, really, really needs to give,” said Barnard professor of history and member of the Barnard AAUP Executive Committee Nara Milanich on the faculty’s rapid organizing efforts. Barnard’s AAUP Chapter, founded in 2024, now represents approximately 150 members — about half of the College’s full-time faculty. “Not only is it a huge number, but it was a huge number that has been organized in the space of very little time,” said Milanich.
Discontent among faculty has only grown since last spring, when they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a no confidence motion against President Rosenbury, citing the administration’s undemocratic conduct and unwillingness to collaborate.
Milanich went on to explain, “The essential idea here is that we need to change our governance structures in fairly radical ways in order to get ahead of what feels like a situation of perpetual crisis.”
Faculty are especially concerned with the administration’s recent record of rolling out sweeping policies created by the Senior Staff without faculty involvement or approval. Milanich pointed to policies like the dorm room door rule “implemented last year in an incredibly arbitrary fashion.” She criticized these changes for being “poorly thought out” and for “not respecting appropriate procedure.” She also highlighted the administration’s handling of the controversial September Community Expectations policy. “It was rolled out from one minute to the next… and then they revised it after it had been published. Who revises a policy after making it public?” she asked, referring to revisions made before the faculty teach-in in September. Faculty members criticized the administration’s use of a Google form to collect feedback, arguing that it did not truly represent shared governance. Milanich emphasized that “a Google form is not democracy.”
She added that, “it's not just about incompetence or a lack of communication — there's a suspicion that it could be a more studied strategy to wear faculty down.”
The Barnard faculty’s role in College governance has been reduced over time. Historically, faculty has had more input on decision-making through bodies like the Judicial Council, which is currently dissolved, and faculty committees, whose powers have seen recent dilution. Faculty at private institutions like Barnard are unable to unionize, which is where the AAUP comes into play.
By the time negotiations concluded for the semester on December 23, the AAUP had achieved three notable wins according to an email newsletter sent to members obtained by the Barnard Bulletin:
Reconstitution of the President’s Council
The President’s Council will be composed of both administrators and faculty and will replace the body of Barnard Senior Staff responsible for the generation of policies without faculty involvement or approval.
A reform of faculty committees
Elected faculty committees will replace presidentially-appointed task forces.
Proposal for elected faculty representation to the Board of Trustees
The administration has agreed to bring a proposal for elected faculty representation to the Board of Trustees.
Despite their success in securing these agreements, Bernstein said that a number of uncertainties remain. Faculty want the President’s Council to be an advisory body, rather than a policymaking one, to replace the current system where unelected Senior Staff work with President Rosenbury to create policy without faculty input or ratification. Bernstein said that negotiations are ongoing to establish new policy-making procedures and it is unclear whether the administration will agree to transfer policy-making power away from the Senior Staff. These concerns have been compounded by the fact that the newly-formed President’s Council meets only once a month, and without the Faculty Dean of Diversity, who faculty were under the impression that the Council would include.
Bernstein explained, “The implementation phase is very important, especially in this moment when higher education is under attack. We have some concerns, for example, about the composition of the President’s Council given the Faculty Dean of Diversity was not invited to attend the first meeting and if it will come to supplant the Senior Staff as choice advisory body to the President as per our agreement.”
Key demands were also left unaddressed, including that policy proposals be ratified by a binding faculty vote, the repeal of all policies that were put in place from 2023 to 2024 without faculty approval, and the reinstatement of an independent, tripartite Judicial Council to address student conduct as well as staff and faculty discipline.
Milanich noted that one of the most critical aspects of the faculty’s organizing efforts is the relationship between the administration and college constituencies: “How do we rebuild trust? How do we rebuild the process? How do we rebuild democracy in order to move forward?”
This goal has become especially pressing since the inauguration of President Trump at the start of the Spring 2025 semester. The President has made clear his intention to go after universities, which he claims are run by “Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” In her address on behalf of the AAUP to the full faculty and administration at the semester’s first faculty meeting on February 3, Bernstein urged the administration to avoid “anticipatory obedience” — compliance before official pressure to do so — with Trump administration policies. She drew attention to the elimination of the word “diversity” from the Vice President of Inclusion and Engaged Learning and Chief Diversity Officer title, now called the Vice President of Inclusion and Belonging, suggesting this was motivated by the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI initiatives. The failure to invite the Faculty Dean of Diversity to the President's council echoes this concern.
Bernstein ended her address with an appeal to Barnard’s mission, presenting a page from Barnard’s website: “We remind the administration of what Barnard College is, or at least, what it once was: a place for change-makers. Here, we see the Boldly Barnard webpage, which explicitly celebrates generations of Barnard women for expressing their opinions, often in public protests, and seeking to make change in the world. We remind the administration of their responsibility to uphold this legacy.”
President Rosenbury has not made a public statement addressing how Barnard plans to handle attacks from the federal government on colleges, universities, and academic freedom.
Despite progress towards the establishment of shared governance, which Bernstein acknowledged at the start of her February 3 address, the College recently took unprecedented disciplinary action against student protest with the expulsion of two student protesters. The expulsions are the first at Columbia University related to pro-Palestinian activism, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest, who claims that the expulsions were issued by a sole employee of the Office for Student Intervention and Success established last fall. Had the AAUP resolution been agreed to in full, such disciplinary measures would have been conducted through a Judicial Council of students, faculty, and administration.
The AAUP has yet to comment on the February Barnard expulsions, but students will have the opportunity to hear directly from AAUP members at Barnard and beyond about their work in the evolving political landscape on March 12, when they will be holding a community teach-in entitled “The End of Academic Freedom? Teaching and Learning in Authoritarian Times.”
However, almost three weeks prior to the expulsions, Bernstein’s AAUP address explicitly expressed concern that the administration may use crackdowns on protest to signal compliance:
“We fear that the Barnard administration will use a strategy of cracking down on seemingly minor infractions in order to demonstrate compliance. For example, administrators may use ‘academic difficulty’ as a pretext for pushing out students who have engaged in campus protests. Now more than ever, adherence to the principles of transparency and due process is of unprecedented importance.”