Barnard is in a state of free fall. A once thriving campus that valued community, intellectual risk-taking, and bad-ass boldness, is quickly becoming a shadow of its former self. The college faces financial hardships due to incompetence and negligence. The administrators who worked to ensure a community of care have fled. Staff are demoralized. Faculty and students no longer feel the community is theirs. The community feels broken. The spirit of exploration, change-making, and pioneering leadership that guide Barnard’s mission - has been quashed. What happened?
In March 2023, the board of trustees of Barnard College named Laura Ann Rosenbury the ninth president of Barnard. Since arriving in June of 2023, she has trampled our governance structures, compromised the basic research and teaching functions of the college, and has exhibited disdain for students, faculty, and staff.
There is no question that it is a complicated time on college campuses. But leadership that actively disdains and disrespects its own college is unsustainable.
First, it’s important to note that we’ve never actually been here before. Never in our history has a Barnard president faced a vote of no confidence from faculty. And never in our history has Barnard experienced such a rapid decline in its reputation and in the sense of community on campus.
The trust within our community is broken – and to be clear, it’s President Rosenbury who broke it. We are here because our administration makes unilateral policy decisions with no consultation - and often no notification. These sudden policy changes have sown administrative chaos because our leadership fails to understand how they will actually impact college activities. The administration talks about community but has locked down the campus. The day after commencement, it shut the newly-minted grads out of their campus. Rosenbury talks about care but has pursued disciplinary actions against students that are more draconian than those at Columbia and that radically depart from how administrations have dealt with student protest in the past.
Young women come to Barnard to learn about the world and to develop their voices. Instead, this administration has attacked the basic right to free speech, expression, and protest. A new rule even prohibits students from hanging decorations on their dorm room doors.
While changes in administration are often associated with flux, upper-level administrators have fled Barnard in unprecedented numbers. Meanwhile, faculty and staff have been entirely shut out of decision-making by an administration that institutes policies without consulting the campus constituencies who will be impacted by them.
Desperate to make their voices heard, the faculty organized a vote of no confidence in April of 2024 – an unprecedented development in Barnard’s history. The vote captured just how wide and deep the discontent is: 72.4% of faculty voted, and of those, 77% expressed no confidence in Rosenbury’s leadership. Neither Rosenbury nor the Board of Trustees has acknowledged the implications of this vote: instead, they have privately dismissed it as unrepresentative or as the work of “troublemakers.”
Saving Barnard, its mission and values, requires a radical reset. As the vote makes clear, a large majority of the faculty have concluded that Rosenbury cannot continue as president. But we also need to understand how we wound up with a president so ill-suited to lead our college in the first place.
A group of concerned faculty, staff, and alumnae has set up this website to share information about what is going on at Barnard – and how alums, parents, and others can join the effort to turn things around. We are calling on all who care about the Barnard community to pay attention to what’s going on. Barnard belongs to all of us, and our community is shaped by us, not the administration. We are stronger together and we must support each other in safeguarding our values and mission and in holding the administration accountable for its actions.
To get more context about recent events on campus, see the Timeline.