The House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Barnard on Thursday expressing concern and requesting information about the Feb. 26 sit-in at Milbank Hall and the March 5 sit-in at the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning.

The committee requested Barnard provide a briefing no later than April 10 to “help the Committee better understand these two incidents.”

The letter, addressed to Barnard President Laura Rosenbury and Cheryl Glicker Milstein, chair of the college’s Board of Trustees, was signed by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development.

“We’re reviewing the letter,” a Barnard spokesperson wrote in a statement to Spectator.

In February, the Committee on Education and Workforce informed Barnard and Columbia administrators of an investigation into the University’s “response to antisemitism and its failure to protect Jewish students.” The committee, along with the House Committee on Ways and Means, previously requested information on policies to “prepare for unauthorized encampments” from Barnard and Columbia in identical Aug. 22 2024 letters.

The Thursday letter copied then-interim University President Katrina Armstrong, who stepped down from the role on Friday evening, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The committee praised the college’s expulsion of two Barnard students who allegedly participated in the Jan. 21 disruption of the History of Modern Israel course at Columbia.

The letter stated that the protesters participating in the disruption were “interfering with other students’ ability to learn and casting inflammatory antisemitic flyers across the floor.”

Protesters distributed flyers depicting a boot stomping on the Star of David with the words “Crush Zionism” and another depicting an individual in a keffiyeh holding a burning Israeli flag with the words “Burn Zionism to the ground.”

“Within a few weeks, Barnard held these two students accountable by expelling them,” the letter read. “We commend you for those actions.”

The letter requested information about two sit-ins at Barnard which were in protest of the expulsions.

“We expect those providing the briefing to be prepared to respond to all questions about these incidents, including but not limited to where the university is in its investigation into these incidents and what disciplinary action is being taken and to provide any material requested in a timely manner,” the letter read.

The letter addressed the Feb. 26 sit-in outside Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage’s office at Milbank Hall, where students demanded that the college reinstate the expelled students, provide amnesty for protesters, and change the Barnard disciplinary process.

“Aiming to occupy an area near the office of Dean and Vice President for Campus Life and Student Experience Leslie Grinage, the demonstrators forced their way into Milbank Hall and ‘physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them [sic] to the hospital,’” the letter read. “The student agitators rejected Dean Grinage’s offer to meet, which was conditioned upon the students’ presentation of identification and removal of their masks.”

Protesters dispersed from the sit-in with a tentative meeting with Grinage and Rosenbury the next day. The next day student negotiators told a group of protesters that Barnard had renegotiated the terms of the meeting and demanded that the student representatives be unmasked for the meeting.

The letter added that the sit-in reportedly lasted for more than six hours and caused $30,000 in damages.

The letter addressed the March 5 sit-in at the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, where the New York Police Department arrested nine individuals after Barnard authorized its entry to campus following a reported bomb threat.

The letter wrote that protesters entered the library “with the help of an accomplice holding open a back exit door.”

“The agitators disrupted library operations and scattered pro-Hamas pamphlets,” the letter read. It then referenced the titles of two distributed pamphlets, which read “The Urban Guerilla Concept: The Red Army Faction” and “Counter-Insurgency and the UCIntifada,” as well as a poster with Rosenbury’s image that read “For complicity in genocide.”

During the sit-in, the committee condemned the protesters in a post on X and reposted photos of pamphlets by the Hamas media office distributed during the sit-in.

The letter then stated that “the anti-Israel campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted an Instagram message: ‘PUPPET PRESIDENT ROSENBURY, are the Zionist donors pulling the strings? You’re committing genocide!’”

The letter acknowledged the NYPD arrests, stating that protesters “who refused the orders of police officers were arrested.”

The letter described Barnard’s obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, stating that post-secondary institutions that receive federal funds must maintain a safe learning environment and promptly address discrimination and harassment.

The letter concluded that Congress’ oversight power derives from Article I of the U.S. Constitution and has “been repeatedly affirmed by the United States Supreme Court.”

The letter comes the week after the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Barnard for discrimination involving shared ancestry, according to its “List of Open Title VI Shared Ancestry Investigations” webpage.

Under Title VI, students of any religion are protected from discrimination and harassment based on their actual or perceived shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics, or “citizenship or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity,” the OCR “Discrimination Based on Shared Ancestry or Ethnic Characteristics” web page reads.

The OCR has not provided further details on the investigation, including the type of discrimination for which Barnard is being investigated.