A Bomb Threat Targeted Student Protesters. So Why Did They Get Blamed for It?

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, [email protected], 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 bomb squad could assess the threat. She added that the school had asked police not to arrest protesters. An NYPD spokesperson told The Intercept that it dispatched its Emergency Services and K-9 units. The spokesperson did not respond to a question clarifying whether the NYPD Bomb Squad, a separate unit, had also been dispatched. 

Later that night, the college addressed the bomb threat in an email to the broader school community. Rosenbury said the bomb threat was no longer a danger and went on to describe the “disturbing and unacceptable events” that took place in Milstein prior to the threat. She said staff tried to get protesters to leave the building throughout the afternoon and that the “unauthorized protest” had disrupted classes and studies. She blamed protesters for putting the entire school community at risk by not following evacuation orders after the threat was received.

“Our staff, at risk to their own personal safety, remained in the Milstein lobby, urging the masked disruptors to take the threat seriously,” Rosebury wrote. “Even when the College activated the fire alarm, the masked protesters put our entire campus at risk by refusing to leave.” 

At the time of the incident, school administrators and the New York Police Department gave no indication that the threat had been made against pro-Palestine protesters. That information was not shared by school administrators or police with the broader school community or the public. 

“We heard news of a bomb threat and the lobby was evacuated very quickly thereafter but I do not recall being told the bomb threat was made toward those in the sit-in,” said Barnard theatre professor Shayoni Mitra.

Various reports have introduced differing timelines of police response — and different reasons the NYPD was called to the scene.

The day after the protest, an NYPD spokesperson told the Columbia Spectator that police had responded to the protest around 1:50 p.m. to an “unscheduled demonstration,” and said it had no information about a bomb threat.

Three days later, another NYPD spokesperson told the Spectator something else: that police had indeed responded to the protest because of the bomb threat. The spokesperson also said that students who were arrested on charges including governmental obstruction and trespass were taken into custody during the police evacuation in response to the threat. Barnard told the Spectator that it called police in response to the threat, not because the demonstration was unauthorized. 

Mitra said she taught a class on the first floor of the building that houses the library on the day of the sit-in and heard three shelter-in-place orders announced over the public address system between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. A photo shared with The Intercept shows a handful of police officers standing on the street outside Milstein at 3:25 p.m. — 36 minutes before the bomb threat email reviewed by The Intercept arrived in the school president’s inbox.

A later message from Rosenbury mentioned threats “via multiple email messages on March 5, 2025” — further muddying the timeline as to when police were first called to campus and why.

“Barnard lied when it said it called the police because of the bomb threat — timestamps show the threat came after the call.”

“Barnard lied when it said it called the police because of the bomb threat — timestamps show the threat came after the call,” said attorney Remy Green, partner at the law firm Cohen&Green and counsel for several students at Barnard. “Rather than address and protect its students from a violent, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic person who threatened to murder them, Barnard saw an opportunity to deceive the public into thinking the students were connected to the threat. By doing this, Barnard has made this campus less safe and less free.” 

According to three people who were in the library when police arrived, dozens of NYPD officers from the Strategic Response Group — a specialized team often deployed to protests — entered the library shortly after 4 p.m. An NYPD spokesperson later told the Columbia Spectator that police responded at 4:22 p.m.

The NYPD did not respond to The Intercept’s questions asking the department to clarify what time police first responded on campus that day. 

Sources who spoke to The Intercept said that the NYPD kettled some protesters on the lawn outside the building. Photos reviewed by The Intercept show students who were arrested in zip-ties lined up against the outer wall of the building. Police then escorted the people they arrested through the building that was the target of an active bomb threat. 

“They took the students that they had arrested and put them up first up against the building that was ostensibly about to explode,” said Abu El-Haj after reviewing footage and photos taken by students.

Some members of the faculty learned that the threat was directed at student protesters the next day at a faculty meeting. According to sources with knowledge of the meeting, faculty members read aloud the text of the bomb threat to colleagues, shared with a few professors internally by an administrator.

In a joint statement released following the meeting, Barnard and Columbia faculty condemned the arrests of students and blamed them on Rosenbury, as the school had summoned police to campus. They called for an independent investigation into the incident and the school’s response to another sit-in at Barnard’s Milbank Hall on February 26. 

Students themselves are now being interrogated about the threat. Barnard’s head of public safety — ex-NYPD officer Gary Maroni — is questioning student protesters about that threat in mandatory fact-finding meetings, according to emails reviewed by The Intercept and accounts from faculty and attorneys working with pro-Palestine students on campus. Faculty worry that these interrogations — which students were originally told they had to attend without any witnesses or legal representation — could be turned over to Congress. 

“I have deep concerns about students walking into those meetings without lawyers because of the way that Barnard is in the midst of a discovery process with Congress, as I understand it,” said Abu El-Haj. “I am worried about either congressional subpoenas, or if there’s any attempt on the part of the criminal justice system to bring any kind of criminal cases against students, that those records might be subpoenable.”

Barnard is one of several schools that put in place new disciplinary processes and campus speech policies as part of efforts to curb speech on campus since the height of Gaza protest encampments. 

In an email to faculty last month, Rosenbury outlined some of those changes, including new rules governing the “time, place, and manner” of events and demonstrations. She said the school would make “every effort” to deescalate disruptions internally. But if they persisted and prevented members of the school community from learning, studying, or working, administrators would “continue to rely on the NYPD when specialized skills are required, as was the case when the College received bomb threats.” 

Rosenbury wrote in the email that the school had paused disciplinary actions related to activities that occurred after February 26 while enacting new disciplinary policies in response to the war on Gaza. (All student conduct processes for incidents prior to February 26, the date of another campus demonstration, had been completed by late March.) Rosenbury said, however, that fact-finding related to disciplinary investigations would continue. Part of the process, she wrote, could be an “inquiry meeting” that would not include witnesses or legal representation. Faculty managed to push back on this stipulation and attended some of the meetings. If charges were recommended after inquiry, Rosenbury wrote, she would consult with administrators about whether the school was close enough to adopting its new policies to hear new cases. 

At least 27 students have been called into such inquiry meetings for protests last month. One student was called into a conduct meeting for two actions: a Jews Say No to ICE protest last month, and another action earlier this month. They are being charged with disruptive behavior, failure to comply, failure to maintain public order, and obstruction of access. 

It’s not clear what if any information from the inquiry meetings the school plans to share with congressional officials. Either way, protesters must reckon with potentially life-altering charges from the school, said Abu El-Haj. 

“Outside of the context of whether this gets subpoenaed anywhere or goes to Congress, students are facing quite serious consequences,” she said. “Expulsion and or suspension can carry significant financial consequences for students.” 

Barnard College was dropped last month from the lawsuit over the government’s efforts to access disciplinary records for student protesters, including those of recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last month blocking Columbia and Barnard from turning over information to Congress; Barnard is not currently subject to the order after being dropped from the suit. Earlier this month, the judge ruled that Columbia must give Khalil and other students 30 days notice before turning over additional information to Congress.

At least 50 faculty members sent a letter to Barnard administrators on Thursday asking for an update on the new deadline and what information the school plans to share with Congress. Faculty who spoke to The Intercept said they have not yet received answers from the school. In a meeting on April 7, Rosenbury told faculty that the school had received an extension on its deadline to turn over information to Congress but did not specify the new deadline.

The Trump administration has used the president’s executive order on antisemitism to attack, abduct, and deport student protesters that Trump and his Republican colleagues have repeatedly, with no evidence, conflated with terrorists.

Correction: April 24, 2025, 9:40 p.m. ET
Due to an editing error, this story has been corrected to reflect that Gary Maroni is the head of public safety at Barnard College, not Columbia University. And Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury told faculty about a moved deadline for turning over information to Congress was April 7, not April 11.

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