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Barnard College of Columbia University

Undergraduate School

Mailing Address
3009 Broadway St
New York, New York 10027
Phone
(212) 854-5262
School Information
Founded in 1889, Barnard was the only college in New York City, and one of the few in the nation, where women could receive the same rigorous and challenging education available to men. The College was named after educator, mathematician, and 10th president of Columbia College Frederick A.P. Barnard, who argued unsuccessfully for the admission of women to Columbia University. The school’s founding, however, was largely due to the rallying efforts of Annie Nathan Meyer, a student and writer who was equally dissatisfied with Columbia’s stance and staunchly committed to the education of women. She joined forces with a small group of her peers to petition the University Trustees for an affiliated self-sustaining liberal arts women’s college, and in two years accomplished what she had set out to do.
General Information
The college has made a broad range of institutional commitments to the work of DEI for several generations. Keeping track of how Barnard progresses on institutional DEI commitments matters. DEI work at Barnard seeks to steward and track the commitments we make toward change and ensure the community is regularly informed about how we are progressing toward the ongoing goals that we set. Barnard’s mission is to rigorously educate and empower women, providing them with the ability to think, discern, and move effectively in the world—a world that is different from when the College was founded. Now more than ever, the success of that mission depends on a community made up of diverse perspectives born from different lived experiences. DEI works in partnership with faculty, staff and students in offices and programs across the college in an effort to increase awareness and deepen commitment to diversity and inclusion across the institution. Barnard College and Columbia University are located in Lenapehoking, the traditional territory of the Lenape people and a place of longstanding importance to Native peoples from the region and around the world. We give honor to the Indigenous people of this place--past, present and future--and recognize their displacement, dispossession and continued presence. (source: https://barnard.edu/diversity-equity-inclusion)

Actions Taken

Admissions Policies
  • As part of its "institutional commitment" to access and equity, Barnard has created a working group on affirmative action which is described as follows: "Collaboration between the Admissions Office, Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and the Office of General Counsel has been instrumental in strategically anticipating the Supreme Court’s limitation on race in college admissions while maintaining the enrollment of a diverse student cohort...Barnard is also poised to cultivate community awareness of the history  and prospective ramifications of the Court's ruling through the curriculum and special initiatives."
  • On June 29, 2023, Barnard's President issued a statement in response to the Supreme Court's rulings on affirmative action which reads in part as follows: "Barnard remains deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion even as we adapt to the new legal landscape created by this ruling...This ruling may be painful or discouraging for many in our community given our nation’s tortured history of race relations and the ways that equality remains elusive to this day...Today’s ruling presents an opportunity to think anew about what our foundational commitment to diversity and inclusion requires of us in a changed and more challenging environment."
Anti-Racism, Bias, and Diversity Training
  • Barnard provides students extensive opportunities in extracurricular social justice education, including the Social Justice Resource Room, the Social Justice residential hall, Equity in Action workshops, and others.
  • Barnard's Office of DEI facilitates workshops that "can cover topics such as implicit bias and microaggressions, disability justice, and LGBTQ+ affirming practices."
  • Barnard provides "diversity and professional development" in order to "provide a better education for our students and a richer intellectual environment for our faculty." 
Curriculum Changes and Requirements
  • Incoming freshmen are required to complete Barnard BLUE: The Barnard BLUE Series includes workshops, dialogues, and a summit around leadership development and social justice education. This series is aimed to engage students in intentional dialogues to explore their identities and what it means to foster inclusive communities. All incoming students are required to attend the Discover Barnard BLUE session during NSOP as an introduction to the series and to begin the conversation about what equitable and inclusive communities mean. Our Collective, workshops, and summit exist to further that conversation during a students times at Barnard. Discover Barnard BLUE The Barnard BLUE Series includes workshops, dialogues, and a summit around leadership development and social justice education. This series is aimed to engage students in intentional dialogues to explore their identities and what it means to foster inclusive communities. All incoming students are required to attend the Discover Barnard BLUE session during NSOP as an introduction to the series and to begin the conversation about what equitable and inclusive communities mean. Our Collective, workshops, and summit exist to further that conversation during a students times at Barnard. Every incoming student is required to attend this session during the New Student Orientation Program. Discover Barnard BLUE (DBB) replaced what was "Perspectives on Diversity" and serves as an interactive session to assist students in defining what is an equitable and inclusive community, and what there are hopes are for their time at Barnard. We specifically explore the many identities that all students bring to campus and discuss how these identities impact how we all uniquely contribute to and intersect with the larger Barnard community. Discover Barnard BLUE is facilitated by Student Life staff and NSOP Orientation Leaders.
  • Critical Inquiry Labs allow students to explore various subjects surrounding Critical Theory, including CRT.
  • On March 14, 2022, Barnard News reported that Barnard Alumnus Melissa E. Flores "helped Barnard’s Biology Department redesign its curriculum to ensure inclusivity for students from all backgrounds." One of the reasons for this redesign was to "ensure that current and new students of color have an easier time seeing themselves as scientists."
Program and Research Funding
  • Barnard offers Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Grants which are "dispersed to qualified proposals for initiatives that will help foster inclusion, belonging, and equity in the Barnard community." DEI Grants "carry a maximum award of $4000."
  • As part of Barnard's "Fund for Innovation in Teaching," the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Grant would "enable the design of courses and projects that address antiracism and structures of power, with an expectation of interdisciplinarity."
Re-Imagining Policing
  • Barnard has restructured its campus safety force: "The safety and well-being of our students, faculty, staff, and guests are of the utmost importance to Barnard. CARES represents a conceptual and organizational evolution at Barnard in order to promote community safety and well-being. The new structure includes Community Safety, focused on campus security concerns while incorporating new approaches to practice, breaks out a first response team, sensitive to the individual challenges and crises faced on a college campus, and enfolds the Nondiscrimination and Title IX office, ensuring equity and collaborating across these areas of expertise."
Resources
  • Pursuant to a 2017 Diversity Task Force report, Barnard has created a vast network of goals, including 2020-2021 Commitments such as becoming a member of the Liberal Arts College Racial Justice Equity Leadership Alliance, hiring an Executive Director for Community Engagement and Inclusion, Learning from Institutional History, and the like. There is much more detail available on the website.
  • The spring lecture series in 2021 included: "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages." Prof. Heng's lecture is sponsored by the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS) and Department of Women's Studies, Barnard College.
  • A joint effort by Africana Studies, American Studies and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS) is dedicated to creating a vibrant intellectual community across disciplinary boundaries and fostering the in-depth study of race and ethnicity at Barnard College. CCIS offers students and faculty the intellectual space to develop transformative frameworks for thinking through issues of ethnicity and race in both local and global contexts.
  • Barnard offers an "Antiracist Reading Group."
  • In March 2022, Jennifer Rosales was named Vice President for Inclusion and Engaged Learning, Chief Diversity Officer.
  • The Center for Engaged Pedagogy hosted its second annual community of practice on anti-racism in 2022.
  • The Barnard Biology Department has created an "Anti-Racism Working Group" which includes the following: "organizing and planning departmental events including the seminar series intended to highlight and uplift the voices of BIPOC STEM professionals; and generating action items to be considered in the areas of awareness, course pedagogy, major curriculum, research, and faculty hiring."
  • In October of 2023, Barnard's Center for Engaged Pedagogy began hosting its annual "community of practice on anti-racism" which focused on "reproductive justice, trans inclusion, and climate."
Symbolic Actions
  • The Biological Sciences Department issued a Black Lives Matter Statement which reads in part as follows: "We also acknowledge, however, that merely extending a statement of virtue signaling would be insufficient support. Police brutality is not an isolated instance of racism. Such injustice is perpetuated by years of systemic White supremacy, institutionalized oppression, and slavery rebranded as modern discrimination that has infected many aspects of our country. We are ashamed that higher education has not been immune from such racism. Now is the time for action and change."
Last updated February 29th, 2024
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