Barnard College professor expresses support for anti-Israel activists who attacked and hospitalized school worker

A professor from Barnard College, a Columbia University affiliate in New York, showed solidarity with students at the school who stormed a campus building and assaulted a school worker. 

The students forcibly occupied Milbank Hall on Wednesday, calling on Barnard College’s leadership to reverse the expulsion of two activists who had previously interrupted a class on Israel as part of a protest against the Jewish state. 

The professor in question, Jackie Orr, is an adjunct professor at Barnard College’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. 

An X video posted by the group Jews Fight Back shows a Jewish student talking to Orr. 

Ever wonder why the students are unhinged antisemites? Look no further.

This faculty member was asked by a Jewish student if she supports the physical assault of a security guard and her response was: “What I support isn’t the question. It’s whether you support a genocide.” 🤔 pic.twitter.com/Mvhwh4ZDPS

— Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JewsFightBack) February 27, 2025

“Ma’am, there was a report of an assault of a public safety officer earlier. Are you in support of that?” the student asked. Orr responded: “Who are you in support of?”

The student replied: “I’m in support of the students who want to go to class in this institution, like most normal people in colleges. I’m curious, do you support this assault of a public safety officer?”

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Orr repeatedly refused to answer the question directly. 

Instead, she told the student: “You know, the framing of your question, and the people all around here, and your little social media, are part of the f***ing problem. So, what I support really isn’t a question. It’s whether you support a genocide, whether you support an administration that expels students with obscure, occulted, unaccountable forms.”

She continued, stating her support for the student activists: “Those students in there are taking risks.”

When asked again if she directly supported the assault on the Barnard College worker, she responded: “Dude, that is not the frame of the question. Do you know what’s going on in this country in terms of political repression? Do you know who’s being harmed and injured?”

“Dude, go home, go to bed, sweet normal dreams,” she concluded. 

Jews Fight Back wrote about Orr: “When she was a professor at Syracuse, Jewish students sought her dismissal for praising Leila Khaled—a Palestinian TERRORIST AIRPLANE HIJACKER—in CLASS.” 

Her work focuses on “the fields of cultural politics, contemporary theory, and critical technoscience studies,” and the “performance and textual/visual collage as alternative methods for re-making public memory and insurgent knowledges.”

Her curriculum vitae also lists her interests as “Cultural politics & performance; Technoscience & media studies; Contemporary theory; Critical body studies; Militarization and securitization; Trauma studies; Arts-based research practice.”

[RELATED: 33 percent of Jewish students claim professors have contributed to rise of anti-Semitism on campus, new report finds]

In a 2012-2013 photo essay published for The Scholar and Feminist Online, she wrote: “Today, the anticipation of disaster operates politically to govern time itself—repeatedly activating imagined futures in the present moment of their intensified foreclosure.”

In the fall semester of 2024, Orr taught a course at Barnard College on “Feminist Media Praxis,” a course that “learns from diverse feminist political expressions” and “interrogates feminist histories.”

Orr is also listed as an Associate Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University, though her profile is no longer active. 

Campus Reform has reached out to Orr and Barnard College for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.