President Rosenbury announces Dean Grinage’s resignation, effective January 5

Dean Grinage’s resignation comes after her sabbatical during the Fall 2025 semester, along with controversial administrative decisions since Columbia’s 2024 “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

Photo by Haley Scull/The Barnard Bulletin

By Karissa Song and Kimberly Wing

December 24, 2025

On December 22, President Rosenbury announced in an email to the Barnard community that Leslie Grinage would be resigning from her role as Dean of the College and Vice President of Campus Life and Student Experience on January 5, following her semester-long sabbatical this fall.

Dean Grinage, who was appointed by former Barnard President Sian Beilock in 2019, oversaw the “complexities of instituting remote and hybrid learning” during the COVID-19 pandemic and “helped guide Barnard through moments of tragic loss, transition, and heightened tensions across higher education, consistently centering students and approaching her work with empathy and intentionality,” according to President Rosenbury’s email.

As Dean of the College and Vice President of Campus Life and Student Experience, Dean Grinage oversees various programs at the College, including Beyond Barnard, the Center for Accessibility Resources & Disability Services, and Access Barnard. 

President Rosenbury wrote that she is “deeply grateful for Dean Grinage’s many contributions to Barnard,” which include “[bolstering] professional development, and [instituting] thoughtful programming initiatives in service of student success.”

Amid rising campus tension during the Gaza war, Dean Grinage announced the formation of the Public Order and Protests (POP) Team, created to help “students better understand and interpret College policies, codes, and rules, specifically those related to activism” In this email, sent just before the start of the Fall 2024 semester, Grinage wrote that more information regarding the POP Team would be shared in “an upcoming Barnard 411,” which was ultimately never released. She also introduced the Barnard Ethics Reporting Hotline “to ensure that everyone has a voice.” 

“We all have a responsibility to take care of each other. This community cares about students and supporting students outside the classroom to thrive inside the classroom. That’s an important part of our work,” Dean Grinage told the Barnard Magazine in 2020.

Dean Grinage’s tenure was controversial among the Barnard community. In February 2024, she announced a ban on dorm door decorations, eliciting frustration from students. Dean Grinage also received significant backlash for her disciplinary responses to the Spring 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment, led by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), where she oversaw the suspensions and evictions of over 50 Barnard student protesters. 

In response, on April 22, 2024, over 100 Barnard and Columbia faculty members marched to Dean Grinage and President Rosenbury’s offices in Milbank Hall, led by members of the Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). On the same day, Barnard’s AAUP chapter also released a letter addressed to Grinage, demanding that the charges against student protesters be lifted and expunged from student records and calling for increased faculty participation in administrative and disciplinary decisions. 

“It is hard to believe that an institution tasked with the education and care of young people would intentionally endanger the safety of young students to punish them, let alone an institution like Barnard that prides itself on its communities of care,” wrote the AAUP.

On April 26, 2024, the College stated that it reached resolutions with “nearly all” suspended students and restored access to campus, including residence halls. 

During the Spring 2025 semester, CUAD organized two sit-ins, demanding that President Rosenbury and Dean Grinage reinstate three Barnard students who were expelled for pro-Palestinian activism on campus. Ultimately, neither Dean Grinage nor President Rosenbury met with protesters to discuss negotiations.

Following these events, alumni of Davidson College, Dean Grinage’s alma mater, demanded her removal from Davidson’s Board of Trustees for “[k]nowingly and deliberately siding with state actors at the expense of the safety and well-being of students at [Barnard].” Grinage, who joined the Davidson College Board of Trustees on January 1, 2025, is still an active member as of December 2025.

“Her presence on the Board of Trustees is an embarrassment and a detriment to the students, faculty, alumni and greater community of Davidson College,” the statement wrote.

Many Davidson community members, particularly international students, also expressed their concern for freedom of expression on campus given Grinage’s role in overseeing student disciplinary actions at Barnard.

In May, following CUAD’s demonstration in Butler Library, Dean Grinage reportedly emailed three student journalists — who reported on the demonstration for WKCR and the Columbia Daily Spectator — to inform them of their suspensions, eliciting student backlash. During Barnard’s 133rd Commencement ceremony, many graduates and audience members booed and jeered as Dean Grinage delivered her remarks to the Class of 2025.

At the start of the Fall 2024 semester, Dean Grinage introduced a committee to review the Student Code of Conduct, composed of students, staff, and faculty. A pilot for the revised Code of Conduct was released on November 13, 2025, intended to “govern all student conduct taking place from January 1, 2026 to August 31, 2026.” 

“Dean Leslie Grinage’s time at Barnard College is marked by overseeing the largest number of student disciplinary cases around student protest in the college’s history that have resulted in multi-year suspensions, and expulsions,” theater professor Shayoni Mitra wrote in a statement to The Bulletin.

According to Professor Mitra, Grinage's office "has insisted that conduct proceedings are academic in nature, and not criminal or civil cases by legal standards." Through this disciplinary process, students were required to write essays or submit infographics, but did not have the right to legal counsel, nor to review evidence files beforehand.

“No faculty member, that is the pedagogical and instructional arm of the college, was invited to weigh in on the academic components of the sanctions,” Professor Mitra added, “We really have to think about what we are signaling as an institution of higher learning when the office of student life disciplines en masse students engaged overwhelmingly in peaceful protest activity.”

Another faculty member who wishes to remain anonymous echoed these sentiments. “I had a lot of respect for Dean Grinage in the first years of her tenure, but the last two years have been a disaster,” the faculty member told The Bulletin. “In fairness, I think it has been and remains impossible for anyone to succeed in this job for two reasons. First, there is constant pressure coming from the outside to discipline students on account of their political beliefs, and this administration has proven unwilling or unable to resist that pressure. Second, the entire disciplinary process lacks legitimacy because this administration has completely demolished trust on campus.”

The faculty member continued, “Without community buy-in, discipline will fail. Meanwhile, the administration’s hollow statements that the disciplinary process is ‘educational’ just wind up sounding Orwellian.”

Vice Deans Nikki Youngblood Giles and Holly Tedder, who oversaw Dean Grinage’s responsibilities during her sabbatical, will serve as the College’s Interim Co-Deans until a new  Dean of the College is introduced. Rosenbury stated that more information would be shared “in the coming months” about the process to permanently fill the role.