Columbia University Students Barge into Classroom to Protest Title IX Administrator

A group of Columbia University students interrupted a class session last week being taught by a Title IX administrator to protest her role in the alleged mishandling of a sexual assault case on campus.

Several students disrupted a class session being taught by Columbia administrator Suzanne Goldberg, who is also a Title IX administrator. According to Goldberg’s faculty profile, her career has focused on the advocacy of progressive ideals.

Professor Goldberg began her career at Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization focused on LGBT and HIV-related civil rights. There, she worked on immigration, employment discrimination, and family law matters as well as two cases that eventually became cornerstone gay rights victories at the U.S. Supreme Court – Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down Texas’s sodomy law, and Romer v. Evans, which overturned an anti-gay Colorado constitutional amendment.

Despite her history, student protesters barged into her classroom on Thursday to protest her role in what they allege was a mishandling of a sexual assault incident on campus.

“Professor Goldberg proudly refers to her experience as an LGBTQ rights lawyer while continuing to create a dangerous environment for students—including queer students—on this campus,” Columbia student Amelia Roskin-Frazee claimed when she entered the classroom, standing aside five students holding protest signs.

In 2012, Roskin-Frazee was named one of the Advocate‘s Forty Under 40 LGBT Activists for her writing, which often focuses on the topics of LGBT and sexual assault.

“You’re interrupting my class. This is a core function of the school. This is a disruption,” Goldberg responded. “What I’m telling you is that you can’t [inaudible] in the middle of my class.” She added that she’d be “glad to talk to” the students after class.

According to Campus Reform, Goldberg has been targeted in the past by students. Last year, students followed her to her taxi as well as to an administrative building to demand that the university divest their interests in fossil fuels.