The personal cellphones of dozens of current and former Barnard College employees pinged Monday evening with a text message that looked, at first, like a scam.
The text said it was from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, part of a review of the employment practices of Barnard. A link led to a survey that asked respondents if they were Jewish or Israeli, and if they had been subjected to harassment.
After faculty members asked Barnard administrators about the text, the college confirmed to them on Wednesday that the messages were authentic — part of a federal investigation into discrimination against Jewish employees that started last summer.
Serena Longley, Barnard’s general counsel, acknowledged in an email to the faculty members that Barnard had provided the commission with the personal contact information of staff members to give them the opportunity to participate. “Participation in the survey is voluntary,” she wrote.
The texts, which faculty members said appeared to have gone to nearly all Barnard staff members, appear to be part of an aggressive new tactic by the Trump administration to collect reports of alleged antisemitism at Barnard, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University that has come under heavy criticism for pro-Palestinian demonstrations on its campus.
The Trump administration has been taking on elite universities over what it says is a systemic problem with antisemitism, but critics of the administration say the confrontation actually represents a broader attack on academic and institutional freedom. The administration has withheld more than $400 million in federal research funding from Columbia until it does more to fight antisemitism, and immigration authorities arrested several pro-Palestinian demonstrators in an attempt to deport them.