How the Yale Women’s Center Was Colonized by Pro-Hamas Radicalism

The center no longer supports women, at least if they’re Jewish.

T he Yale Women’s Center (YWC) has abandoned women. Instead of advocating for its namesake, the center has spent its time, funding, and resources advocating for Hamas. 

Even before the horrific events of October 7, 2023 — which spurred student activists across the nation to glamp in solidarity with the “freedom fighters” of Gaza — the YWC was riding the “Queers for Palestine” train. In the spring of 2023, the YWC hosted an “Art as Resistance” event, where participants could paint their own pro-Palestinian tote bags, a Yalies 4 Palestine “workshop group,” and plenty of other anti-Israel events geared towards “social justice.” 

After Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, the YWC’s pro-Palestinian advocacy only escalated. In December 2023, the Yale Women’s Center co-sponsored New York Times journalist Ameera Harouda to discuss the “Gaza genocide.” In March 2024, the YWC hosted an event that featured the student groups “Jews for Ceasefire,” “Endowment Justice Coalition,” and “Yale Bleeds” — each radically progressive and pro-Hamas. 

Around this time, senior undergraduate Kira Berman reached out to the center. Berman was acting in her capacity as president of Yale Friends of Israel, a group connected to the university’s Slifka Center for Jewish Life. Berman’s request was simple, she told National Review. She just wanted to meet with YWC student leaders and talk about ways that they could make Jewish women feel included.

However, the YWC never answered her email (or her direct message on Instagram, for that matter). Berman thought it might have been a mistake. But she learned soon enough that it was not. The YWC made “an active decision not to answer my email,” she says. “They didn’t want to work with us.” 

In the following weeks, after Berman’s request for a meeting was ignored, the Women’s Center announced that they were going to host a conference titled “Pinkwashing and Feminism(s) in Palestine” — a derogatory reference to Israel’s advocacy for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights as supposed means for masking its “colonization” of Gaza. The conference was to feature a litany of antisemitic speakers who advocated for “queer liberation” in the Palestinian territories and boycotts, divestment, sanctions against Israel.

So, why would a “Women’s Center” avidly support the cause of a radical Islamist terrorist organization that spits in the face of “women’s rights?” In short, the YWC has been successfully colonized — to use a word favored by the Left — by radical “wokeism.”

In 1970 — the year after Yale first admitted women — the Yale Women’s Center (YWC) was founded as a place for the limited number of women on campus to band together, host events, and blaze trails. According to an official Yale webpage, “the Center’s mission is to improve the lives of all women, especially at Yale and in New Haven.” (The “Learn more” link leads to a now-defunct website, yalewomenscenter.com.) 

When National Review reached out to the YWC for comment for this piece, the board offered a short reply:

The Women’s Center is a feminist undergraduate organization. All women, including Jewish women, are and have always been welcome in the Women’s Center.

However, according to the YWC’s Instagram — which now functions as the center’s website — its current mission has somewhat expanded: “In this moment and all moments, the Yale Women’s Center is committed to collective liberation, including the rights of women of color, queer and trans rights, and reproductive freedom.”

And what does commitment to “collective liberation” look like? Supporting the Middle East’s premier, liberal organization: Hamas. According to Articles 17 and 18 of the 1988 Hamas Covenant, the terrorist organization believes women exist to “make men,” “rear children,” and perform “housekeeping matters.” In 2021, the Hamas-run “Sharia Judicial Council” of Gaza declared that women cannot travel without the permission of a male guardian. And, of course, Hamas’s poor treatment of Gazan women is nothing compared to the unspeakable atrocities that Hamas committed against Israeli women on October 7. 

In short, the YWC has embraced Marxist radicalism as its banner — to the detriment of women on campus. How did a once pro-woman organization end up shilling for terrorists?

National Review spoke with Claire Barragan-Bates, a current senior at Yale College who observed firsthand the YWC’s leftward descent. Barragan-Bates served on the YWC board in her freshman and sophomore years but ultimately left exasperated with the institution’s Marxist direction. 

“I got involved with the Women’s Center when I first came to Yale,” Barragan-Bates said. “I was still very much a common-sense, moderate person politically. But I cared a lot about women’s rights and women’s issues, particularly being pro-choice, having access to birth control, and having spaces on campus for women to excel academically and in their careers.” Looking for a job on campus — and excited to work for an organization she believed in — Barragan-Bates joined the YWC board (a paid position).

“In my first year on the Women’s Center board, I really was just doing what I was told, learning about the process,” Barragan-Bates said. “I was the only freshman on the board, so my job was to do the social media and newsletter.” However, as senior members graduated and the group transitioned leadership, Barragan-Bates found herself heading the YWC board as a sophomore. 

In her position as “Board Coordinator,” Barragan-Bates encountered the political extremism of the center’s other student leaders. Although she was the head, all actions had to be passed by a majority vote of the board — and it was Barragan-Bates against the world. 

“The things that they were outvoting me on were absolutely insane propositions and beliefs that they had about the Women’s Center and its place on campus,” Barragan-Bates said. “They held that the center should be a Marxist space. And I challenged that. I asked, ‘What does that have to do with feminism?’ And in fact, I think that the Women’s Center was undermining feminism on campus.” 

Barragan-Bates wanted the YWC to support other women’s organizations on campus and to offer them unique YWC resources — a physical space and funding provided directly by the college. “I felt like the best way to have the Women’s Center create a bigger presence on campus was to partner with existing organizations — like student groups for women that have high memberships — and let them use the center’s space to host their meetings and events. But the rest of the board outvoted me,” Barragan-Bates said. 

However, the board insisted that “the Women’s Center is a Marxist organization, and we don’t want to partner with any organizations that are complicit in the evils of capitalism.” After a year of dealing with an admixture of incompetence and radical-leftist tyranny, Barragan-Bates decided she would not return to the YWC board as a junior. 

This would prove a prudent move, as Barragan-Bates was able to avoid all of the drama around the “Pinkwashing” conference. After all of the pro-Hamas content coming out of the YWC, the “Pinkwashing” conference was the last straw. The campus, the public, and even the Yale College Dean’s Office had had enough. The latter stepped in and threatened to revoke the YWC’s special college privileges if they continued on down its distinctly antisemitic path. 

On April 4 of this year, the YWC released a statement and rescinded its status as a “host” of the controversial event. Rather than acknowledge that it had strayed from its mission, the YWC board cried “oppression.” A student leader of the YWC at the time told the college newspaper: “As soon as the Center advertised the Pinkwashing Conference, the administration used tactics of intimidation to scare us into backing down, and it worked. The Women’s Center canceled the conference out of fear of retaliation and to protect our well-being and academic standing.”

While undergraduate support for Hamas is nothing new to National Review readers, this case is especially thorny because the Yale Women’s Center is an official Yale College organization. Unlike other student organizations on campus that operate as independent, volunteer organizations solely run by students, the YWC is directly funded by Yale and is granted its own physical space on campus. Members of the YWC board (all undergraduates) are paid hourly for their time by the university.  

Because of its special status, the YWC is subject to direct oversight by the Dean of Yale College. Crucially, a directive issued by the Dean’s Office this past September outlined the college’s expectations for the YWC. The directive states that “current expectations” include the following: 

• The YWC will maintain a space that is open and welcoming to all students at Yale, regardless of their personal characteristics or beliefs. 

• To ensure that all students feel welcome, the YWC and its board will maintain broad neutrality in its programming and actions, as do other campus resources. 

If these expectations are not met, the Center’s “set of special privileges . . . may be revoked.”

As Jewish students at Yale know full well, the center has not lived up to a policy of “broad neutrality,” even now. After the “Pinkwashing” debacle, the YWC took a hiatus of sorts. The center had its “grand reopening” last month. Its first guest? Abbas Alawieh — a former adviser to Rashida Tlaib, co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, and noted anti-Israel advocate. In other words, the YWC is back on its favorite hobby horse. 

National Review reached out to Dean Melanie Boyd’s office for comment and received this response: “Yale College expects all of its staff members, including student staff, to be welcoming of all members of the undergraduate community. Individual events need not be ‘neutral’; such a requirement would stifle the open exchange of ideas. Over time, and across the many activities of the College, students have many opportunities to hear and engage with a wide variety of viewpoints.”

Jewish women at Yale are not reassured.

Berman said, “I think it’s ridiculous that they’re claiming to be neutral, and do this — you can’t have it both ways.” Sahar Tartak, a 2024 graduate of Yale College — and former National Review intern — who was active in Jewish life on campus, offered her thoughts: “I find it absurd that an institution that calls itself the Women’s Center can’t see a problem with bringing guests who look at October 7 as something worth celebrating. I don’t see any world in which rape is worth celebrating, and the fact that that doesn’t apply to Jewish women for them is a stain on the institution. I hope they’ll improve in the future and return to their true and meaningful principles.”

While the Yale Women’s Center pays lip service to feminism, the organization remains devoted to anti-Israel advocacy.