Emma Biswas grew up in a life of luxury. She led the robotics team at the Harker School, which bills itself as one of the nation’s top college prep schools and where tuition can reach $65,000. While there, she interned with a biotech company that boasts, “Prospective Nobel Prize Winners Work Here.” And until she left for Barnard College, Biswas lived in a San Francisco Bay Area mansion worth about $5.8 million, according to a Redfin estimate.
Then she was arrested for storming a Columbia University library, along with 80 other radicals. The May 7 mob injured two security officials, damaged bookshelves, distributed pamphlets praising Hamas, and renamed the library after a terrorist. They were led by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a notorious anti-Semitic group that wants the Ivy League school to cut all ties with Israel, and chanted, “We want divestment now.”
By joining in those demands, Biswas was essentially taking aim at a source of her family’s wealth. Her father, Baribrata Biswas, has been a senior vice president with Synopsys for over 20 years, according to his LinkedIn page. The multibillion-dollar tech company has offices in Israel, which it calls a “hub for innovation,” and has supplied components to Elbit Systems, an Israel Defense Forces weapons maker that anti-Israel radicals have targeted.
Biswas was just one of the eight Barnard and Columbia students who attended swanky and prestigious private schools and were charged with criminal trespassing for their roles in the Butler Library storming, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
Another was Barnard student Luna Firefly Deerfield Cuming Shaw, the granddaughter of Mark Shaw, who describes himself as John F. Kennedy’s unofficial family photographer. He also snapped other celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Yves Saint Laurent, and Nazi lover and collaborator Coco Chanel, according to his website. Cuming Shaw’s grandmother, Pat Suzuki, is an actress best known for her role in the Broadway musical, Flower Drum Song.
Cuming Shaw attended the Putney School in Vermont, which charges day students $50,100 and boarding students $80,200. Despite the price, it advertises itself as a “progressive school” that considers inclusivity “a fundamental principle of the school.” It sports two committees dedicated to the cause, allowing it to remain “in the forefront of the drive for social justice.” Her mother, Juliet Cuming, is a longtime leftwing activist, Barnard alumna, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) supporter.
Before Marisol Rojas-Cheatham was arrested, the Columbia pre-law student grew up in a Berkeley, Calif., home valued at $1.8 million by Redfin and attended the Bentley School, where tuition can reach nearly $60,000 per year. According to her LinkedIn page, Rojas-Cheatham was the captain of the varsity women’s soccer team, played varsity lacrosse, and was president of the student government, to name a few of her extracurriculars on Bentley’s sprawling 12-acre Upper School campus. Her father, Primitivo Rojas-Cheatham, works at Kaiser Permanente as a training and development consultant and is trained in “somatics, trauma and social justice.”
Two other arrested Columbia undergrads attended prestigious private grade schools in New York City. Stefan Inderbitzin attended the Cathedral School, where tuition costs over $64,000. He later transferred to a public school, the Bronx High School of Science, which describes itself as “one of the most renowned & rigorous high schools in the country.” Vivien Sweet, meanwhile, attended Horace Mann, where tuition can reach $64,000. While at the prestigious prep school, she was a features writer for the Horace Mann Record.
Columbia graduate student Ava Ambrose Tomasula y Garcia also found herself in cuffs following her posh upbringing. Before earning her undergraduate degree from Yale University, Tomasula y Garcia attended Interlochen Center for the Arts, a private Michigan high school. She was likely a boarding school student—with tuition costing over $78,000—given that her home was about four hours away. Her parents, both distinguished professors emeriti at the University of Notre Dame, are accomplished in their fields: Her father, Steve Tomasula, is a novelist, and her mother, Maria Tomasula, is an artist.
Sophie Elizabeth Jones, meanwhile, spent 11 years living overseas at the American Community School, an Abu Dhabi school, where tuition can run as high as $27,000. As a high school student, she was honored with the Haitham Zamzam Al Hammadi Medal of International Friendship. Then Jones, who identifies as American with Indonesian and Canadian roots, joined Barnard’s class of 2027. She began frequently writing about Palestinian issues for Bwog, a Columbia student news website, and was ultimately arrested with the rest of the Butler Library mob.
The Free Beacon also reported that Barnard student Dima Aboukasm was an honored guest at Mayor Eric Adams’s “Abate Hate Summit” last July with Columbia student Eliana Goldin. Aboukasm, a graduate of the prestigious MacDuffie School in Massachusetts—where annual boarding tuition exceeds $75,000—resides in a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home valued at approximately $1.1 million, per public records. To earn a MacDuffie diploma, students must take English courses that offer an “examination of ethnic, racial, gender, and cultural diversity in both Western and non-Western texts.” At Barnard, she studies “the intersection of healthcare and social justice.”
Sweet could not be reached for comment. The other students did not respond to the Free Beacon’s inquiries.
