Barnard College, founded in 1889, is an independent college of liberal arts and sciences for women, located in the borough of Manhattan, in New York, New York, United States. Though affiliated with Columbia University, Barnard has its own campus, faculty, administration, trustees, operating budget, and endowment. The college has occupied its four acre (16,000 m²) Morningside Heights campus since 1898. This Manhattan neighborhood is at times referred to as the Academic Acropolis, because the Manhattan School of Music, Teachers College, Bank Street College of Education, Union Theological Seminary, and Jewish Theological Seminary are also situated here.

Barnard's original 1889 home was a rented brownstone at 343 Madison Avenue, where a faculty of six offered instruction to 14 students in the School of Arts. When in 1900, Barnard was incorporated into Columbia University’s educational system, it continued to be independently governed, while making available to its students the instruction, the library, and the degree of the university.

The College gets its name from Frederick A.P. Barnard (1809-89), an American educator and mathematician, who served as then-Columbia College's president from 1864 to 1889. Frederick Barnard advocated equal educational privileges for men and women (but preferably in a coeducational setting).

Barnard College was one of the Seven Sisters founded to provide an education for women comparable to that of the Ivy League schools, which (with the exception of Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania) only admitted men for undergraduate study into the 1960s. Barnard was the sister school of Columbia College, one of the undergraduate schools of Columbia University. Columbia College began admitting women in 1983 after a decade of failed negotiations with Barnard for a merger along the lines of Harvard College and Radcliffe College. Today, Barnard is one of five Seven Sisters that remain single-sex. It maintains financial independence from Columbia University.