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“Columbia University agreed Friday to put its Middle East studies department under new supervision and overhaul its rules for protests and student discipline, acquiescing to an extraordinary ultimatum by the Trump administration to implement those and other changes or risk losing billions of dollars in federal funding. As part of the sweeping reforms, the university will also adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand ‘intellectual diversity’ by staffing up its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies…
“Earlier this month, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other funding over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza… [Columbia] will hire new public safety personnel and empower them to make arrests on campus, bar students from protesting in academic buildings and revamp its long-standing process for student discipline. Students will no longer be permitted to wear face masks on campus ‘for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.’…
“The university will also appoint a new senior provost to review the leadership and curriculum of several international studies departments to ‘ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced’… The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Columbia University of letting antisemitism go unchecked at protests against Israel.” AP News
Here’s our recent coverage of the cuts to Columbia. The Flip Side
The left is critical of Columbia’s decision, arguing that the administration is violating its free speech rights.
“When most Americans think about our great universities, they probably don’t think about the origins of lasers, FM radio or bar codes; they don’t think about the Google algorithm, the invention of the computer and the iPhone, cures for childhood leukemia, the Pap smear, scientific agriculture or the discovery of mRNA vaccines. They almost certainly don’t think about the CRISPR technology that may lead to cures of many genetic-based diseases…
“Yet all these discoveries and inventions — and tens of thousands more — have their origins at American public and private research universities. For over a half-century, these institutions have housed the best and most innovative sites of learning in the world… Today, the pre-eminence of the American research university is under severe attack from the federal government…
“If Columbia allows authoritarian-minded leaders to dictate what we can teach, then the federal government will dictate what we can read, what books we may have in our libraries, what art we can display, what problems scientists can explore. Then we are no longer a free university.”
Jonathan R. Cole, New York Times
“Let’s say Columbia had been found to have violated Title VI. The law says that the remedy, cutting off funds, must be ‘limited in its effect to the particular program, or part thereof, in which noncompliance has been so found.’ Instead, the Trump administration apparently planned to cut off funds affecting a broad swath of the university’s programs, including the medical school, which was far removed from the protests. Columbia had every reason to file suit, challenging the order. Instead, it conceded.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, Los Angeles Times
“It's especially important for strong institutions to stand up, to set an example and to insulate those who have fewer resources or are more vulnerable. Columbia has a huge – nearly $15bn – endowment. It could have withstood the withdrawal of federal funds… Some principles are so central to an institution’s purpose that to betray them should be unthinkable…
“And a university – which stands for academic freedom, for freedom of thought, speech and expression, including the right to peacefully protest – cannot buckle to demands to undermine those principles. Sadly, that’s what Columbia did, even going so far as to put an entire academic department under highly unusual supervision… This action stains a great university, which could have recovered from a financial threat but may not recover from this capitulation.”
Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian
The right applauds Columbia’s decision, arguing that the changes are necessary to ensure free speech rights for students.
The right applauds Columbia’s decision, arguing that the changes are necessary to ensure free speech rights for students.
“As a rule, practitioners of politics should not forge new weapons for use in the culture wars lest they are prepared to see them deployed against their creators. Yet, the reforms to which Columbia is now committed do not cut against the grain of American culture but with it…
“[Columbia] will establish and promulgate clear rules that govern protests and establish unambiguous frameworks that distinguish protected expression from campaigns of intimidation designed not to promote free speech but stifle it. It will adopt a form of ‘institutional neutrality’ modeled on the University of Chicago’s gold-standard approach to promoting academic curiosity…
“That paradigm encourages inquiry by prohibiting deans, presidents, provosts, department chairs, and the like from establishing dubious and controversial ‘official’ positions on hot-button issues of the day, intimidating dissenters and leading objectors to self-censor… Ensuring that the country’s campuses protect the rights of all their students is of vital importance, and this is a step in the right direction.”
Noah Rothman, National Review
“Many of the steps Columbia is now promising should have been made long ago in its own best interest. Restricting masks means rule-breakers have to take responsibility for their actions… The school will also incorporate into formal policy the definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s own Antisemitism Taskforce last year, which makes you wonder why it hasn’t already…
“Too many universities have become intellectual monocultures that refuse to allow alternative points of view. The public saw conservative speakers shouted down on campus, if they were invited at all. Leftist critical theory and anti-Western, anti-American views often dominate curricula. Then last spring the schools erupted into a display of antisemitism that presidents and trustees seemed unable or unwilling to control or discipline… Americans can’t be expected to hand a blank financial check to schools that promote values that are inimical to their own.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Honestly, the problem with the Trump administration is that it’s giving Columbia University the $400 million back in exchange for just a handful of basic concessions, like ‘adopt a formal definition of antisemitism’ and ‘hire an internal security force that will be empowered to make arrests.’ That’s a really low bar to clear. It’s time to require colleges and universities that get so much federal aid to cut the administrative bloat.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
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