Columbia University has agreed to cede to Donald Trump’s unprecedented demands in negotiations over $400 million in federal funding that the administration revoked earlier this month.
Columbia has agreed to “ban masks, empower 36 campus police officers with new powers to arrest students and appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies,” reports the Wall Street Journal. In addition to the nine Trump’s demands that the university had to meet before talks on restoring the $400 million in cuts could begin, the university has agreed to make additional efforts to encourage more intellectual diversity at the historically radical left school.
An unsigned memo issued by the school on Friday said, “We have worked hard to address the legitimate concerns raised both from within and without our Columbia community, including by our regulators, with respect to the discrimination, harassment, and antisemitic acts our Jewish community has faced in the wake of October 7, 2023.”
The Trump demand that has most radical-left schools quaking in their boots is the government meddling in the academic governance of Columbia. “Receivership” is a word suggested by the administration, but even though Columbia refused to describe the changes that way, the school has placed those academic departments in what is generally considered receivership.
The Center for Palestinian Studies has been a hotbed of antisemitism, with several Palestinian professors celebrating the October 7 attacks that killed 1200 people. It will now be overseen by a provost who will enforce several new rules, including redefining the term “antisemitism.” The new definition will include excluding Jews based on their attitudes toward Israel and celebrating violence against Israelis or Jews.
The receivership clause was perhaps the most unusual — and controversial — of the listed demands. According to the memo, Columbia will appoint a vice provost to review the department’s curriculum, nontenure faculty hiring, and leadership “to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced.” The school, however, refrained from describing the agreement as a “receivership.”
The last time a receivership was invoked at Columbia was in 2002 when the English department was embroiled in a fight that “pitted feminists and multiculturalists against traditionalists,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The university implanted a classics professor as the department’s chair, and after three years, the department “picked up and carried on quite well.”
Columbia’s Middle Eastern Studies department has long fielded accusations of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. Such was documented in the 2004 film “Columbia Unbecoming” which raised the curtain on the mistreatment of Jewish students by mostly Arab and Muslim professors who taught — and continue to teach — in the aforementioned department.
Columbia will go beyond the demands made by the administration, including a pledge not to take political positions on controversial issues, and developing programs for their hub in Tel Aviv.
One of the most significant steps announced by the school is the promise to expand “intellectual diversity” at Columbia.
Further, the school will expand “intellectual diversity” among faculty by appointing new faculty members with joint positions in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the departments of Economics, Political Science, and School for International and Public Affairs. “These faculty members will contribute to a robust and intellectually diverse academic environment, reinforcing the University’s commitment to excellence and fairness in Middle East studies,” the university states.
The power to pressure universities to crack down on dissent that disrupts classes or takes over campus buildings has always been there. The power to deal with antisemitism in schools that ignore or even encourage it has always been there. The power to bring to heel the radical leftists who hide behind a grossly exaggerated definition of “academic freedom” has always been there.
Trump has decided to use that power. Radicals being radicals, they will not take this lying down. There will be protests at Columbia, and schools across the country, already brought to a hysterical fever pitch by the media and Democrats, may also explode into violence.
This would work in Trump’s favor, as it did for Richard Nixon in the 1970s. The cost would be high, but given the reality on the ground at universities, it may be unavoidable.
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