Tuesday , March 25 2025

Columbia to comply with Trump admin’s demands

23-03-2025

NEW YORK: Columbia University agreed to some changes demanded by US President Donald Trump’s administration before it can negotiate to regain federal funding that was pulled this month over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.

The Ivy League university in New York City acquiesced to several demands in a 4,000-word message, opens new tab from its interim president released on Friday. It laid out plans to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint a new official with a broad remit to review departments that offer courses on the Middle East.

Columbia’s dramatic concessions to the government’s extraordinary demands, which stem from protests that convulsed the Manhattan campus over the Israel-Gaza war, immediately prompted criticism. The outcome could have broad ramifications as the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of similar action.

What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department, opens new tab was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the cancellation, called unconstitutional by legal and civil groups, of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.

Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over.

Columbia did not refer to receivership in Friday’s message. The university said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review leadership and to ensure programs are balanced at MESAAS, the Middle East Institute; the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and other departments with Middle East programs, along with Columbia’s satellite hubs in Tel Aviv and Amman. Professor Jonathan, a historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.

“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”

Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, called the Trump administration’s demands “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy that we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”

“It sets a terrible precedent,” Wolfson said. “I know every academic faculty member in this country is angry about Columbia University’s inability to stand up to a bully.”

In a campus-wide email, Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote that the her priorities were “to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”

Mohammad Hemeida, an undergraduate who chairs Columbia’s Student Governing Board, said the school should have sought more student and faculty input.

“It’s incredibly disappointing Columbia gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom, which they emphasized to us in almost daily emails,” he said.

The White House did not respond to Columbia’s memo on Friday. The Trump administration said its demands, laid out in a letter to Armstrong eight days ago. (Int’l News Desk)

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