According to HBO’s John Oliver, the Trump administration’s push to get anti-Semitism out of college campuses is just a ruse to exert control for its own sake. The Last Week Tonight host claimed on Sunday that Trump’s demands on Columbia University represented an “extreme degree of government intrusion” and that Columbia is now “the little birch university” for accepting them.
After explaining he doesn’t think Trump is sincere in his concerns over campus anti-Semitism, Oliver lamented, “And yet, that's how Trump is justifying his current assault on higher education. And it is worth looking at exactly what he's doing, because it's pretty grim. And let's start with one of his first major targets, Columbia. It was a prominent scene of protests over Gaza and at the beginning of March, it was notified by Trump's anti-Semitism Task Force—y'know, this guy's [Leo Terrell] team—that its grants were under review.”
Oliver continued mourning, “And while those sorts of Title VI investigations typically take months and sometimes years, just four days later, it announced its conclusions, and the administration, citing Columbia's 'Continued failure to end the persistent harassment of Jewish students,' canceled $400 million in contracts and grants. Just a week later, it sent Columbia a letter giving them seven days to comply with a new list of demands, which were extensive, including calling for the university to deliver a plan of comprehensive admissions reform and install new oversight of the university's Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department.”
Earlier, Oliver conceded that some of the demonstrators did engage in anti-Semitism, but instead of demanding accountability for the departments that “educate” such people, he complained, “It was an extreme degree of government intrusion, which is what made it so dispiriting when this happened.”
After a March clip of NBC reporter Tom Costello announcing, “Columbia has agreed to pretty much all of the president's demands,” Oliver reacted, “Yeah, they caved in about five seconds, officially solidifying Columbia's reputation as the little bitch university, rather than what it was known for before: being the place Timothée Chalamet went for five minutes before realizing he didn't need it.”
It is almost certain that the reason why Columbia folded wasn’t so much because they were a “little bitch” but because they were terrified about what civil rights investigators might find. Even if Oliver honestly thinks Trump doesn’t genuinely care about anti-Semitism, it still does not necessarily follow that Columbia did not or does not have an anti-Semitism problem.
Here is a transcript for the September 7 show:
HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
9/7/2025
11:37 PM ET
JOHN OLIVER: And yet, that's how Trump is justifying his current assault on higher education. And it is worth looking at exactly what he's doing, because it's pretty grim. And let's start with one of his first major targets, Columbia. It was a prominent scene of protests over Gaza and at the beginning of March, it was notified by Trump's anti-Semitism Task Force — y'know, this guy's team — that its grants were under review.
And while those sorts of Title VI investigations typically take months and sometimes years, just four days later, it announced its conclusions, and the administration, citing Columbia's ‘Continued failure to end the persistent harassment of Jewish students,’ canceled $400 million in contracts and grants. Just a week later, it sent Columbia a letter giving them seven days to comply with a new list of demands, which were extensive, including calling for the university to deliver a plan of comprehensive admissions reform and install new oversight of the university's Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department.
It was an extreme degree of government intrusion, which is what made it so dispiriting when this happened.
TOM COSTELLO: Just in the last few minutes, we are learning that Columbia University will give in to demands from the Trump Administration in order to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. It appears that in some way, shape, or form, Columbia has agreed to pretty much all of the president's demands.
OLIVER: Yeah, they caved in about five seconds, officially solidifying Columbia's reputation as the little bitch university, rather than what it was known for before: being the place Timothée Chalamet went for five minutes before realizing he didn't need it.
But here's the thing: That capitulation didn't put an end to it. Because the administration kept escalating further, freezing all of Columbia's remaining NIH funding, amounting to about $700 million in total. And even threatening Columbia's accreditation. And there's no guarantee the administration's going to stop making demands from Columbia, and why would they when they keep getting met.