“An extraordinary escalation”, decried the Chronicle of Higher Education – the US’s leading industry publication for universities – in reporting the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw $400 million in federal government funds from Columbia University.
But there is nothing “extraordinary” about it.
The government funds were ordered to be pulled after an investigation by the Department of Justice’s newly-created Task Force to Combat Antisemitism determined that Columbia has not sufficiently protected its Jewish students from discrimination. Under applicable US federal law, namely Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, universities that do not provide adequate civil rights protections are at risk of losing federal funds, theoretically in their entirety.
Finding that Columbia inadequately protected Jewish students will hardly have taken much detective work. Since Hamas’s Oct 7 2023, attack on Israel, a number of elite US universities, including Columbia, witnessed openly anti-Semitic protests that called for the destruction of Israel, the death of Jews, praise for Hamas and terrorism in general, and numerous incidents of verbal and physical harassment that would easily fall under any legal or administrative understanding of discriminatory conduct. The protests also included a range of related crimes that American institutions have the power to prevent and police themselves, as well as the ability to call in local, state, and federal authorities.
When invited to a Congressional hearing on the issue of campus anti-Semitism held in early December 2023, Columbia’s then-president Minouche Shafik gave it a miss, pleading a scheduling conflict. Three presidents of other elite institutions who did testify beclowned themselves with testimony in which they failed to state unequivocally that their institutions’ codes of conduct prohibited calling for the genocide of Jews.
Just four days later, University of Pennsylvania president M Elizabeth Magill was out the door. Within a month, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay followed her in disgrace, having reportedly lost her institution as much as $1 billion in charitable donations; she also faced large-scale accusations of plagiarism in her academic work.
Columbia appeared to learn no lessons, even as prominent alumni withdrew support, with one donor, the billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, pronouncing on national television that students “have s— for brains”. In the spring of 2024, renewed protests rocked Columbia’s campus, again including assaults and a violent building occupation by protesters.
“An extraordinary escalation”, decried the Chronicle of Higher Education – the US’s leading industry publication for universities – in reporting the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw $400 million in federal government funds from Columbia University.
But there is nothing “extraordinary” about it.
The government funds were ordered to be pulled after an investigation by the Department of Justice’s newly-created Task Force to Combat Antisemitism determined that Columbia has not sufficiently protected its Jewish students from discrimination. Under applicable US federal law, namely Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, universities that do not provide adequate civil rights protections are at risk of losing federal funds, theoretically in their entirety.
Finding that Columbia inadequately protected Jewish students will hardly have taken much detective work. Since Hamas’s Oct 7 2023, attack on Israel, a number of elite US universities, including Columbia, witnessed openly anti-Semitic protests that called for the destruction of Israel, the death of Jews, praise for Hamas and terrorism in general, and numerous incidents of verbal and physical harassment that would easily fall under any legal or administrative understanding of discriminatory conduct. The protests also included a range of related crimes that American institutions have the power to prevent and police themselves, as well as the ability to call in local, state, and federal authorities.
When invited to a Congressional hearing on the issue of campus anti-Semitism held in early December 2023, Columbia’s then-president Minouche Shafik gave it a miss, pleading a scheduling conflict. Three presidents of other elite institutions who did testify beclowned themselves with testimony in which they failed to state unequivocally that their institutions’ codes of conduct prohibited calling for the genocide of Jews.
Just four days later, University of Pennsylvania president M Elizabeth Magill was out the door. Within a month, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay followed her in disgrace, having reportedly lost her institution as much as $1 billion in charitable donations; she also faced large-scale accusations of plagiarism in her academic work.
Columbia appeared to learn no lessons, even as prominent alumni withdrew support, with one donor, the billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, pronouncing on national television that students “have s— for brains”. In the spring of 2024, renewed protests rocked Columbia’s campus, again including assaults and a violent building occupation by protesters.