Great University yields for Trump: Gaza protest will be tackled harder

The first and perhaps biggest Dominosteen in Donald Trumps fight against the American top universities has fallen. The prestigious Columbia University in New York yields for the demands of the president to tackle demonstrations against the Gaza war on campus harder and to place education across the Middle East under supervision.

With the Knieval, the university hopes to remain assured of federal subsidy. This month Trump threatened to withdraw 400 million dollars of government support if Columbia would not take measures against anti -Semitism that, according to him and other Republicans, has increased hand at universities.

Progressive academics and organizations for civil rights are shocked that the New York University gives itself won so quickly and did not challenge the sanctions in court. Some speak of extortion and the grossest infringement of academic freedom since the communist hunt of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

The university board announced on Friday that it would take a series of measures to meet Trump. Face cover is limited on campus, except for religious or medical reasons. Everyone should be able to identify if it is requested. A newly formed team of 36 enforcers can arrest and remove protesters. Rules for sanctions against students and action groups are being tightened.

‘Balance’

Columbia will also examine the curriculum and personnel policy. A new top officer to be appointed will be the first to explain the Middle East Department on ‘Balance’ ‘. The’ intellectual diversity ‘of the staff must also be increased. The university embraces a new definition of anti-Semitism that also’ exclusion based on real or alleged ties with Israëlit. To the outside, the university will maintain “institutional neutrality” in political controversies.

The steps of Columbia have aroused great turmoil in the academic world, which vibrates on the foundations by Trumps attacks on gender studies and other ‘Woke’ disciplines, diversity policy and pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The democratic political commentator and former minister Robert Reich speaks of “extortion” and calls the concessions of Columbia a “shame” that “opens the way to tyranny.”

On the right, the new course of the university with consent and even cheers is greeted. “Columbia gives up,” said the education committee of the House of Representatives dominated by Republicans. The conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a pacemaker of the offensive against ‘left’ universities, called this ‘only the beginning’.

A spokesperson for a pro-Zionist Jewish student group to Columbia, which has numerous student groups, finds the measures, a “victory for the safety of Jewish students”.

Columbia, a progressive attitude with a long tradition of student protest, has been the target of Trump for some time. At the beginning of March, the task force against anti -Semitism of his government announced that millions of subsidies would be suspended because the university did too little to protect Jewish students. For more than half, 250 million dollars, that amount, consists of research money from the US National Health Institute NIH.

Many American universities, including private as Columbia, also depend on federal donations and research contracts.

A day later, the arrest – despite his valid residence permit – followed by the Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, a leading of the protests against the war in Gaza. After that, the University received Trumps package requirements, including a ban on face covering in protests, stricter police action and revision of the curriculum.

Real estate

Trump has not yet responded to Columbia’s measures and possible resumption of the federal subsidy. A similar study is on dozens of other universities. The University of Pennsylvania – where Trump himself studied – a sanction of 175 million awaits because Transvrouw Lia Thomas was allowed to participate in the swimming competition for women as a student as a student. The chairman of the board stepped down at the end of 2023 after a venomous interrogation by the education committee of the House of Representatives on Pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

It is not the first time that the born Newyorker Trump clumps with Columbia. During his heyday as a real estate magician at Manhattan, he collided with the board about land that he wanted to sell the expanding university around 2000. According to a reconstruction of The New York Times Trump fell furiously out of the discussions, because the university offered him too little. Later he called the chairman of the board “worthless” and “a stupid head.”

Diversity policy

The turning of Columbia is not the only recent success of Trump in his offensive against ‘Woke’ institutions and companies. The law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which played a role in business against Trump and the stormers of the Capitol in 2021, promised to abolish diversity policy under heavy pressure and to do free legal work for the White House worth 40 million dollars. Trump had withdrawn subsidies to the company by decree and limited access for lawyers.

New channel ABC also arranged with Trump at the end of last year, after the president had threatened the journalistic organization with a complaint for defamation. The channel apologized and donated 15 million dollars to the construction of the future Presidential Library of Trump.

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