With a long -awaited agreement between his government and Columbia University, Donald Trump, on the warpad against ‘left’ universities, achieved his first major victory this week at a renowned American institution.
The agreement, the details of which have now become known, stipulates that Columbia pays $ 200 million to the federal government, which has accused its university, insufficiently acting against anti -Semitism on campus. The university must also pay $ 21 million for a federal committee for equal treatment.
In exchange, the government will drop half a dozen legal complaints against the university and Columbia can again claim more than 400 million dollars of federal subsidies for, among other things, medical research that were frozen earlier this year. A supervisor must monitor compliance with the agreement by both parties in the coming three years.
The agreement stipulates numerous commitments that Columbia made earlier. The New York University, one of the most famous in the country, will be committed to alleged anti-Semitism on campus, maintaining stricter rules for student protests, screening the curriculum of the Middle Eastern studies and appoint staff members that are affiliated with Israeli and Jewish studies.
In order to prove that the university has renounced diversity policy, as the government has demanded, Columbia will also share data on the admission of students with the government. Admission may only take place on the basis of ‘merit’. The University will pass on data to the Ministry of Security about suspension, removal or arrest of students.
‘No capitulation’
According to Columbia, the agreements do not violate the ‘core values’ of the university. Columbia chairman Claire Shipman called the agreement “far from a capitulation.” The text states that the measures may not be explained as “control of the federal government about the hiring of staff, admitting students or about the content of academic education”.
Chairman of the Board of Columbia University called the agreement with the government “far from a capitulation.”
Critics of the agreement believe that it comes down to this in practice. They also fear that the attacks at university will not stop. Former director Lee Bollinger of Columbia spoke of “a tragedy for higher education and for the country”. Professor of Law David Pozen of the university called the agreement “a legal form of extortion”.
Some alumni, teachers and pro-Israeli student groups to Columbia in turn welcome the agreement, although some think it doesn’t go far enough. They see it as a correction on the ‘left’ course of the university and on the increased hostility to Israel and Jewish students.
For Columbia there was little else to do than to arrange, the board believes. The university cannot afford to live with the government, a crucial financier of research for years on a basis of war. The total federal support of 1.3 billion was at stake, according to board chairman Shipman. “We had to stop bleeding,” said another driver. Since freezing the federal funds, Columbia has had to dismiss nearly two hundred employees.
The agreement is a milestone in Trumps fight against American elite universities, which he accuses of anti-Semitism and left-wing indoctrination. Columbia was one of the universities where after 7 October 2023 large protests broke out against the war in Gaza. The university called the police to put an end to demonstrations and an occupation on campus.
Protesters not anonymous
After Trump took office early this year, the university still got the full layer. The government froze hundreds of millions of investigative money to put pressure on the institution. Columbia got to the knees to the dismay of other universities. Internally, the board kept full of Trumps requirements of the sharpest edges. There was not the required ban on face covering during demonstrations, but an identification obligation for protesters. Columbia also attracted dozens of enforcers with the authority to arrest students.
Pro-Palestinian student groups are furious about the agreement now reached and the new course of the university. Columbia recently announced that it was embracing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, controversial because it calls some criticism of Israel (as the country calls a “racist project”) anti-Semitic. According to the Pro-Palestinian student group CU Apartheid Divest, Columbia recently met sanctions-suspensions of one to three years-against eighty students who had been involved in Gaza protests.
According to activists, that fits in the ‘Project-Asther’ of the conservative Heritage Foundation, a plan to crush the Palestinian movement in the US, which, according to them, is put into practice by the Trump government. In the project (named after the Jewish heroine Esther from the Bible book of the same name), student protests apply to the war in Gaza as part of a “global Hamas support network”.
And what does Harvard do?
For the Trump government, the agreement offers a blueprint how other universities can be forced to join the wishes of the president. First of all, the prestigious Harvard, which received an even heavier package of requirements in April than Columbia and did not negotiate but went to court. As a retaliation, the government froze two billion in financing. The resistance of Harvard has led to a series of provisional statements in favor of the university, among other things about Trump’s desire to keep foreign students (Columbia says in the agreement to ask foreign students about their motives to come and study in the US).
A federal court will soon have to speak about stopping the two billion support to Harvard. A few weeks ago, the university resumed discussions with Washington and Trump announced that an agreement was close by. However, that did not happen. Whether Harvard can still conclude an agreement without making new concessions is the question. The Knieval of Columbia will in any case not reassure critics who fear curtailment of academic freedom in the US.