Columbia academics protest as Trump officials hail the university’s concessions

NEW YORK - The Trump administration on March 24 welcomed

concessions by Columbia University

to tighten disciplinary procedures and assert more control over academic departments in response to charges of anti-semitism, saying the actions represent a “positive first step in the university maintaining a financial relationship with the United States government”.

Facing the loss of about US$400 million (S$535 million) in federal research funding

, Columbia has pledged that masked demonstrators must show identification when asked, that protests will generally not be allowed in academic buildings and that several dozen public security officers will be empowered to make arrests. The Trump administration’s statement on March 24 was its first extensive response to Columbia’s announcement about concessions three days earlier.

The changes are being made in response to Trump administration claims that anti-semitism, particularly as a part of

pro-Palestinian demonstrations

, has been insufficiently checked on campus.

“Columbia is demonstrating appropriate cooperation with the Trump administration’s requirements, and we look forward to a lasting resolution,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. She added that she had been communicating with Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong, during the past few weeks and that she appreciated “her leadership and commitment to advance truly meaningful reforms on campus”.

Still, the road to restoring funding is long. The Trump administration regards the actions Columbia has announced as a “pre-condition” to formal talks to restore cancelled federal grants and contracts, which largely affect scientific and medical research.

“Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign, but they must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end anti-semitism and protect all students and faculty on their campus through permanent and structural reform,” said Mr Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, which is part of the General Services Administration, one of the agencies calling for changes at Columbia.

Earlier on March 24, about 50 professors turned out in a steady drizzle outside the campus gates to protest the funding cuts and what they criticised as Columbia’s conciliatory response. The professors said they hoped to be the vanguard of a resistance movement among academics that remains, for now, at an early stage.

“We need to stand up, all of us,” said mathematics professor Michael Thaddeus at Columbia and vice-president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, speaking to the crowd. “We need to organise, from the grassroots to the national level. If we lead, our leaders will follow.”

The protesting professors included a biomedical researcher who spoke on behalf of colleagues who had been laid off because of the funding cuts and a professor who studies autocratic regimes and protest movements. They held up signs with slogans including “Protect Academic Freedom” and “Columbia Fight Back”.

“What is happening to Columbia now is what the erosion of democracy looks like,” said political science professor Virginia Page Fortna.

Calling on their knowledge of history and university governance, the professors said that the attacks against Columbia resembled steps commonly taken by authoritarian leaders. They said that Columbia’s concessions had weakened academic independence by consolidating power in the office of the university president.

“We’ve studied what’s happened to universities in authoritarianism,” said senior lecturer Anya Schiffrin, at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “We’ve seen what happened in Spain under Franco, in Turkey, in India and in Hungary. It’s a mistake to think it won’t happen here.”

The professors said they were particularly upset at the concessions that reduced faculty power, a concept that academics call “shared governance”. They said those changes would make it easier for the university to bend to political will.

The Columbia University Judicial Board, which federal officials have said was too slow and lenient in its punishment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, will now be overseen by the school’s administration, not by its University Senate, a 111-member deliberative body that includes faculty and staff members and students. The Columbia president will decide all appeals.

A new vice-provost will review curriculum and hiring processes for several university departments, including a Middle East Studies department that the Trump administration demanded be put into “academic receivership”.

Ms Samantha Slater, a Columbia spokesperson, said in a statement that the university “is fully committed to the steps we announced last week to continue to combat anti-semitism and all forms of discrimination and harassment. Our focus will always be on our core mission to teach, create, and advance knowledge while protecting free expression.”

The professors demonstrating on March 24, who said they were working on recruiting more people to the ranks of academic freedom activism, acknowledged that they could not operate at the speed of Mr Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and other Trump White House “shock and awe” tactics. But they said they wanted to try.

“Institutions respond more slowly, and that’s just the reality,” Prof Thaddeus said. “We are going to respond vigorously, just on a time frame of weeks or months, not days.” NYTIMES