After 'Extraordinary Ultimatum,' Columbia Caves

Columbia University agreed Friday to put its Middle East studies department under new supervision and overhaul its rules for protests and student discipline, acquiescing to an extraordinary ultimatum by the Trump administration to implement those and other changes or risk losing billions of dollars in federal funding.

• Backstory: Earlier this month, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other funding over the university's handling of protests against Israel's military campaign in Gaza. As a precondition to restoring those funds—along with billions more in future grants—federal officials last week demanded the university immediately enact nine separate reforms to its academic and security policies.

• Details: In a letter published Friday, Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, indicated Columbia would implement nearly all of those reforms. As ordered, it will hire new public safety personnel and empower them to make arrests on campus, bar students from protesting in academic buildings, and revamp its long-standing process for student discipline. Students will also no longer be allowed to wear face masks on campus "for the purposes of concealing one's identity"; people wearing them for health or religious reasons may still do so.
• More changes: As part of the sweeping reforms, the university will adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand "intellectual diversity" by staffing up its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. The university will also appoint a new senior provost to review the leadership and curriculum of several international studies departments to "ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced"—a seeming concession to the Trump administration demand that the university put its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under "academic receivership for at least five years."
• Pushback: The announcement drew immediate condemnation from some faculty and free-speech groups, who accused the university of caving to President Trump's largely unprecedented intrusion upon the school's academic freedom, reports the AP. "Columbia's capitulation endangers academic freedom and campus expression nationwide," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
• More pushback: "Shaking under government pressure, Columbia crumbled," said Tyler Coward of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "If Columbia—with its immense resources and influence—can't stand up to government demands that threaten free speech, what are other colleges to do?"

More here. (More Columbia University stories.)