The school will ban masks at protests, empower campus police, and implement other reforms to unlock ‘long-term’ negotiations with federal regulators
Columbia University ceded to the Trump administration’s demands in the opening stages of its efforts to restore more than $430 million in federal funds, the Ivy League institution announced Friday afternoon.
Columbia agreed to ban masks, empower 36 campus safety officers to arrest students, and appoint a “senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies,” the school outlined in a memo to administrators first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong addressed the move in a letter titled, Sharing Progress on Our Priorities. She called it “a privilege to share our progress and plans.”
“Our response to the government agencies outlines the substantive work we’ve been doing over the last academic year to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus,” she wrote. “In the spirit of great American universities, we expect Columbians to engage in robust debate and discussion about our way forward, and we welcome it as an opportunity to shape the future of Columbia.”
While the policy changes put Columbia one step closer to restoring its fiscal relationship with the federal government, the road remains long. The administration issued its demands as “preconditions” for “long-term” negotiations, and Leo Terrell, who heads the Trump administration’s task force to combat anti-Semitism, has said Columbia is “not even close” to getting funds back.
“They’re not even close, not even close to having those funds unfrozen,” Terrell said during a Thursday night interview. “There is no closeness of getting that $400 million back.”
“Columbia has to make sure that Jewish American students on their campus are not prevented from going to school,” he added. “They are to be treated like every American in this country, that they be allowed to go to school and get their money’s worth when they go to a school like Columbia.”
Of all the policy changes, those impacting the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies are perhaps the most contentious within Columbia. Putting a department in receivership is a rare move that has caused concern among faculty, who say Columbia is permitting the federal government to influence its curriculum. The department’s new provost will “conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting immediately with the Middle East.” Among the programs being reviewed are the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. The provost’s priorities include ensuring these offerings are “comprehensive and balanced” and vetting the “hiring of non-tenured faculty.”
The current Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies chair, Gil Hochberg, has accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “his gangsters” of being “children killers” and “psychopathic monsters,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Hochberg has also expressed admiration for former Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, who blamed Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli “settler colonialism” and “apartheid.”
The mask ban, along with other policy changes beefing up disciplinary actions over illegal protests, also comes as a crucial blow to Columbia’s anti-Semitic groups. Agitators often used face coverings to conceal their identity while engaging in anti-Semitic or illegal actions, such as the storming of Hamilton Hall last spring. Participants in the storming as well as the illegal encampments dodged discipline until recently, after the Trump administration began cracking down on campus anti-Semitism.
The university agreed to incorporate a definition of anti-Semitism that Columbia’s own anti-Semitism task force recommended in August. Under that definition, anti-Semitism will encompass “prejudice, discrimination, hate or violence directed at Jews, including Jewish Israelis.” It will also include “targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them; exclusion or discrimination based on Jewish identity or ancestry or real or perceived ties to Israel; and certain double standards applied to Israel.”
Columbia also announced a candidate search to expand “intellectual diversity among faculty.” And despite pressure from anti-Semitic student groups to end Columbia’s ties to Israel, the university touted its upcoming launch of the Columbia Tel Aviv Global Hub.
The administration first sent Columbia a letter on March 13 spelling out the “immediate next steps that we regard as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.” It set a March 20 deadline to comply. The administration then granted Columbia a one-day extension until close of business on Friday after the school “requested two additional days” to respond.
The letter came shortly after the administration canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, an institution grappling with anti-Semitism scandals in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. It slashed another $30 million in grants late last week, the Free Beacon reported.
The Trump administration’s demands have pit professors at Columbia’s left-wing journalism school against each other, according to Breaker. At internal meetings discussing the demands, one professor, Nina Berman, alleged that her colleagues had engaged in “doxxing,” while another, former journalism school dean Nick Lemann, physically collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.
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