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Columbia University faces one of the most consequential choices of its nearly three-century history this week. The Trump administration has given the school a deadline of tomorrow to make a series of concessions in exchange for keeping $400 million in federal funding. Columbia has not publicly signaled what it will do, but The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the university was close to yielding to the demands. That would be a disaster for Columbia, for American higher education, and for the United States.
In a letter earlier this month, the Trump administration sought to dictate how the university disciplines students involved in pro-Palestinian protests last year, structures its disciplinary processes, handles masking on campus, and runs its admissions. It also demands that the university begin the process of placing its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years,” a process where universities put departments that have failed to govern themselves under the supervision of some university official outside the department.
These demands are ostensibly about addressing anti-Semitism on Columbia’s campus. Anti-Semitism is a genuine problem at the school, but these are not genuine fixes. This is an attempt by the federal government to take control of an elite private university that it sees, correctly, as a bastion of liberalism. The gambit against the MESAAS department makes this especially clear; as a member of the American Association of University Professors’ academic-freedom committee told the Associated Press, “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.” These demands come as the Trump administration is also seeking to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the protests at Columbia last year and a legal permanent resident. The government has still not charged him with any crime.
In their defense, Columbia’s leaders are right to be worried about the threat of a funding cut. As my colleague Ian Bogost has explained, American higher education as we know it depends greatly on federal money. This is not a matter of charity: The nation benefits heavily from research and education. The $400 million ransom here comes on top of other cuts to federal funding for universities. Yet many experts don’t think that the government’s threats would stand up to legal challenge.
University leaders may also agree with some of the diagnoses the federal government has made about its admissions or disciplinary practices, but these are problems for the university to handle itself. (One bleak possibility right now is that administrators would rather let the federal government take the blame for changes they want to make than face backlash from students, donors, faculty, or alumni.)
Surrendering to Donald Trump, however, would be a serious error. The first impact would be on Columbia itself, which would be granting control to an administration that has been frank about its desire to knock universities down a few notches. Concession would probably provoke outrage from faculty and students, which could cause tumult, could harm the university’s reputation, and—crucially—is likely to only invite further attacks from the White House. It’s a death spiral waiting to happen.
Columbia should know this better than most schools. When House Republicans assailed it over the Gaza-war protests last year, President Minouche Shafik bent over backwards to answer their concerns. It satisfied no one. She lost the confidence of the university community and resigned in August. The ritual bloodletting did not appease the right, as the current pressure campaign shows, but rather emboldened it. The White House is already looking past Columbia to its next target, the University of Pennsylvania, and if these sorties are successful, other colleges will be next.
This is a consistent pattern when people and institutions seek accommodation from this president in order to protect themselves. There’s no such thing as an armistice with Trump; there’s only ever a temporary truce.
In 2016, the Republican Party as a whole opted to indulge Trump’s candidacy, on the premise that he couldn’t possibly win the nomination. When he did, leaders decided to work with him, on the premise that he was inexperienced and policy-ignorant and could be manipulated to serve their ends. Instead, he has conducted a full-scale takeover, remaking the GOP platform in his image, purging opponents, and turning the Republican National Committee into an arm of his business.
In that 2016 race, Chris Christie was the first rival candidate to endorse Trump and assist him. That won him a job leading the Trump transition—until he was unceremoniously fired, became the butt of cruel Trump jokes, and emerged as a prominent Trump critic, once it was too late.
Senator Mitch McConnell also chose to work with Trump and defend him, including some of his baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen. He seemed to believe that indulging Trump would help further his own priorities. McConnell did get scores of conservative judges appointed, but he also kept taking flak from Trump, and coddling the president helped foment the January 6 insurrection. After the riot, McConnell was furious but glad to be done with Trump. “I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” he told the reporter Jonathan Martin. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
But McConnell didn’t want to take the political pain of pushing his caucus to convict Trump after his impeachment. The result? Trump is back as president, and McConnell is casting lonely, symbolic anti-Trump votes as he prepares to leave the Senate. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy initially blasted Trump behind closed doors after January 6, but then quickly flew to Mar-a-Lago to make amends. Yet Trump did nothing to save McCarthy from an internal revolt, and he was deposed as speaker.
Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo ran or considered running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, but both eventually endorsed Trump. Haley practically begged to stump for him. Once elected, Trump promptly shut both out of his new administration and later yanked a security detail assigned to Pompeo because of death threats from Iran—stemming from Pompeo’s work as secretary of state under Trump. Many business executives lined up behind Trump in this election as well, hoping he’d be good for the economy. Instead, they’ve gotten gyrating markets and fears of a recession.
Foreign leaders have also tried to get on Trump’s good side. France’s Emmanuel Macron has been very effective at building a friendly relationship with the U.S. president as a way of fortifying his interests. As a reward for that effort, Trump has slapped large tariffs on Europe, threatened to bail on NATO, and turned his back on Ukraine, a major European priority. It’s no wonder that Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was willing to spar with Trump in the Oval Office. Stand up to Trump and he’ll punish you; act conciliatory and he’ll do it anyway.
Back in 2019, the journalist Andrew Sullivan warned against accommodating Trump. “We are appeasing an angry king,” he wrote. “And the usual result of appeasement is that the angry king banks every concession and, empowered and emboldened by his success, gets more aggressive and more power hungry.”
As it happens, Columbia was founded in 1754 as King’s College. An imprudent choice now could result in the school becoming the de facto fief of an aspiring angry king.
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Today’s News
- Donald Trump signed an executive order today that is set to dramatically shrink the Department of Education, but the department would still continue some functions, such as administering student loans, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
- Tens of thousands of articles on Pentagon websites were removed or flagged for removal to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to erase “diversity” content. According to CNN, which obtained a database showing which content has been or could be purged, these articles cover topics including Holocaust remembrance, Jackie Robinson’s military service, and breast-cancer awareness. The Pentagon has since restored some of the removed pages.
- A Georgetown University researcher on a student visa was detained by federal immigration authorities over alleged ties to a senior adviser to Hamas, which his lawyer denies.
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