Columbia University, faced with the loss of $400 million in federal grants and other monies, has caved and will comply with the Trump administration's requirements that the university tamp down on their riotous, antisemitic protestors. A mask ban will be enforced, and there will be "oversight" to prevent a recurrence of some of the recent encampments and riots.
Columbia University has caved to the demands of the Trump administration to restore $400 million in federal funding that was yanked over antisemitism on campus, according to a report Friday.
The Morningside Heights university — which had become the epicenter of violent anti-Israel protests — agreed to implement a mask ban and put new leadership in charge of reviewing curriculum for its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department and Center for Palestine Studies, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a memo to the administration.
The school will also empower 36 campus cops to arrest students.
The school’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, in a letter to the school Friday painted the submission as a progression toward making its campus a safer place for all students, but did not specifically mention its Jewish population.
One might argue that a "threat to one is a threat to all," but that seems a canard in this case. The protests, encampments, and, yes, riots - campus buildings were overrun and seized, and people assaulted - were all focused on Israel and the Jewish people. The rioters, including the majority who appear to be upper-class white kids, were wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and shouting about Gaza; that seems pretty antisemitic to most people.
The university did list the actions it intends to take:
In a four-page document released Friday, Columbia listed the specific steps it was — and already had — taken to rectify antisemitism on campus. The first bullet point mentioned suspending, expelling or temporarily revoking the degrees of the students who stormed Hamilton Hall.
It revealed it would cede to the White House’s call for a reorganization of discipline processes — but did not totally give in to other demands.
As of this writing, the Trump administration has not replied to Columbia's actions or the document described above.
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Suspensions, we suppose, are a step in the right direction, although it would be preferable to see all the malefactors expelled, not merely suspended, and were there any justice in the world, they would be unable to find themselves accepted at any American university. As for the revoking of degrees - why not make it permanent?
And, of course, all this raises the question, why did it take the threat of the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for Columbia University to finally act towards tamping down these antisemitic, Hamas-supporting nutcases? Why was every one of them not expelled the moment they first covered their faces and started shouting "From the river to the sea?"
The fact that they were not, that it did take the threat of the loss of this money for Columbia to act - well, that tells us a lot. There is still a lot of work to be done to fix America's system of higher education, not to mention replacing the people who are in charge of the institutions.
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