Several Columbia University professors are protesting against changes to the university’s internal policy of bowing to the Trump administration’s various demands in order not to lose $400 million in federal funding.
On Monday, during what was the first day back from spring break, the American Association of University Professors held a vigil outside the university’s gates. Those in attendance said they dressed in black to mourn the loss of academic freedom: some of them, held signs that read “Hands off our students, faculty and researchers.”
“The business interests of the university are winning over student rights,” said Jed Holtz, with the Freedom Socialist Party. “They’re targeting immigrant student workers who are the most vulnerable.” Michael Thaddeus, professor of mathematics at Columbia and vice president of the American Association of University Professors added, “We can’t be sanctioned for the decisions that we make or for our academic speech”.
Over the past weekend, the university’s leadership agreed to accept the Trump administration’s demands, which included measures such as banning face masks on campus, giving security officers the power to remove or arrest people, and immediately overhauling programs such as the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
The courses in question will now be supervised by a new official, and no longer by the university’s faculty. “Scholars and students who are working in that area are going to be under a kind of special scrutiny that is not merited by anything that’s happened on this campus,” said Dhananjay Jagannathan, an assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia.
The federal administration had decided to freeze funding for the university over the events of last spring, when the campus was the scene of pro-Palestinian protests and has accused Columbia of failing to combat anti-Semitism. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of possible action for allegedly failing to comply with federal civil rights laws related to anti-Semitism.
For their part, after yesterday’s protests, Columbia’s top leadership told CBS: “We respect that there will be vigorous debate on campus about issues of academic freedom and protest, and we welcome that debate. Columbia is fully committed to the steps we announced last week to continue to combat antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and harassment.”
