Columbia University Caves In to Get Its Government funds

The fine print in a letter to Columbia students and faculty makes clear between the line how and where they surrendered to the Trumpian and Republican assault..

The Columbia student. protest encampment against Israel’s war on Gaza was a peaceful affiar, with th=entts on rhe lawn but not sidewalks through the main quad of the urban Ivy League school in New York City. Education was not disrupted until the then president of the unicversity called in the NYPS to roust the demonstrators, destroy their tents and arrest leaders and those resisting the polixe action. Far from being anti-semitic, manhy of the encampment protesters were themselves Jewishl. (screen grab from a CNN. news report.)

In her long letter explaining the agreement reached between the Trump administration and Columbia, acting University President Claire Shipman focuses on how most of the university’s $400 million in blocked federal grants will be restored, and how other unspecified federal funding totaling $1.3 billion will be unfrozen, but insists, “The agreement preserves Columbia’s autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making.”

However, that seems like a hope or a misstatement on her part, given a couple of important conditions she agreed to which her letter glosses over way too quickly.

Firstly she admits that the University “reached an agreement to resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws,” and as part of that settlement will pay $200 million over three years to the federal government, as well as another $21 million to "settle investigations brought by the US Equal Opportunity (sic) Commission. Any “agreement reached that came with that high a penalty was clearly a very high-pressure deal, and we can safely assume there were lots more hard pills to swallow in the fine print.

President Shipman insists that the university, as part of that settlement agreement, “has not admitted wrongdoing and does not agree with the government’s conclusion that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” Big deql. That statement of course is literally a of any corporation adopted by almost every corporation that opts for a settlement with the federal or a state government in order to cut its financial losses and legal costs. It’s what Boeing did, for example, as it settled claims involving a series of catastrophic plane crashes by its new 737 Max when whistleblowers made it clear that shoddy workmanship, profit obsessed management, and inadequate testing were to blame. It’s also the line the government itself takes when reaching a settlement involving its wrongdoing. as it did in the case of the Navy’s shooting down of Iranian Airline’s Flight 655 in 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew.

The truth of the matter is that Columbia, in it’s financially-driven cave-in to the Trump administration, agreed to the establishment of a set of procedures to be followed “in the event of disputes.” As she puts it, using her best corporate-speak, “We have agreed on a robust dispute resolution process that includes a mutually agreed upon independent monitor and arbitrator as neutral third parties, rather than ceding authority to the government or court.”

Sounds good in the abstract but arbitration systems, when set up between parties of unequal power, almost always benefit the more powerful side. That’s why big corporations include in the fine print on their product warranties on a requirement for customers to agree in advance to accept arbitration instead of turning to lawsuits to settle disagreements, and. It’s also why financial advisors require their clients to agree in advance too to accept arbitration if they believe they were ripped off by their supposedly ‘“fiduciary” advisor. And clearly such an agreement was forced on Columbia, which was having substantial funding withheld, with the prospect of future grants also being withheld too.

But the real cave-in was a sell-out of Columbia’s management autonomy and of the freedom of speech and assembly of its faculty and students, at least where the issue involves Israel and its treatment of the captive population in the open air concentration camp of Gaza, and its creeping theft of Palestinian land through the use of IDF-protected brutal and deadly pograms against Palestian villages on the West Bank.

Shipman admits that as part of the agreement with the Trump administration, the university has adopted and promises to follow, in an effort to “combat antisemitism” on campus, guidelines defining supposedly antisemitic speech and actions, claiming that “the institution’s leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed.”

This by way of explaining why on July 15, Columbia, a famously comfortable Ivy League option for many Jewish students (including my wife’s uncle, who transferred there to escape the antisemitic Dartmouth and went on to earn a BA and Law degree),, as part of the settlement agreement, has adopted, as its guide to what speech is ”antisemitic,” the definition drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA,). That definition, heavily backed by Zionist and Israeli lobbying organizations is highly controversial even among Jews. That is because, in the 11 examples it gives of kinds of antisemitic speech, five relate to criticism of Israel, a country that has been shown to be a theocratic Jewish state with apartheid policies towards the Palestinians within its borders and the territories it controls, and that more recently in its all-out war on the fenced-in and totally blockaded enclave of Gaza has been found to be committing genocide against the captive population population there.

Shipman and her administration also agreed with the government as part of the settlement to have students and faculty “taught about recognizing antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League.” That organization, according to thE Jewish Magazine Jewish Currents, in its report on the number of antisemitic incidents in the US, routinely conflates anti-Israel actions like protests of its war on Gaza, as “antisemitic,” adopting the IHRA definition. (As a result, as more and more Americans are sickened by Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and its talk of driving desperate Gazans out of their land as refugees, the number of “antisemitic attacks” in the US is reported as rising by the ADL.)

As Jewish Voices for Peace, a group that describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world,” says of the IHRA definition: “The IHRA definition is not about Jewish safety. The only thing it secures is impunity for violating international law and trampling on Palestinian human rights.

Indeed, it is the IHCA definition, adopted by the Trump administration and its agencies, that is being used as a basis by ICE and Homeland Security for arresting and trying to deport protesting foreign students like the Palestinian graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by ICE and detained for three months in a internment prison in Louisiana, until freed by a federal judge. Still facing a federal court hearing on the cancellation of his Green Card on orders of Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio, who between the Ukrainian0Russian War, the war on Iran, the Israeli War on Gaza and tensions with China, one might think would have bigger things to do than hound a Columbia student protester, has claimed he ordered Khalil arrested and deported because as an activist criticizing Israel’s genocide against Palestine, he was somehow “damaging US foreign policy.,” That claim, that if accepted by US courts, could be used against any protest of US foreign policy, if you think about it!)

Human rights organizations and First Amendment advocates —many of them critics of Israel, say the IHCA’s mischaracterization of anti-Israel speech and protest as antisemitic, in effect “weaponizes” that accusation as a way of silencing legitimate criticism of and protest against Israel’s apartheid and it’s genocidal policies towards Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaking as a Columbia alum, an institution I once greatly admired, and a place where I learned a great deal from wonderful professors in Chinese language, journalism, finance and economics, and even effective protest and as a fellow grad like Shipman of the Columbia Grad School of journalism, a place that venerates the First Amendment, I find it both sad and infuriating to see the place crumble and lose its way under the pressure for a tin-pot fascist president (ironically one who has made antisemitic comments all his life and doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about any kind of prejudice unless it’s against his main base; white males.

The worst thing is that Columbia, with its $14 billion endowment, has the resources, including its formidable law school faculty and alumni, to stand up to improper federal government pressure, even if it doesn’t have Harvard’s almost four times larger hoard. If Columbia, Harvard, and the other top ranked universities in the country teamed up and confronted the administration collectively, they would defeat this assault on freedom and academic autonomy. Instead while Harvard is on its own putting a lot of legal muscle into fighting Trump’s assault, Columbia by its gutlessness, is leaving less well-endowed colleges and universities to their fate.

This isn’t going to end well. The golden era of academic freedom in the US, already under attack by corporate interests, appears to be on the way out.