Two pieces of news this evening:
1. A week or so ago the interim president of Columbia was removed by the trustees, seemingly to appease the Trump panel she was negotiating with. At the time we were told she would be returning to her position running the medical center. Tonight the news is that she’s been replaced there, will go on sabbatical. This appears to be because of this news story, which is based on a transcript of a deposition by Armstrong. I haven’t yet read the deposition, but the story accuses her of not being aware of the details of incidents of supposed antisemitism at Columbia.
2. Just received the following email from the provost:
Dear members of the Columbia community,
As many of you may have seen in various media reports, the federal government has begun taking action to terminate visa eligibility for international students across the country for alleged incidents including minor traffic violations. Over the past two days, the University has learned that four current international students have had their visas revoked and participation in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program terminated by the federal government. The University was not notified of these status terminations and only became aware of them through proactive daily checks in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database by our International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO).
ISSO is monitoring the situation closely, notifying students as we become aware of any change in their SEVIS status, and connecting them with resources, including external legal assistance that the University has made available.
ISSO is also standing by to provide support resources to any international student or scholar who may have questions or concerns. ISSO (Morningside/Manhattanville and CUIMC) offers advising appointments in person, via Zoom, or phone (212-854-3587). ISSO advisors are here to support you. The ISSO e-mail (isso@columbia.edu) is continuously monitored. Please immediately notify ISSO of any pressing concerns and an advisor will reach out to set up a same-day appointment.
The University deeply values our international scholars and students. Our international community is essential to driving excellence in scholarship and research at Columbia and we are committed to supporting all members of our community.
Sincerely,
Angela V. Olinto
ProvostProfessor of Astronomy and of Physics
It’s very unclear what is going on here. Were these some of the students being pursued by pro-Israeli groups? People with traffic tickets? Something else? What happens to a student who loses their visa in this way? Will Columbia join any legal actions of the students the way Tufts did?
Update: Just read through the transcript. Very odd, a Trump administration lawyer brow-beating Armstrong about her supposedly insufficient dedication to fighting antisemitism, after she was forced out. Also very odd, the transcript is cut off exactly where it gets interesting, when she is asked “why did you step down as interim president?” Maybe the answer to that didn’t fit the agenda of the person who leaked the deposition.
Update: The Wall Street Journal has a story. Reporters Liz Essley Whyte and Douglas Belkin have now written a string of stories based on confidential information provided them by one or more sources hostile to the university. This time, like the far-right Washington Free Beacon, they were provided the partial transcript of the Armstrong April 1 deposition, and used that to make Armstrong and Columbia look bad. On top of helping execute this anonymous attack, they’re also helping their anonymous sources put out threats:
The government called Armstrong in for questioning to send a message to higher-education officials broadly beyond Columbia that they will have to answer for their words and actions under oath, people familiar with the matter said.
Update: Excellent analysis and advice: Why Universities Must Start Litigating — and How, from 3 law professors (Columbia’s David Pozen, Harvard’s Ryan Doerfler, and Michigan’s Samuel Bagenstos.
Update: There are now two dueling documentaries out there about the protests here last year. In one, the Columbia administration is anti-semitic, supportive of the Palestinian cause and won’t protect its pro-Israel students. In the other the Columbia administration is firmly pro-Israel and won’t protect its pro-Palestinian students. Stephen Silver has watched both and discusses here.
Inside Higher Ed has a story about an event discussing the Trump administration’s plans for higher education. Besides shutting down Columbia University, the article features Grand Canyon University, which is a model for what the Trump administration wants higher ed to look like. It’s a for-profit operation, run out of a variety of locations throughout the West. They are proud that “a biblical worldview is incorporated across all academic subjects at GCU.” and argue that:
“The media, higher ed and Hollywood has tried to convince most of America that what is being taught at 95 percent of our universities is what Americans want, and that is absolutely untrue,” Mueller said. “The majority of Americans don’t want what’s being taught from a worldview perspective in most of these institutions. It wants what we’re teaching in our institutions.”
This kind of for-profit non-truth-based operation has had problems with accreditation, so changing the accrediting system is one of the main goals of the Trump people.
I have read for years and never commented. I will make this exception so that I can express my appreciation for your work here. I am older and wiser than you. Okay, six months older, but still.
Poor humor aside, best of luck in your future endeavors. You are obviously heading into a collision with the powers that be.
Justin Case,
Thanks, but don’t worry about me, worry about the Columbia administration. They’re in the middle of discovering what a huge mistake they’ve made by trying to appease bullies coming after them with bogus “antisemitism” accusations.
The Armstrong deposition is enlightening to read. It’s pure Joe McCarthy/Roy Cohn bullying with “communism” replaced by “antisemitism”. This is going to go on until some day it is stopped by people being willing to stand up to it. Instead of admitting to a supposed antisemitism problem, what Armstrong should have been saying was: ” Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
I found the Nation article deeply disappointing. I had hoped some legal experts would lay out a course of action that could rebut some or any of my concerns from the Columbia III thread. Alas they do none of it. They talk in vague terms about fighting, banding together and likely legal victories, at least in the lower courts. All of these things are obvious-I mean we know that what Trump is doing is not justified legally in any reasonable sense, at least without some sort of due process along the lines of Title6/9 hearings, and even there likely not. This was never the point. The point is that the process would take years while the money is frozen (people don’t seem to understand that even for no reason right now a lot of funding is frozen-I have a junior colleague who got one year of his DOE grant, the rest is in limbo now-and I know a lot of such stories. This has nothing to do with the 400M). While this is being fought over in court, more money would be halted, and implicitly as this goes up the chain of courts success becomes more unclear-they implicitly note this.
All that said-I think I would prefer universities to take the risk on ethical grounds and suffer as they may. But I find it sad that our courts and laws are constructed in such a way to make this most likely a “lose-lose” or “lose-win” situation as opposed to what it should be-a simple win.
Dave,
You may be right that a court fight will in any case leave the money tied up for a long time, effectively removing it permanently.
It is though starting to become clearer to me how the Trump people see this. They’re culture warriors, feel the universities are the other side, now feel that they have a very effective tool they can use to force the universities to change dramatically into something that is on their side, or at least won’t oppose them. With the bogus antisemitism stuff they’re just getting started, next there’s: get rid of “DEI”, change your admissions criteria to what we want, deport any foreign students who disagree with us, then get rid of most of the rest of them too, expel any students who protest our policies, fire faculty with views we don’t like, hire right-wing faculty with views we do like, etc. We’re not going to get the scientific research money back until we’ve done all this to their satisfaction. Why should they give up their leverage over us before they’re completely happy? We’ve already started down this road by agreeing that we will fire the president if they’re not happy with him/her.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that while going to court may not work, it’s the only chance to get scientific research funding back, since even if we have trustees that have decided to do whatever the MAGA culture warriors want, implementing that is going to take a long time and be a brutal battle.
I agree with this-they are both using “antisemitism” as a way to crush universities not just because they hate universities but also because those who are protesting are of the left. As we saw with Trump version 1, those at Charlottesville included some “fine people” as well.
However I think it is pretty simple. If Trumpism is rebuked and Trump and his ilk are gone in 4 years then yes funds will be recovered and things could slowly rebound. But I guess my frustration is that there is no path to blocking this really before hand. At least not till 2026. While I ethically and morally think fighting is the right thing to do, I am less interested in taking the risk averse universities to task for what they are failing to do as the outcomes are bad all around and could in a functional sense be worse given a different course. The could be better too-but that path comes with big risks too (from the standpoint of $)
Hi Peter,
Indeed, you are completely correct-
Antisemitism is a small part of the problem of universities. The goal is to dismantle the DEI beuorocracy, the illegal admission and hiring procedure at universities, and the politicization of various departments
rick,
The problem is that if a new administration comes into office, it’s supposed to follow the current laws until it passes new ones to implement its policies. And, it’s supposed to follow the bill of rights. Instead we now have moved to a completely different but well-known form of government: Fascist dictatorship, led by a strong man claiming to incarnate the will of the people, who governs by decree, ignores court orders and lies about everything, all the time.
I assume the people who think this is fine will also be fine with a next president who lies about everything, all the time, and on day one expropriates ownership of everything to the state, announces we now live in a Communist utopia and deports to El Salvador anyone who objects.
Peter,
Even if you dont like the president of the USA, you can support when he does things that are for the good of your university: like dismantling the enormous DEI beurocracy, the massive hiring discrimination against asians, and the anti-science woke grievence studies
rick,
So far the dictator who lies about everything, all the time, has not done anything good for my university. All he’s done is put a stop to biomedical and other science research, deported students for saying the wrong things, and exploited divisions over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to remove the university president. So, no, I’m not on board with welcoming the destruction of US democracy for this.
“Were these some of the students being pursued by pro-Israeli groups?”
Why do you suspect that?
Phanatic,
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/03/05/in-leaked-messages-members-of-columbia-alumni-for-israel-group-chat-work-to-identify-punish-pro-palestinian-protesters/
Well-I guess at this point it is all in on litigation!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/us/politics/cornell-northwestern-university-funds-trump.html
Dave, thank you for the news that Cornell got a 1$ billion freeze. Since years, my scientifically correct publication on gender&STEM is blocked by the preprint server arXiv at Cornell, that instead accepts politically correct articles on the same topic. I hope that the minimal scientific standards can be restored, once DEI is removed.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned here yet: the visa revocations aren’t just happening at Columbia, and don’t seem to be directly related to protests, see here: https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/news/visa-revocations-leave-international-college-students-in-limbo/169053/ . There have been more cases come to light since that article too, including 17 just now in Utah. Whatever is going on seems less like an intentional attempt to take down particular universities and more an attempt to attack universities and/or immigration with every tool they have access to.
Alessandro,
You’re making the same mistake as the Columbia biomedical faculty members who were enthusiastic that Trump would go after the supposed antisemitism at their institution and have now lost their grants and their ability to do their research (probably permanently).
What you’re not understanding is that Trump’s tactic is to play on the people’s resentments to get their support, but he doesn’t really care about those issues (he has about has much interest in gender issues in STEM as he does in antisemitism). From all evidence, what he (or the people around him) do care about is defunding the US scientific research establishment.
Alessandro-glad my friends at Cornell who have never posted on arXiv can take the bullets for you in your quest to have minimal scientific standards restored.
Unfortunately, since the election Project 2025 has gone off the radar. It’s the blueprint for how the MAGA culture warriors intend to reshape the US into a Christian Dominionist paradise, with all cultural and educational institutions suitably reshaped. Grand Canyon University is the template. There will be little or no need for applied science once evangelical christianity supplants it with theology.
To assume that there are no anti-semites leavened in among those who legitimately protest Israeli government misdeeds is naive, but to use the broad brush and brandish anti-semitism as a weapon for the dismantling of persons and institutions that stand in the way of the establishment of a Christian theocracy (where the status of Jews as “non-believers” is as yet unclear) is the most galling form of irony.
I’m pleased to see things named correctly. Everyone should read their Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism. I’d say Trump scores quite high 12/14.
Stipe Galic,
I definitely recommend reading the Umberto Eco article you refer to, see here:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
I’ve always thought it was a bad idea for those on the left to inappropriately apply the term “Fascist” to those they disagreed with. It is only with the advent of Trump that the US has had a true Fascist come to power. Here the word is getting used in its original meaning, that of Mussolini and his political movement. Watching videos of Mussolini, I don’t see how one can deny the obvious close personal and ideological similarities.
In many ways, Mussolini was just a clown, with the true awfulness the later advent of the German version. Hopefully we’ll survive this idiocy and not have to deal with what this same thing led to in the 1930s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/nyregion/columbia-trump-consent-decree.html