Excellent news from Vermont: Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was released on orders of the judge in his case. This is yet another positive indication that resistance to the new dictatorship is possible, with the US judicial system still functional enough to often stop the illegal exercise of dictatorial powers. Unfortunately the Columbia trustees still have not realized they need to resist and try going to the courts like Harvard.
In local resistance news, at Rise Up, Columbia you can read some of the texts of speeches given at the 25-hour speakout here. In the Spectator, there’s a letter from Jewish students at Columbia and Barnard about the abuse of accusations of antisemitism that is at the root of the current situation here.
Still no news about the ongoing negotiations between Trump’s people and the trustees. Unfortunately it has become much clearer to me why the trustees so far have not decided to go to court to resist illegal demands from the would-be dictator. Besides being afraid of the consequences of confronting the dictator, some likely see this as an opportunity to get changes made here that they want anyway, and would otherwise have great difficulty achieving. Looking at the list of trustees, only one (Victor Mendelson) regularly donates to Republican candidates, recently to Elise Stefanik. But many of the others (and major donors like Robert Kraft) are strong supporters of the Israeli government and see pro-Palestinian protests or sympathies here as a major problem that needs action. From their point of view, the demands they have agreed to so far are not a cave-in to Trump that has ruined the reputation of the university but a positive step in fixing the ruining of the university’s reputation caused by the pro-Palestinian protests. Given the clownish incoherent behavior of those around Trump, it’s hard to guess what their current demands are, but as long as they’re careful to cater to bogus accusations of “antisemitism”, they may very well be able to convince the trustees to not resist by going to court, but to a further cave-in of some form.
In relevant news from elsewhere, Harvard has released reports about antisemitism and Islamophobia. I believe the situation at Harvard is very much like the one here at Columbia. Bringing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to these campuses has caused a lot of fear, but is hitting one side a lot harder: the reports show that 15 percent of Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, while more than three times as many (47 percent) Muslim students feel unsafe. While 61 percent of Jewish students are worried about expressing their views, 92 percent of the Muslim students felt this way.
Update: Multiple people have assured me that the reason Columbia is not suing the Trump administration over illegal grant cancellations is that it’s not possible to do this while negotiating, and that for now Columbia is negotiating. Harvard however seems to have shown that this is not true. They have gone to court over the illegal government actions, and publicly refused Trump’s demands. What is the Trump administration reaction? According to a new story from CNN, the Trump people are still trying to negotiate with Harvard:
“What we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut. So we’re not having a conversation of what is, you know, releasing the spigot again. We’re not. The spigot is closed, if anything, getting tighter right now,” a White House official told CNN when asked about Harvard’s recent actions.
“But there is an avenue, a very clear avenue, a very real situation in where, you know, they can commit to what we’re asking – reasonable asks. This isn’t something like not reasonable, where we could have a conversation about funding,” they told CNN…
The Trump administration is expected to formally communicate with Harvard again in the coming days…
“It’s a positive step in acknowledging the truth and acknowledging that civil rights need to be prioritized,” the White House official said. “By no means is this the final step that they need to take to address all the things that they need to change in their campus. But if this is their way of giving a good faith effort, we’ll be here to monitor and make sure that this is something that’s followed through on.”
Hoping the Columbia trustees are reading this, kicking themselves for the time they’ve wasted (they could have filed a lawsuit nearly two months ago when the illegal actions started), and telling the university’s lawyers to go to court now.
Polling both sides to see how afraid they are to express their views misses one crucial variable — namely, how afraid they should be, given the content of their beliefs. Broadly speaking, I’d like anyone on either side who feels like the wrong approach is being taken to a peaceful two-state solution to be totally unafraid to speak. But I’d also like anyone on either side who feels like the other side needs to be eradicated from the earth, to be afraid to speak.
Scott,
Maybe an even more crucial variable is what each side is afraid of. In this case I believe students worried about expressing pro-Israel views are fearful of hostile verbal reactions and social ostracism. Those fearful of expressing pro-Palestinian views are often worried not about this, but about being grabbed off the street by masked thugs and thrown in a hole in Louisiana.
On the “peaceful two-state solution” issue, which I’ve now listened to debate about for over fifty years, I’m loathe to hear more debate untethered to the (ever less promising) realities on the ground. But I have been mystified by the way you seem to make commitment to this your touchstone for what is acceptable, given that the current Israeli government has expressed firm opposition to a sovereign Palestinian state.
I’m strongly opposed to the current Israeli government, as I’ve made clear at every opportunity. I’m even more opposed to anyone, on either side, who glorifies the mass murder of the other side — meaning, not collateral death in war, but killing the other side’s civilians simply because they all deserve to die. Yet “all Zionists deserve to die” was an accepted view within the tentifada movement from the very beginning, and has been the explicit position of CUAD at least since they welcomed back Khymani James in fall of last year.
Scott,
We’re back to the problem that you have a completely delusional view about what the pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia and elsewhere were thinking and saying. While you probably could find a small number of idiots amongst them who believe “all Zionists deserve to die”, this was not “an accepted view”. For every one of such idiots I’m sure you could find without much effort multiple pro-Israeli idiots going on about “all Palestinians are terrorists and deserve to die”.
Unfortunately I think you’re still completely devoted to your conviction that Columbia’s pro-Palestinian demonstrators who you’ve never seen or met and know nothing about are murderous demons. I’d like to this time more politely encourage you to leave us alone. Maybe you can at least change your focus to Harvard, which has not been so heavily damaged yet by the kind of campaign you’re pursuing.
” But I’d also like anyone on either side who feels like the other side needs to be eradicated from the earth, to be afraid to speak.”
alternatively if people do think that let them say it so we know who the assholes are
> We’re back to the problem that you have a completely delusional view about what the pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia and elsewhere were thinking and saying
The video you linked to in your previous post directly supports Scott’s view. I don’t know who you need to hear this from to make you listen.
Vladimir,
Can you give me a timestamp for where the protestors say “all Zionists deserve to die”? I didn’t watch the whole thing, but heard nothing like that. People like Scott sometimes assure us that “Intifada” means “kill all the Jews”, but I see no reason to believe that’s what the protestors have in mind.
In any case, everyone can watch what Vladimir is referring to here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9qklegxPyM
and make up their own mind. I don’t want to host an argument over this. I’ve had multiple people earnestly explain to me that “Free Palestine” clearly means “kill the Jews”, since if Palestinians had political rights, that’s what they would do. People hear what they want to hear in political slogans.
For comparison, take a look at what happened in Crown Heights last week
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/29/us/crown-heights-protests-woman-harassment-israel-mob-hnk/index.html
when Ben Gvir (the Israeli minister who used to keep a photo of Baruch Goldstein on the wall in his home) was visiting.
There a mob of Ben Gvir fans evidently was assaulting women and chanting “Kill the Arabs” in Hebrew. When people know that what they want is to kill members of the other tribe, they make that clear. It looks quite different than the demonstration at the Columbia gate.
Peter,
15:57 We will honor all our martyrs
22:20 There is only one solution intifada revolution
24:58 From the river to the sea
29:06 We don’t want no two state we want 48
34:58 Zionism no more
Granted, none of these are “kill the Jews”, but even if your own idea of tolerable speech allows for anything short of that, I’m sure you’ll agree that’s not the well-established and widely known standard at Columbia.
> When people know that what they want is to kill members of the other tribe, they make that clear.
I agree, most protesters probably don’t know that what they claim they want amounts to another Holocaust, but again, Columbia wouldn’t accept that excuse in any other context. Just imagine a couple of students from Alabama organizing a protest to which people come wearing white robes with pointy hats and chant “White lives matter” or “Purity is our strength”.
Vladimir,
The argument you’re making is essentially the same one I referred to above, that calling for “Free Palestine” is de facto equivalent to “Kill the Jews”. I don’t agree.
You’re right that the protestor’s chants you quote are not a viable program for resolving the endless, horrendous and grotesquely ugly Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I wouldn’t join in them. But if people want to express their reaction to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank by chanting this kind of slogan, that seems to me well within the constitutionally protected bounds of freedom of speech.
Yes, the standard I’ve put forward does indeed indict Itamar Ben Gvir, as totally beyond the pale of civilized discourse. I have no problem with anyone protesting him. I regard Netanyahu’s including him in his coalition as one of the worst acts in Israeli political history, and I’m relieved that Ben Gvir remains one of the least popular figures in Israel. No one who had a picture of Baruch Goldstein on their wall can possibly have a place in the community of the sane — the camp that’s pro-Zionist, pro-Palestinian, and pro-peace.
For comparison, “We will honor all our martyrs / There is only one solution intifada revolution / From the river to the sea / We don’t want no two states we want ’48”? Those are, alas, now the mainstream slogans of anti-Zionist side, heard at pretty much every encampment and protest since October 7. And to anyone who knows the relevant history, it’s difficult to understand them other than as calls for mass expulsion of the Jews or, should that prove impractical (as it did in Europe in the 1930s), then genocide.
Peter,
> The argument you’re making is essentially the same one I referred to above, that calling for “Free Palestine” is de facto equivalent to “Kill the Jews”
You’ll note that I didn’t quote “Free Palestine” itself, as that, unlike the ones I did quote, can plausibly refer to nothing more than some sort of two-state solution. I don’t think the chants I quoted are equivalent to “kill the Jews”, either. They’re actually worse in a way. If I (an Israeli Jew) pass by people who chant “kill the Jews”, then (a) I know exactly where I stand with them, and (b) I can be quite sure I won’t later encounter them in polite society. With the student protesters, I’m practically guaranteed to encounter one sooner rather than later, and when I do, I have to try and guess whether they’re an unfortunate combination of well-meaning, ignorant and prone to groupthink, or they genuinely would like to see another Holocaust. Granted, the latter is significantly less likely than the former, but its probability given that they chanted those slogans is significantly higher than baseline.
> But if people want to express their reaction to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank by chanting this kind of slogan, that seems to me well within the constitutionally protected bounds of freedom of speech.
Agreed, but Columbia isn’t bound by the Constitution. What concerns me is the apparent double standard: I have little doubt that Columbia would respond far more forcefully to comparable slogans if they had to do with other protected groups. To make the analogy more direct than in my previous message, consider simply replacing “Zionism”, “Zionists” etc. with “Islam”, “Muslims” etc. Would Columbia show any tolerance towards students who chant “Islam no more”?
Vladimir,
Engaging with your “worse than “kill the Jews”” feelings about these slogans is a waste of time, as would be engaging with your trying to muddy the waters with bad analogies to identity politics and the stupidities surrounding them.
One last thing about the event documented in this video. It’s outside the gates, so the freedom of speech issues are in the public property, city of New York policing sphere, not the private property, university sphere. The reason the students are outside the gates is that the university has basically banned (or regulated in such a way that they don’t happen) any form of pro-Palestinian protest on campus, even if it consisted solely of chants in favor of a peaceful two-state solution.
Just wanted to say, as a longtime reader of this blog and layperson, I really appreciate you speaking out on this Peter. I am a lowly staff person at a university (not Columbia) and see this issue impacting so many things, down to average workers like me. Higher education and its workers across the country are being attacked with the excuse of fighting anti-semitism, wokeness, or whatever other right wing bogeyman they want to pull out.
I have also appreciated Scott’s work over the years. But I think the commenters willfully misinterpret and inflate the sloganeering that by its nature is not a political platform or thesis. If you spend any time at all actually reading the writing and discourse of those that claim anti-Zionism, especially in the United States and western countries, you will see that their inspiration is anti-colonialism in places like South Africa or Northern Ireland. Many political movements believe ruling institutions should be abolished. Your average right wing libertarian believes in abolishing basically the entire US government aside for a few departments here or there. You would not claim they want to genocide the American people because of it. Nor would your average communist or socialist be guilty of genocidal sloganeering for calling for the abolition of the US capitalist state. The same applies to protestors that don’t believe in the legitimacy of the Israeli state, that they believe is colonial. In South Africa and Northern Ireland there are parties with ties to guerrilla insurgencies that targeted civilians, but thankfully nobody is carpet bombing Belfast or Zulu homelands. And those that say “Brits out!” aren’t merely terrorist sympathizers. The lack of any intellectual curiosity or seriousness here with regards to Palestine solidarity movements is telling.
Layman Reader,
Thanks, but I do want to strongly discourage further debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here, including debating topics such as whether colonialism is a sensible way to conceptualize this conflict. From everything I’ve seen over many years, debate on this topic attracts large numbers of people with strong opinions who want to demonize their opponents, and no one participating in this ever seems to learn anything or change their mind about anything.
What I do want to focus on is providing an accurate understanding of exactly what is happening here at Columbia now, which as far as protests is concerned is pretty simple. The situation last year was much more complicated and I don’t want to spend my life debating the details of it. If this is what you want to do, a group of faculty has just issued a 469 page report arguing about what is in a previous 335 page report by a different group of faculty, see here
https://standcolumbia.org/wp-content/uploads/sunlight/The-Sunlight-Report-20250430-vF.pdf
The video I linked to I think gives an accurate portrayal of one of the very few protests we’ve seen here this year. Thanks to Vladimir for going through it and identifying what exactly about such protests upsets those arguing that Jewish students are not safe here. Anyone who cares can decide for themselves by taking a look.
My first reaction when all this started over a year ago here was anger at both sides. It seemed to me that two groups of people upset about an awful, ugly, murderous conflict on the other side of the world had decided that they would only be happy if they could bring this conflict here and fight with their enemies on this campus. My sympathy went out to administrators tasked with figuring out how to keep these people from physically hurting each other and innocent bystanders.
Things changed dramatically after last spring, as the campus was put in a security lockdown that is still in place (this morning I went through 3 security checks to get to my office). Pro-Palestinian protests have been heavily suppressed, with the little remaining what is documented in that video. On the other side, there are not pro-Israeli protests in the streets, but a continuing highly organized and ruthless attempt to demonize the university, and tear it apart in collaboration with a Fascist dictatorship, all with the goal of pursuing imaginary “antisemitic” enemies threatening the safety of Jewish students. I’m trying to understand what is happening and do the best I can to document and explain that here. I’d much rather be doing something else, hope this stops soon…
I deeply sympathize with anyone wanting to spend their time on any topic that isn’t Israel/Palestine! I was even mostly succeeding at that myself before Oct 7 and its aftermath made it impossible for me.
But Peter, the entire position you’ve staked out on this blog rests, as you’ve conceded, on the premise that the narrative of frightening Jew-hatred at America’s leading universities is fabricated and bogus, notwithstanding detailed reports from your Columbia colleagues and now from Harvard faculty saying the contrary. That, in turn, depends on a further premise: namely that, when thousands of students at these universities chant “long live the intifada,” “Al-Qassam you make us proud,” “we don’t want no two states we want ‘48,” “from the river to the sea,” etc etc, none of it means what it naively seems to mean.
But why doesn’t it? At this point there are two options: either you can infantilize the protesters, and treat them as playing a sort of internal campus social signaling game that’s totally disconnected from the realities of the Middle East. Or, you can invoke the realities of the Middle East — but in the latter case, you do need to say that the protesters are explicitly advocating the program of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and that program really does call for Israel’s eradication, via “resistance” whose model was October 7 and whose scaled-up version would be a second Holocaust. I don’t see a third option.
Scott,
I know from past experience this is completely hopeless, but here goes: there are no thousands of students chanting “Al-Qassam you make us proud” or “explicitly advocating the program of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis”, calling “for Israel’s eradication” and a “second Holocaust”. These are paranoid fantasies.
In the real world, during the past academic year there have been basically zero pro-Palestinian protests on this campus. Outside the campus, the biggest one I know of you can watch pretty much the whole thing on the youtube link I provided. There were about 20 protestors there. You can listen to all their slogans, Vladimir has provided the ones you might find most concerning. They’re not calling for a second Holocaust.
On another front of your fantasies (CUAD which you believe to be the face of Columbia University or something equally nuts) I haven’t seen at all the CUAD people you are so concerned about. At this point I’d guess they are a very small group, incapable of doing much of anything. There’s a new story out today at the New York Times, see
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/columbia-protests-justice-department.html
A top Trump appointee evidently shares your fantasies, and tried to investigate them, couldn’t get a search warrant despite repeated efforts, since judges said they had no evidence of anything illegal. The prosecutors, FBI people, etc. couldn’t convince him that he was delusional. He’s evidently living in the same fantasy land that you’re devoted to.
Dear Peter and Scott: Gaussians have tails. We can argue about where the means of each distribution are, and how fat or narrow the tails are, but we cannot wish away the tails. People who read math blogs should know this. The point is not to let the tails dominate the discussion.
Case in point: my own family group chat has been overwhelmed by these tails since the recent terror attack in Kashmir. The anti-muslim rhetoric is vile. Genocide of an entire nation of 250 million souls by nuclear fire is anticipated with glee. In capital letters. Some of these people hand fed us sweets at my wedding.
The point is like all tails they are tiny compared to the bulk of the distribution. However, we in the bulk are rather reluctant to engage. We exchange private texts, filled with eye-roll emojis. If I did engage (even if just to point out the problem of prevailing winds) I know I would be dismissed as a US-born-and-bred naive rube.
But this all WAS happening last year, wasn’t it? So then, if it’s no longer happening this year, surely it’s not because the relevant students and faculty had sudden changes of heart, but only because fear of the “T-Rex” is successfully deterring them? That would have implications that I’d think you of all people would abhor. I abhor them too. That’s why I agree with the presidents of Harvard and Columbia that universities should tackle this problem on their own—especially as it’s as much a problem of breathtaking historical ignorance as one of evil intent. Maybe tackling the problem on our own will make it harder for the T-Rex to maul us — but even if it doesn’t, it will still have been the right thing to do.
Scott,
No, it wasn’t happening last year either. There never, ever have been thousands of students chanting “Al-Qassam you make us proud,”, or any of the rest of your paranoid fantasies about the second Holocaust.
University administrations have been doing exactly what you want for a year trying to appease you and others who share your delusions, but it can never be enough. You remain crazed, fearful and obsessed, so far gone that you’ll collaborate with a Fascist dictator who you think will finally exterminate the anti-semitic demons. Seriously, leave us alone. Surely there’s some other institution that you can focus your craziness on.
Dear Peter,
I have been reading your blog since its inception and I greatly enjoyed all the debates on physics and math that you opened up. I learned a lot about the sociology of physicists and that of some corners of math departments. With the Trump saga, your recent series of posts about Columbia allowed me to learn a lot about how American universities function and about the people sitting behind the wheels of such American institutions. For me it is truly disheartening as I used to look up to such places as the purest places on this planet for truth seeking. I just learned how delusional I was. Also, I admire your humbleness, your patience and your diplomacy in handling some of your commentators. What’s more amazingly is that you do all this for free, no ads whatsoever are displayed on your blog. The difference between truth seekers and pseudo scientists is obvious and no wonder why you were right all along about string theory and those we consider to be university elites were wrong.
I hope all this nightmare will come to an end soon and that we’ll get back your inspirational posts about science and mathematics and about the failure of those ideas that are not even wrong.
Thank you!
Albert,
Thanks, but keep in mind that the reason I’m writing about this is that something completely unprecedented is going on at Columbia, which I’m trying to understand myself, hope this will be of use to others. American universities have various strengths and problems in general, but what is going on here is something very different.
Specifically, what is happening with the trustees is extremely unusual. Normally they do not get involved in the academic operations of the university, their main role is an overall financial one (managing the endowment, large donations) and choosing the president. The current situation of having as president a trustee, basically acting as spokesperson for the board of trustees, has never happened before.
The illegal defunding of the university by Trump, joined together with the intense campaign to fight pro-Palestinian sentiment with accusations of antisemitism is also something far from anything that has happened before.
New Trump message: He will abolish tax exemption for Harvard University. The catastrophe is growing.
Marvin,
Yes, but Trump’s statements rarely correspond to reality. The IRS may try to take away Harvard’s tax exemption, but likely this is the sort of obviously illegal thing the courts so far are mostly ruling against. I suspect Harvard can get a court injunction stopping any negative effects of this.
More serious is the news that the NSF has stopped all payments on grants, old and new
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2
This is the kind of thing it would be hard to get a court to overturn quickly. It also makes clear that the Trump people see their war as not just against specific elite universities, but against the US scientific community in general.
Peter,
Your exchange with Scott Aaronson illustrates one heartbreaking aspect of all of this.
Several of my friends (some Jewish, some not) have the same paranoid fantasies that Scott has. There is no evidence I can present to them that would get them to accept reality. (They’re like string physicists in that way.)
They’re still my friends, but their inability to believe anything but the right-wing /corporate media narrative on Israel, Palestine, and the campus protests is depressing.
Also, I’ve been a reader of both your and Scott’s work for a long time now. It is truly horrifying for his post here to implicitly brush off the deaths of 60,000+ Palestinians as “collateral damage during a war.”
I know you said that you don’t want people posting about the Israel–Palestine conflict, but I believe it is impossible to understand the current censorship on college campuses—and the accompanying attacks on universities as legitimate institutions—without talking about the conflict.
Zoki,
Yes, it’s impossible to understand the behavior of people like Scott, what has been going on at Columbia and the success of Trump’s campaign to use “antisemitism” to justify illegal rule by decree, without reference to what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank. It’s also true that I won’t provide a venue for discussion of that topic, since it would attract keyboard warriors intent on exterminating their opponents by any means necessary (and me if they decide I’m on the wrong side).
Peter,
I completely understand and am definitely not faulting you for how you moderate this forum. It’s just such a sad state of affairs, but your commentary on Columbia is much more effective if you steer clear of those landlines.
Thank you again for being a voice of reason on this issue.
Zoki