The Situation at Columbia XIV

More is coming out about the awful implications of the ongoing refusal by the trustees to in any way challenge the Trump administration’s funding cancellations. See this open letter in the Columbia Spectator, which begins:

On March 10, the federal grant funding the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study was terminated by the National Institutes of Health as part of the federal government’s response to alleged Title VI infractions at Columbia. Although Columbia is considered the primary recipient of this grant, 90 percent of the funds were being spent outside of Columbia through subcontracts to 30 Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study centers located in 21 states. However, as the central financial grantee, only Columbia can appeal the termination of the grant, and to date, it has been reluctant to do so. Without funding, the DPPOS, which is almost 30 years old, will die.

and continues:

Since March 10, the DPPOS leadership has sought to have the funding restored by highlighting our innocent bystander status in the press and appealing to members of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, the largest caucus in Congress. Thus far, Columbia has not submitted a formal appeal of the termination to the NIH on our behalf; instead, it has required us to wait while it negotiates a University wide appeal. Unfortunately, this places our study in grave peril. Staff at the 30 clinical sites are already being laid off, and clinics are preparing to close.

The failure of Columbia to file a timely appeal on behalf of the DPPOS is damaging the DPPOS infrastructure irreversibly. We cannot wait any longer to submit the appeal, which may be our only hope. Further, Columbia has prevented us from submitting an application to the NIH for a supplement that would allow us to conduct an orderly close-out, protect the data, and honorably conclude the relationship with study participants. The loss of the DPPOS would mean that important public health questions related to diabetes and dementia may never be answered: the almost 30 years of data it has collected from its 1,700 current participants is unique and cannot be replicated.

I was shocked when I first found out that the trustees were refusing to go to court to challenge the illegal funding cancellations by a new administration that was trying out the exercise of dictatorial powers. The details explained in the open letter of the ongoing implications of their decision are appalling. This decision needs to be immediately reversed, although waiting two months to do anything may turn out to have had a huge destructive effect on important biomedical research.

In contrast to what is happening at Columbia, the news from elsewhere about what happens when illegal actions of our new dictator are challenged has been encouraging. Mohsen Mahdawi’s lawyers won his release from jail. The law firm Perkins Coie conclusively won its case. The state of Maine won its case and got its funding back.

Why are the Columbia trustees refusing to go to court and to appeal the illegal funding cancellations???? All I’m hearing publicly from them is the ridiculous claim that Trump is negotiating “in good faith”, and privately that many people involved in this think this is a good opportunity to make changes they favor.

Update: The trustees have announced that Jeh Johnson will be the new co-chair. Johnson has been at Paul Weiss, the first law firm to cave-in to Trump on March 20, the day before the March 21 Columbia cave-in (he says he will be retiring from his position at that firm).

Update: Rise Up, Columbia reminds me I should have linked to this New York Times story, which explains that law firms are finding out that caving-in may not be good for business. They also have this from a partner at one of the law firms fighting Trump:

If Trump came into your kitchen and said, “Take out the garbage,” you wouldn’t say, “OK, I was going to take it out anyway.” You’d say, “Get the fuck out of my kitchen!”

Of course, there are other possibilities. You might like having Donald Trump in your kitchen. If you’re in an ongoing battle with your spouse over how to deal with the garbage, and Trump is on your side in this fight, you might be fine with having him there to make your spouse cave-in.

Update: More Columbia news, as in Columbia Broadcasting System. Trump’s FCC chair is threatening to revoke the CBS broadcast license because of news programming Trump doesn’t like. Probably within CBS there are people now arguing for how they need to “bend the knee”, but if the national news media cave-in to Trump, we’re in even worse trouble than if the universities cave. All parts of US society need to intensively resist and not cave-in to Fascist dictatorship.

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8 Responses to The Situation at Columbia XIV

  1. in_hoc_signo says:

    Peter, what do you think is the appetite amongst the adults in the room (the faculty) to collectively retaliate against the unilateral actions of the board? A university without its professors seems pretty ineffective…is there any world in which the faculty goes “on strike” to force a better resolution?

  2. Peter Woit says:

    in_hoc_signo,
    That the faculty are the adults in the room may be overly optimistic…

    The faculty have relatively little they can do about actions of the President or board. Last year the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted no confidence in president Shafik because of, to my mind, much more minor sins than what is going on now. I have no idea why no one has tried to put such a resolution before the Senate or the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

    Getting the faculty to agree and take action on anything is exceedingly difficult. As for a “strike”, most teachers feel very responsible for their students, so aren’t going to likely agree to a tactic of stopping their course in the middle and not teaching.

  3. marcel proust says:

    Furthermore, haven’t you reported (or suggested) that some of the Trump regime’s demands appear to have “come from inside the building,” i.e., from some group of faculty (no time to search your posts at the moment)?

  4. Peter Woit says:

    marcel proust,
    The original set of demands made to Columbia on March 13 (and caved-in to on March 21) possibly had their origins in a list of demands presented to president Armstrong back in February by a group of faculty and alumni. I don’t know what role if any this group played from then on.

    Since the March 22 fiasco when someone leaked the transcript of a Zoom call in which president Armstrong discussed the cave-in, as far as I know, all information about negotiations with Trump is being tightly held within the trustees and donors. There’s still a “from inside the building” issue, but it’s more from trustees and donors than faculty at this point.

  5. Peter Woit says:

    Dave,
    Thanks. That the Trump people are cutting off all funding to Harvard isn’t very surprising. The McMahon letter, see here
    https://x.com/edsecmcmahon/status/1919517481313427594
    is a complete joke (cut off Harvard’s funding because they are providing extra help to students with weak math backgrounds?). These people are clowns and Harvard should win in court, the way other institutions who resist this clown-car fascism are winning.

    The Doug Belkin WSJ “exclusive” is just the same thing as usual. He’s getting this from Sean Keveney, a clown on the Trump panel, who thinks it’s a great tactic to pressure Columbia with this kind of thing. There already was a “consent decree” story a while back, and Keveney is the fool at the middle of the “we sent a letter to Harvard by mistake” story. The only mystery here is why Columbia keeps negotiating with these people, and that’s a huge one. One justification for this I’d heard was the belief that Linda McMahon was reasonable and they could negotiate with her in good faith. I hope anyone who thinks that reads the Harvard letter.

    WHY HAS COLUMBIA NOT JOINED HARVARD IN GOING TO COURT????

  6. Dave says:

    Hi Peter:
    1.Yes that letter reads like Trump himself wrote it-filled with right wing tropes and capital letters. It is insane.
    2.I agree-no matter what Columbia does we aren’t going to get funding so fight.

    I wonder how the courts will deal with denial of grants from Harvard. They will say it is illegal. However Trump has purged the agencies and put loyalists in charge-so even after reversal we need a way to fight against funding bodies simply saying “thank you for submitting your grant, it was deemed non-competitive….”

  7. David Brown says:

    “… waiting two months to do anything may turn out to have had a huge destructive effect on important biomedical research.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/science/trump-research-animals-euthanasia.html
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/04/11/hhs-research-cuts-lab-animals/

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