This morning we received a long message from the acting president, entitled Preserving Columbia’s Critical Research Capabilities. Here’s a summary:
- It’s a complete mystery to me, but the trustees still refuse to go to court to challenge the defunding of research grants, somehow because they think they are negotiating this, even though it has for a long time been clear that negotiating with Trump is not going to lead to anything but humiliation. The message has:
As many of you are aware, the University is engaged in a two-pronged effort related to grants terminated by the federal government. The first prong focuses on our continued efforts to restore our partnerships with government agencies that support critical research… Columbia’s leadership continues discussions with the federal government in support of resuming activity on these research awards and additional other awards that have remained active, but unpaid.
The Wall Street Journal has an “Exclusive” article claiming that Trump’s people are negotiating a consent decree with Columbia:
Columbia leaders are negotiating with the government and weighing what to do, the people said. The university’s board is undecided on whether to accept a consent decree, they said. For a consent decree to take effect, Columbia would have to agree to enter it.
The government has told the school that it can either negotiate and accept a consent decree, or face a court battle that could end up with the school facing more public scrutiny and in the end the same kind of legal agreement to make changes, perhaps with worse terms, they said.
With a consent decree, the government is seeking viewpoint diversity among Columbia’s faculty and that the school not consider race in admissions, the people said.
The article also includes:
A Columbia spokesperson said: “This story is based entirely on hearsay and does not hold merit.” She pointed to a statement issued last month from acting university president Claire Shipman, who said that Columbia would reject any agreement that would require relinquishing its independence.
The article is the latest of many “Exclusive”s by two WSJ journalists, Douglas Belkin and Liz Essley White, who have been simply putting out as “news” delusional statements trying to pressure Columbia from one of Trump’s people, very likely Sean Keveney, the lawyer responsible for the “mistake” letter sent to Harvard. This is actually the second bogus “Exclusive” news about a consent decree, the first was here nearly a month ago.
- Much of the message is concerned with what the university is now doing to contend with the reality that grant funding is gone for now (and will be until they go to court and get a court judgement…):
Separately and in parallel, our Deans have carefully reviewed and prioritized our research activity to develop a plan for managing the affected research. We asked each principal investigator of a terminated award to develop a Research Action Plan (RAP) for review at the school level and to inform a school-based approach. During this review period, the University continued to fund those individuals whose salaries and stipends were previously funded with federal support on now-terminated awards…
Moving forward, we will be running lighter footprints of research infrastructure in some areas and, in others, maintaining a level of research continuity as we pursue alternate funding sources. In some cases, schools and departments are winding down activity but remain prepared to reestablish capabilities if support is restored. Across the research portfolio we have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination. This represents about 20% of the individuals who are funded in some manner by the terminated grants…
As schools and departments moved through the process of reviewing priorities related to terminated awards, it became clear that we need to be prepared to make additional investments to secure the strength of our research enterprise as we navigate future periods of uncertainty and change. Additional complexities and risks include the process and funding for obtaining new awards and continuations of existing research projects. To that end, the University has established a Research Stabilization Fund to navigate these future funding risks and lend support to our scientific community in multiple forms. These resources will be made available through an application process for internal grants to scientists to support their work for a limited time as they seek alternate sources of funding or complete the components of their research to enable publication of results. In addition, the University will contribute funds to schools over the next year to support our commitments to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows on terminated training grants, an area that has been severely impacted by terminations of federal support. The Stabilization Fund and Other Resources webpage developed by the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research provides more details about these funds and other resources on funding opportunities for the research community.
- The message also explains that the university now faces serious budget problems going forward, and announces various steps being taken to deal with it, including a salary freeze:
We will continue to make prudent budget decisions that will ensure long-term financial stability across the University, including making significant budget reductions within the University’s central administration. Across the University, we have set parameters to keep most salaries at their current level, without increases for the next fiscal year, with some schools and units providing a modest pool for employees at the lower end of their salary distribution. We have also developed programs to further streamline our workforce through attrition and are preparing to launch a voluntary retirement incentive program, the details of which will be shared next week.
In case anyone is still tempted to believe that the Trump people are negotiating in good faith and seriously addressing real issues, Harvard yesterday received an absurd illiterate letter from Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment executive now responsible for education in the US. The first accusation against Harvard is that it has a course to help students with weak math backgrounds:
Where do many of these “students” come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country — and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?
Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing “remedial math” program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this “acclaimed university”? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?
Update: New from the Columbia Journalism Review, a disturbing story about student disciplinary procedures at Barnard.
Update: New from the New York Times, a story about how Columbia was taken in by a crooked game of Prisoner’s Dilemma.
A few weeks ago, several prominent American universities and law firms found themselves in what seemed to be a classic prisoner’s dilemma, courtesy of President Trump…
Columbia University made a deal with the administration. So did some of the largest law firms in the country. Recent changes, however, suggest that the dilemma is starting to look very different…
But crucially, one assumption in the prisoner’s dilemma is that the jailer is trustworthy. There is an explicit promise that confessing will allow prisoners to avoid the longest sentence.
In the real world, however, instead of rewarding those who capitulated early, the Trump administration pressured them even more.
Columbia University, for example, agreed to concessions that included imposing new oversight over its Middle Eastern studies department and creating a security force empowered to make arrests. But that was not enough to restore the more than $400 million in grants that the Trump administration had canceled, or to prevent the administration from making even more demands.
The Times story also addresses another problem created by behavior like Columbia’s:
Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said she has observed “burgeoning moral distress” among her membership in recent months. “Campus leaders feel like they’re being coerced into making decisions they believe are unethical, but they feel they have no choice,” she said. “In many instances, that moral distress has morphed into a moral injury that results from the continual erosion of a moral compass.”
Update: In recent days the security checkpoint at the gate nearest the math building has become more difficult to get through, as people have to pass through two different devices with their ids. No one knows (including the people working the security checkpoint) why this new security layer has been introduced. We’re seeing lines of students waiting to get in, people who can’t get in this gate, have to go around to the main gate to get access. Only protest activity on campus in recent weeks a small vigil for our imprisoned students.
Update: Yet another NYT article about Columbia today, this time about the campaign by the trustees to revamp the university senate, which some of them see as “antisemitic” and responsible for obstructing the necessary rigorous discipline of students involved in last year’s protests and building occupation. From the article:
There also appears to be at least some agreement between Columbia’s trustees and those in Washington who feel that support for the student protests was antisemitic, a position that angers university senators, who feel they are being slurred.
Since the administration has a lot going on right now (see above…), it’s odd that the trustees are making it a priority to deal with obscure long-term governance issues like that of how the senate works. The only way I see to understand this is that this is part of the ongoing negotiation about “antisemitism”, which now appears to be a 3-way one involving the Trump people, powerful pro-Israel trustees and donors, and the rest of the university. Last year Jonathan Lavine, now co-chair of the presidential search committee, sent a text message to David Greenwald, co-chair of the board, about “the antisemites on the Senate”.
I’m finding it very difficult to understand why the trustees are still refusing to go to court to stop grant cancellations, supposedly because this would interfere with negotiations with Trump. Given everything happening, why would anyone in their right mind still think that Trump was someone you could sensibly negotiate with? The only reason I can think of is that some of the trustees and donors still find the pressure from the Fascist dictatorship useful to make progress on their own agenda of getting rid of problems at Columbia like “the antisemites on the Senate”.
Update: Josh Marshall has an informative story about how the NIH grant cancellations are being implemented. There’s no stop work order or notification, the university just finds out at the end of the month that it won’t be paid. All universities except Harvard haven’t gone to court, hoping there is something they can do which will keep Trump happy and get the payments restarted. They are telling the researchers involved not to say anything, so the public isn’t hearing about the impacts of these cancellations. Only in the Columbia case has the university been presented with a set of demands. For the others, they’re in the dark even about when they’ll hear what might cause funds to flow again.
It looks like the obvious thing they should all be doing (if they weren’t too paralyzed, fearful and hopeful there is some way to sell out to the dictatorship) is join forces and all go to court together.
Update: There’s a new statement from the Trustees about their plan to revamp the Senate. Nothing in the statement is particularly objectionable (the Senate has been ineffective and maybe needs reform), but there’s no explanation why this obscure governance issue seems to be the highest priority of the trustees at a time the university is facing financial disaster and an existential threat from outside. That some trustees see the Senate (and in particular the chair of its Executive Committee) as a bunch of “antisemites” may or may not be the explanation. For some comments about all this, see here.
This article at the Atlantic points out the obvious: that “antisemitism” was always a bogus pretext is confirmed by the new crazy letter from McMahon (written by Trump?) which drops the pretext completely.
What is Columbia going to do about grad students in experimental sciences, who need to work in labs to complete their training? Have they addressed this issue?
“Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected? ”
That is easy to answer, but whether McMahon will take it is another matter:
Sculptors, Violinists, Shakespeare experts
Peter-rumor is that both the medical school and the main campus will be granted pots of money from which the can apply for funds, perhaps like what JHU has set up via competitive requests. The rumored amounts of money are small (maybe 20% of typical grant volume) and no word on who decided who gets what…
Absolutely dreadful, and no end in sight, as Trump continues to successfully encroach inch-by-inch (and when stopped by a court just backing up and coming again from a different angle, or to a different judge).
And yes this is a lovely sentence I never could’ve imagined reading in my lifetime!:
“…Harvard yesterday received an absurd illiterate letter from Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment executive now responsible for education in the US.” 🙁
At our university we just had a faculty meeting about this today. Indeed it is important to distinguish four logically separate things going on: (1) cuts in overhead rates (we could separate this into (1a) on existing grants and (1b) on new, future grants), (2) stating a blanket policy that new grants will not be approved (as has recently been done, or threatened, to Harvard), (3) cancellation of certain existing grants (which is for sure happening), and — as mentioned by Josh Marshall — (4) “shadow cancelling”. What is (4)? The way NSF typically works is that the money is NOT sent to Universities in advance. Rather, the PI/University spends the money, and then invoices the government. And now they are simply just not paying those invoices. As to: why not go to court? This question was discussed specifically at our meeting today, and the answer was that the University would lose (as pertains to (4)). There is no promissory note from the government saying that they are obligated to pay. It’s just always operated on good faith in the past, LOL. Meanwhile, we were told that we absolutely CANNOT stop (or slow down) work on the grant, since that would give a pretext for yanking the funding — the government could say, look! they are not fulfilling the grant terms!
A federally funded scientist,
Thanks!
I’d be curious to hear informed legal opinions about challenges to the Trump actions. As you explain there are several different separate things going on, so the issues are undoubtedly complicated.
While not a lawyer, I just find it not credible that the president can pick some institution he doesn’t like, say “wouldn’t it be cool to not pay them?” and legally go ahead and do this. While there’s no promissory note, there must be some sort of contract between the university and the funding agency and the university should be able to go to court to enforce the contract.
My understanding has been that the legal underpinning of this has been the administration claiming the contractual right to cancel or freeze funding because an institution is in violation of, for instance Title VI. I’d think the university should be able to fight this in court on at least two fronts: that Trump is not following the procedures laid out in Title VI for investigating and determining a violation, as well as that they are not in violation. They could point to the McMahon letter as conclusive evidence that their money is being taken away without due process, for illegitimate reasons.
Before the cases got before a judge and Trump lost decisively, one might have thought there was nothing Mahdawi, law firms, the state of Maine, etc. could do to win against Trump in court. It looks like for now, the judicial system is still working, at least much of the time. To my mind universities need to grow a spine and start fighting there and elsewhere. In any case, I think they’re now finding out they don’t have a choice. Even if you think the odds are not great, why not go to court anyway? The odds that you’re going to get your money back by negotiating with Fascist clowns out to destroy you are even lower.
Peter, I don’t think this is good for your blood pressure.
Hi Peter,
My impression is that some of Columbia’s trustees will never be willing to stand up to Trump. The trustees make executive decisions, but they (at least on paper) don’t own the university. Being a non-profit, I would think a private university is not owned by any group except itself. Do you know if the university’s bylaws allow the faculty and the administration to change the situation?
Sakura-chan,
Yes, you’re right.
Peter Orland,
As far as I can tell, the Columbia board of trustees is answerable to no one, certainly not to the faculty. The intense push from them to quickly deal with a supposed governance problem with the Senate is very odd. The Senate has been quite ineffective, but when the trustees are in the middle of huge financial problems and an existential fight with the government, why is this the highest priority issue we’re hearing about from them?
The actions of the trustees are completely non-transparent, nobody seems to have any idea why they are doing what they are doing, or who among them is pushing for what. From publicly available information, there is only one trustee (Mendelson) who does things like contribute to Elise Stefanik. Quite possibly there are others though who are not MAGAites, but would be happy to see a lot of the changes made that the Trump people are demanding (especially the rooting out of any pro-Palestinian sentiment or activity at the university).
It looks like you accidentally copied the text
“There also appears to be at least some agreement between Columbia’s trustees and those in Washington who feel that support for the student protests was antisemitic, a position that angers university senators, who feel they are being slurred.”
into the President’s Letter, when it should just be in your quote from the NYT article, right?
4gravitons,
Thanks! Fixed.
I am also not able to give an informed legal opinion, but your thoughts certainly sound reasonable to me!
Perhaps you and others will be more interested, and more depressed, to hear about my impression of the overall “vibe” in the room. “Full capitulation” is close but not quite the feeling. It’s more like looking back at some ancient world (four months ago) wistfully but also with scorn – as in, can you IMAGINE that we used to steal money from the hardworking taxpayers of West Virginia to fund our science experiments; how absurd was that! Of course we won’t get our grants renewed; why should we?
Haven’t we always been at war with Eastasia?
Peter,
There is indeed a contract for every grant, award or contract from the Federal Government. It is tokenized in a document signed by a “cognizant authority”, with extensive terms and conditions. They always refer to the very extensive and tedious to read “FAR” = Federal Acquisition Regulations, which are backed by statute. I am not a lawyer, I’ve just dealt with both the technical and administrative side of grants.
Contra A federally funded scientist, there is even a distinct category in grant accounting for “obligated” funds. Includes what has been spent and also things which are not easy to stop, like custom orders, postdoctoral hires depending, etc. Multi-billion dollar businesses, whether non- or for profit, do not operate solely on good faith.
Just saw that a group of protesters stormed Butler. Have you heard anything on your end?
Anonymous alum,
I just went over to Butler to take a look, and the university sent out an email. I’ll add an update with the email and what I saw.
It is easy to find out what is going on in Butler on X. To summarize:
1.Seems about 100 or so protesters entered one room of Butler.
2.All non-protesters left except press.
3.Public safety arrived and told the protesters to show their IDs, have them recorded and leave. None of the protesters will do so and there is a somewhat heated physical standoff going on where public safety is blocking the only exit.
4.More protesters have tried to get into Butler due to concern for their comrades. They are forced to stay out by a now handcuffed door to keep them out. Some bystander students seem to trapped inside due to this…
One protester appears to have been hurt outside of Butler now-not sure how serious….
Dave,
From what I saw there, and from the videos I just saw online, the disturbing and dangerous situation was not in the reading room, but at the entrance to Butler. What I could see from outside was a bunch of people, almost all with cell-phones out, most not wearing masks or keffiyehs, who were trying to push into the library entrance. From the online videos, the security inside were trying to keep them out. All the while some people were chanting “let them out”, although what one was seeing was people who seemed to be trying to go in.
During the last year and a half, this was the first significant physical confrontation I’ve seen, and it was the sort of thing where someone could get hurt. I have no idea who the people in the Butler entrance were or what they were trying to do there (a few were press), but there were dozens of cell-phones, so this will be an extremely well-documented event.
Peter
Yes that was even more tense (I didn’t say the library scene was disturbing just somewhat tense with pushing). The let them out chant referred to letting the students protesting out of Butler, which security won’t allow without id.
Dave.
One thing that’s quite misleading is the video I’ve seen on X, which labels the video of people trying to push into the building as being people trying to push to get out. I’m still mystified who the people in that group at the entrance were and what they thought they were doing.
Strange-whose feed? Those people clearly don’t know our campus lol!
The clearest video I have seen (Mind you I am waiting for takeout in Newark and not looking right now) is on Olya Scootercaster’s X. What is going on is there are bystanders trapped in the lobby but there looks to be a larger group pushing to get inside presumably to help those inside. Security is pushing back and that’s where someone got hurt.
This is the Spectator report of what was going on at the Butler entrance around the time I was there.
“At around 5:03 p.m., the crowd rushed past the first set of doors, and several protesters entered the vestibule of Butler, pushing past Public Safety officers standing in the doorway. At least four Public Safety officers stood in the doorway between the vestibule and the library pushing protesters out of Butler.
“You have to stop pushing,” a Public Safety officer told the crowd.
“Stand back,” another Public Safety officer said. “Everybody back up.”
The officer repeatedly shouted, “Back up.”
Several members of the crowd told the Public Safety officers, “We cannot back up.”
One protester and one journalist were pushed to the ground.
“You’re hurting this guy right now,” one individual shouted.
At around 5:06 p.m., Public Safety officers secured the closed doors between the vestibule and Butler using handcuffs. Protesters tried to open the door from inside the vestibule.”
It looked like a lot of what was causing an unsafe situation was journalists and other curious onlookers trying to get into or close to the Butler vestibule, all with cell-phones out trying to get video.
Dave,
Yes, that’s the same “Freedomnews.tv” video I was looking at. Note that the videographer is inside the vestibule, with other photographers a significant part of the group there.
I’m looking at the Fox News video here
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6372487952112
taken from one of the helicopters. This purports to show Anti-Israel protestors, but it was the group of people trying to push their way in close to the entrance so as to get better video that I was observing from the back of the crowd.. Some of these may have been protestors, but most I suspect were just trying to get a good cell-phone shot of what was happening at the entrance that security had shut down.
The other thing that is disturbing here now is the loud low flying news helicopters, I think now joined by an NYPD one.
This is an open, small campus, from the ground you can see what is going on, having helicopters hovering overhead seems hard to justify.
Seems likely a lot of arrests-the video I just saw was 10 seconds and showed 14 students in zip ties being led out of Butler. There were more coming when the video cut short. My guess is nearly every person in that reading room got led out in zip ties.
I’ve moved the post content about the Butler story to a new post, may or may not move the comments (which is not so easily done). For more discussion of this, please put comments now on the next post, not this one.
> There is indeed a contract for every grant, award or contract from the Federal Government.
Also not a lawyer, but I worked with a federal contractor. Even though I’m just a worker and not management (I don’t deal with negotiations or contracts), we were all required to take a short training that explained some of the unique attributes of federal contracts. (This was years ago but I doubt things changed.) One of the more startling ones was that the government could always unilaterally cancel a contract. (It weirdly was also illegal to perform work towards a contract and not charge for it, although I have trouble believing companies don’t do this all the time if they accidentally go a little past budget.) Maybe they were over-simplifying things for us, but it sure made government contracts sound risky.
However there are tons of rules on “fairness” of granting contracts, so hopefully there is something in there that makes this illegal. For instance maybe it is legal to abruptly cancel a contract if that work is no longer desired, but it would be illegal to cancel a contract and reassign it to someone else because they sucked up to you. After all, congress has the power of the purse and appropriated these funds. Doesn’t that require the funding agencies to fund _someone_ with it? I don’t really know how the checks and balances work here.
(non-Butler-incident comment)
Kevin,
FAR gets very complicated and its rules are for both the contractor and the Feds to follow. It is too simple to say the govt can unilaterally cancel contracts. There are many rules constraining the authorities who make these decisions, and suits have been filed and won when contracts are cancelled capriciously.
Recent attempts to lower the indirect cost rates and overtly cut the DEI parts of awards have been restrained in Federal courts, and the judges’ decisions there were very contract based.