The Situation at Columbia XX

It looks like the efforts of the Columbia trustees to negotiate “in good faith” with the Fascist dictator have failed so far. I guess this is good news, because the alternative would be reading an announcement further solidifying our reputation as “Vichy on the Hudson”. Maybe the trustees will some day realize they don’t have any choice except to go to court and fight. In the meantime, according to the NYT:

“We understand this finding is part of our ongoing discussions with the government. Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on our campus,” a spokesman for Columbia said in a statement, adding that the school would continue to work with the government to address those issues.

The “Stand Columbia” group is solidifying its reputation as “Bend the knee, Columbia” by immediately coming out with a call for capitulation, without even knowing what we would be capitulating to.

Update: The Fox News story about this gets it right, with lede paragraph

The Trump administration on Thursday accused Columbia University of having violated federal law through its “deliberate indifference” toward anti-Israel protests that have been taking over the campus since Oct. 7, 2023.

This is not about the university allowing antisemitic attacks on students, it’s about Israel, with Columbia standing accused of allowing protests against the Israeli war on Gaza. Columbia was guilty of this until a year ago, but since then has had a policy of not allowing anti-Israel protests on campus, as the genocidal nature of the Gaza war becomes increasingly clear.

The New York Times has an excellent essay today by Steven Pinker, entitled Harvard Derangement Syndrome. This is about Harvard, not Columbia, but the two institutions are very similar, so most of what he writes applies here (except that they are now in open warfare with Trump, we’re trying to appease him).

Pinker has been one of Harvard’s most prominent critics on the subject of the excesses of identity politics, and he’s often been right about that. But about accusations of “antisemitism”, here’s what he has to say:

For what it’s worth, I have experienced no antisemitism in my two decades at Harvard, and nor have other prominent Jewish faculty members. My own discomfort instead is captured in a Crimson essay by the Harvard senior Jacob Miller, who called the claim that one in four Jewish students feels “physically unsafe” on campus “an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.” The obsession with antisemitism at Harvard represents, ironically, a surrender to the critical-social-justice credo that the only wrong worthy of condemnation is group-against-group bigotry. Instead of directly rebutting the flaws of the anti-Zionist platform, such as its approval of violence against civilians and its historical blind spots, critics have tried to tar it with the sin of antisemitism. But that can devolve into futile semantic disputation about the meaning of the word “antisemitism,” which, our council has argued, can lead to infringements of academic freedom.

Update: I haven’t always agreed with Matt Strassler about things, but he’s got it right

As far as I can see, the government is merely using Jewish students as pawns, pretending to attack Harvard on their behalf while in truth harboring no honest concern for their well-being. The fact that the horrors and nastiness surrounding the Gaza war are being exploited by the government as cover for an assault on academic freedom and scientific research is deeply cynical and exceedingly ugly.

Update: What I for a while mistakenly thought happened yesterday did happen today. Harvard went to court to challenge the removal of its ability to enroll foreign students and immediately got a temporary restraining order.

I have been told that one reason the Columbia trustees caved in March was that they had legal advice that Trump could do exactly this and that it would be a disaster for the university that they could do nothing about. We now know that this was very bad advice. So far, the court system is holding and absurdly illegal actions like this are often being immediately struck down. If, as seems all too possible, the trustees are about to cave-in further on the basis of legal advice that they have no choice because of things like this, they need to immediately fire some lawyers and rethink what they have been doing.

Update: Rise Up, Columbia has some analysis of the day’s events. They quote the opinion of a law school faculty member that the latest attempt to pressure Columbia is something that will quickly be enjoined or fall apart if the university does not cave, but goes to court:

It is very rare for an agency to complete the review this quickly, and to come to a final determination this quickly. That suggests to me that there were short cuts taken to prove the conclusion the Trump Administration wanted (similar to the Department of Education finding, which was legally insufficient and is invoked by reference in this press release). It would quickly be enjoined or fall apart, in my opinion, if Columbia filed suit instead of working with the administration to damage the university.