There are some unusual things going on here today. The central university computer system has been having outages since Monday night. No news on the source of these, but this just came in:
CUIT has been working around the clock to restore services following yesterday’s widespread IT outage. As of this morning, many UNI-authenticated services have been restored, and teaching and learning tools are operational, including Courseworks, Zoom, Lionmail, and Google Drive. Additional systems will continue to come back online throughout the day. We will continue to update you with additional information as it becomes available.
In a comment, Alessandro Strumia points to this Twitter post claiming hackers have broken in the Columbia admissions department computers. Just about everything on that site is nonsense, so no reason to believe this, but we’ll see…
I don’t want to try and moderate a discussion here of NYC politics, but will just point out that for the past few weeks, much of the campaign to stop Zohran Mamdani was based on the same kind of attacks as those leveled at Columbia anti-genocide protesters. Shai Davidai is leading an effort to have the IRS go after the student newspaper because it endorsed Mamdani. This kind of thing doesn’t seem to be working, with Mamdani last night decisively winning the NYC Democratic mayoral primary.
Recently I’ve been getting better insight into the point of view of the Columbia trustees. The depressing conclusion I’m drawing is that the reason they’re not fighting Trump is that many of them don’t want to. What I see as a Fascist dictator acting illegally they see as someone governing very much in the interests of the well-to-do, so no threat to them personally. Much of what he’s doing they have no problem with, so why not just go along with it? The taking of grant funding is a big problem for them, but they don’t see any easy way to get it back through the legal system and don’t want to fight with Trump, so they’re focused purely on reaching some sort of settlement with his people (which in practice may be Stephen Miller).
Fox News today has a remarkable opinion piece by one of the trustees, Shoshana Shendelman. It contains a version of various MAGA talking points about how terrible Columbia and other universities are:
Higher education is at a crossroads. As a scientist and a trustee of Columbia University, I have witnessed firsthand how an institution once hailed as a pillar of intellectual progress can be threatened not only by enemies from without, but also by an ideology from within—one that celebrates chaos over creation, grievance over growth, and destruction over discourse…
However, in the spring of 2024, my home was filled with students (my children and many of their classmates) who no longer felt safe on Columbia’s campus. Their fears didn’t stem from intellectual challenge or debate—it stemmed from intimidation. Protesters, many masked, others emboldened by institutional tolerance, took control of the physical environment of the university. They shut down classrooms, buildings and libraries…
The real Columbia—my Columbia—is a monument of advancement shaped by generations of human endeavor. Monuments, however, can be vandalized and dismantled. And these ongoing campaigns have not been acts of civil dialogue; they have been acts of desecration. Of blaming rather than solving. Of tearing apart instead of sewing together. The world is full of destroyers. Their work is quick, loud, and rarely lasting…
Let’s rebuild institutions like Columbia together to ensure that hatred and chaos do not dominate, and everyone feels included and respected. This is our generation’s moment to lead. Building necessitates bravery, and in turn our courage will spread across America. Let’s build again.
Shendelman was the target of this article at the Intercept describing her role at Columbia and problems at her company, Applied Therapeutics. Much of the opinion piece is a personal complaint about this:
After voicing my concerns regarding antisemitism on campus, I became a target of certain media voices determined to erase decades of my work, service, and scholarship with a few calculated, malevolent strokes of a pen.
Up until now, the Columbia trustees have acted in private, keeping discussions of what they are doing confidential. It’s disturbing that one of them is now going on Fox News, presumably with the approval of the rest (I’m finding it hard to believe she would do this without checking with the board) and putting out a picture of the university as threatened from within by antisemitism and an evil ideology, thus needing a house-cleaning and a campaign to make Columbia great again. Yes, there has been an ongoing campaign to destroy a great institution, but going on Fox News with accusations like hers is to join that right-wing campaign. The trustees should make clear that this is not their agenda.
Update: Realizing I didn’t understand what Shendelman sees as the main problem with Columbia now, I reread her piece carefully. Here’s what she says is the main problem facing the university now:
Do we permit this new form of campus intimidation to silence those with opposing views and destroy educational opportunities for an entire generation?
This is very weird. The Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the scientific research enterprise at Columbia, thus destroying educational opportunities in science for years to come. It also has launched a campaign to intimidate anti-genocide protesters, with threats of jail, deportation, suspension, etc. So, as an argument that Columbia needs to fight the Trump administration this makes perfect sense. But from context, the “campus intimidation” she is worried about is not from Trump, but from anti-genocide protesters and their supposed antisemitism, which makes her an ally of the Trump campaign against Columbia. I end up completely mystified by who is supposedly silencing who and who is destroying educational opportunities not just for today’s students, but for “an entire generation”. It sounds like it’s the protesters, but the only educational opportunity they’ve destroyed this semester is a few hours of study time in a library.
Since Shendelman says she is writing as a trustee of Columbia university, the trustees really should clarify who it is who is “silenc[ing] those with opposing views and destroy[ing] educational opportunities for an entire generation?” and what they intend to do about it.
I must comment, even if censored out.
Shendelman’s comment is exactly what I feel here, except we have had no real violence on campus and only very modest demonstrations. But there is an extremely real feeling, backed by campus money, that the administration is exceedingly DEI. They really have truly discriminated against whites, Asians, and men for ordinary faculty jobs.
It takes extraordinary effort , often in the form “he’s a shoo-in for the NAS” to hire a WASP or Jewish male. We admittedly have had good luck with lily-white Miami Cubans.
I’m very very glad I retired when I did.
Doug McDonald,
You do a good job of portraying the resentment at “DEI” hiring and making clear that’s a big part of what is fueling the anti-university campaign from some quarters, but it’s off-topic. Shendelman says nothing about DEI, you’re just reading something into her words which is not there, thinking your resentments are her resentments. Her resentments seem to me more about supposed “anti-Western” and “anti-capitalist” ideology. Shendelman herself likely has been beneficiary of Columbia’s DEI policies of encouraging women graduate students in the sciences (and possibly also in diversifying the traditionally male board of trustees).
A lot of university DEI policies were encouraged by the federal government, through legal means. The new administration has every right to try to discourage them through legal means. What has happened at Columbia is not a legal change of policy about DEI. So far it has had nothing to do with DEI but has been all about “antisemitism” and conducted in an outrageously illegal manner.
All, if you think this is your chance to finally argue here about identity politics, think again. Someday there may be actual news about a DEI phase of Trump’s battle with Columbia, but this hasn’t happened yet.