The long-awaited second cave-in by the Columbia trustees to Trump demands was announced yesterday, details here. A few initial comments:
- Columbia law professor David Pozen explains that this is part of a new form of autocratic government in the US:
the agreement grows out of the executive branch’s first-ever cutoff of congressionally appropriated funds to a university, so as to punish that university and impel it to adopt sweeping reforms, without any pretense of following the congressionally mandated procedures. Lawyers have been debating the exact circumstances under which the executive branch may freeze particular grants and contracts to particular schools. Yet as far as I’m aware, no lawyer outside the government has even attempted to defend the legality of the initial cutoff that brought Columbia to its knees and, thereafter, to the “negotiating” table.
We’re now governed not by laws and courts, but by a dictator, who can at any moment take illegal actions to try and compel you to do what he wants. Laws and courts are replaced by extorted “agreements” like this one, where the dictator agrees to leave you alone (for now) in return for your agreement to a specific list of demands.
- The deal the trustees have negotiated in order to (for now) get money back and stop further illegal actions is not as bad as expected. It’s mostly a mix of the already agreed to set of policies designed to ruthlessly stop any criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, as well as shutting down past DEI and admission favoritism policies that already were either banned by court decisions or likely to be banned by legitimately legal changes in federal government policies. This is much less than the demands the dictator’s people had been making. The Chronicle story about this has:
“Columbia couldn’t tolerate the administration holding up billions of dollars in current and future grants, so they paid what is essentially ransom,” said Michael C. Dorf, a professor of law at Cornell University. “The ransom that they ended up paying strikes me as a pretty good value if you decide you’re going to pay ransom. But the problem with paying ransom is that it incentivizes the taking of more hostages.”
- The only reason they were able to get these relatively favorable terms was that Harvard decided to go to court and fight the illegality. Harvard has won a series of injunctions stopping illegal actions regarding foreign students, and appears likely to very soon win a summary judgment that the withholding of grant funds was illegal. In late March, Columbia’s initial cave-in (in return for nothing) made it look as if there was no way to stop the exercise of dictatorial powers. While the Columbia trustees adopted a policy of publicly supporting the new dictatorship (telling us that it was all legal, and all necessary to deal with the fact that our community had a terrible “antisemitism” problem), throughout the country luckily other groups and institutions did go to court and fought back. They’ve had mixed success, but have slowed down the onslaught and caused Trump to back off at least for now in some areas.
In early April the trustees were about to sign off on a second cave-in much more onerous than the one announced yesterday, but stopped this when they saw that Harvard was going to fight. They can argue that the set of facts Harvard was facing was different, but there’s no denying that their choice not to fight but to capitulate to extortion by the new dictatorship did damage to US democracy, while Harvard’s decision to fight reversed some of that damage (at least for now).
What Harvard has done has helped Columbia and other institutions a great deal by blunting the dictator’s onslaught. What Columbia has done has hurt all other universities, as the success here of illegal dictatorial action will encourage its use against others. This wider campaign surely is just about to get started, maybe could have been stopped by a Columbia refusal to give in.
- The really big winners here? Those so devoted to supporting the Israeli government slaughter of civilians and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank that they were willing to collaborate with and help a Fascist dictatorship destroy US democracy and seriously damage the university in order to get what they wanted: expulsion of student demonstrators and a campus lockdown that would put a stop to the demonstrations, together with university support for a campaign to characterize opposition to genocide and ethnic cleansing as “antisemitism”.
- A crucial part of what the trustees agreed to is in section 8c:
Nothing in this Agreement prevents the United States (even during the period of the Agreement) from conducting subsequent compliance reviews, investigations, defunding or litigation related to Columbia’s actions occurring after the Effective Date of the this Agreement.
So, the trustees explicitly agree that if Columbia does anything Trump doesn’t like, he can defund the university again. Instead of going to court to fight illegality, the agreement explicitly acknowledges that the illegality is a tactic that can be used against Columbia at any time it offends the dictator. What this means in practice is every university decision from now on will be made through the lens of “will this upset Steven Miller?”
- Sone things to watch for:
Will the university gates be reopened, or will we live in security lockdown forever?
Our next president will have to meet with Steven Miller’s approval, and be willing to run the university in a way that will not annoy Steven Miller. Who is that going to be?
As the genocide in Gaza proceeds, will anyone at Columbia be protesting this on campus?
The trustees have agreed to a discipline process designed to achieve the expulsion of anti-genocide demonstrators. This requires the participation of the provost, some administrators, deans and faculty. Will we be told who has agreed to do this dirty work?
There’s a lot of good commentary about this coming out. The NYT published this piece by Suresh Naidu. Some people at CUIMC have created a wonderful satirical version of Columbia Spectator, call The Specter. They’re covering the cave-in with Columbia Buys Back Its Federal Grants and Sells Off Its Spine.
Update: Stand Columbia (Tao Tan) is ecstatic. Illegal dictatorial action has gotten him changes at Columbia he has always wanted. The only problem he sees is that maybe they won’t be as much as he wants. He is creating a Stand Columbia Society Scorecard so that, in the case of insufficient devotion to the new order, Steven Miller will get a heads up that he needs to pull funding again.
Lawrence Summers is also very happy that extortion by the dictatorship is getting him what he wants. “the best day higher education has had in the last year.”!!