{"id":14660,"date":"2025-04-30T11:44:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14660"},"modified":"2025-04-30T18:04:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T22:04:44","slug":"the-situation-at-columbia-xii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14660","title":{"rendered":"The Situation at Columbia XII"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excellent news from Vermont<\/a>: Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was released on orders of the judge in his case. This is yet another positive indication that resistance to the new dictatorship is possible, with the US judicial system still functional enough to often stop the illegal exercise of dictatorial powers. Unfortunately the Columbia trustees still have not realized they need to resist and try going to the courts like Harvard.<\/p>\n

In local resistance news, at Rise Up, Columbia<\/a> you can read some of the texts of speeches given at the 25-hour speakout here. In the Spectator, there’s a letter from Jewish students at Columbia and Barnard<\/a> about the abuse of accusations of antisemitism that is at the root of the current situation here.<\/p>\n

Still no news about the ongoing negotiations between Trump’s people and the trustees. Unfortunately it has become much clearer to me why the trustees so far have not decided to go to court to resist illegal demands from the would-be dictator. Besides being afraid of the consequences of confronting the dictator, some likely see this as an opportunity to get changes made here that they want anyway, and would otherwise have great difficulty achieving. Looking at the list of trustees, only one (Victor Mendelson) regularly donates to Republican candidates, recently to Elise Stefanik. But many of the others (and major donors like Robert Kraft) are strong supporters of the Israeli government and see pro-Palestinian protests or sympathies here as a major problem that needs action. From their point of view, the demands they have agreed to so far are not a cave-in to Trump that has ruined the reputation of the university but a positive step in fixing the ruining of the university’s reputation caused by the pro-Palestinian protests. Given the clownish incoherent behavior of those around Trump, it’s hard to guess what their current demands are, but as long as they’re careful to cater to bogus accusations of “antisemitism”, they may very well be able to convince the trustees to not resist by going to court, but to a further cave-in of some form.<\/p>\n

In relevant news from elsewhere, Harvard has released reports about antisemitism and Islamophobia<\/a>. I believe the situation at Harvard is very much like the one here at Columbia. Bringing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to these campuses has caused a lot of fear, but is hitting one side a lot harder: the reports show that 15 percent of Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, while more than three times as many (47 percent) Muslim students feel unsafe. While 61 percent of Jewish students are worried about expressing their views, 92 percent of the Muslim students felt this way.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Multiple people have assured me that the reason Columbia is not suing the Trump administration over illegal grant cancellations is that it’s not possible to do this while negotiating, and that for now Columbia is negotiating. Harvard however seems to have shown that this is not true. They have gone to court over the illegal government actions, and publicly refused Trump’s demands. What is the Trump administration reaction? According to a new story from CNN<\/a>, the Trump people are still trying to negotiate with Harvard:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is not enough, and there\u2019s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut. So we\u2019re not having a conversation of what is, you know, releasing the spigot again. We\u2019re not. The spigot is closed, if anything, getting tighter right now,\u201d a White House official told CNN when asked about Harvard\u2019s recent actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is an avenue, a very clear avenue, a very real situation in where, you know, they can commit to what we\u2019re asking \u2013 reasonable asks. This isn\u2019t something like not reasonable, where we could have a conversation about funding,\u201d they told CNN…<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is expected to formally communicate with Harvard again in the coming days…<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a positive step in acknowledging the truth and acknowledging that civil rights need to be prioritized,\u201d the White House official said. \u201cBy no means is this the final step that they need to take to address all the things that they need to change in their campus. But if this is their way of giving a good faith effort, we\u2019ll be here to monitor and make sure that this is something that\u2019s followed through on.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hoping the Columbia trustees are reading this, kicking themselves for the time they’ve wasted (they could have filed a lawsuit nearly two months ago when the illegal actions started), and telling the university’s lawyers to go to court now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excellent news from Vermont: Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was released on orders of the judge in his case. This is yet another positive indication that resistance to the new dictatorship is possible, with the US judicial system still functional enough … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-situation-at-columbia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14660"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14666,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14660\/revisions\/14666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}