The trustees on Friday changed the Charters and Statutes of the university, something it seems they can just do when they feel like it, without consulting with anyone or telling the community what they’ve done. Stand Columbia (Tao Tan) is pleased they’ve done this, so has checked the new version against the old, you can see his analysis here.
This has all been done as part of the capitulation to Trump and those forces inside and outside the university that want to make sure that any anti-Israeli protests are punished as severely as possible. The changes to the statutes remove control of the discipline process from the Senate and put it completely under the control of the trustees. The Senate no longer has any say in the Rules of University Conduct, these will be set by the trustees (with the help of the provost’s office). The disciplinary process will be managed purely by the provost’s office, which vets anyone involved to be sure that they will follow trustee policy. If you’re wondering how Columbia could now be expelling students for participating in a library reading room non-violent protest against genocide (a sort of harsh penalty for non-violent protest unheard of in the institution’s history) this is how it’s being done.
Of course the reason that they’re doing it is that Stephen Miller has demanded it. If they don’t expel students who protest the Gaza genocide, Columbia’s federal funding will again be removed. No matter how awful the Gaza situation gets, if you try and protest it on the Columbia campus this fall, you will face expulsion. I doubt we’ll see many cases of this actually happening, the threat alone will do an excellent job of keeping everyone quiet.
Bari Weiss has spent 25 years fighting for punishment of anti-Israeli sentiment at Columbia. Her Free Press yesterday explains how this will now work:
A senior Trump administration official familiar with the negotiations said that “this is just step one.” The official added: “In late August, the kids and faculty come back to campus, and many of them believe they—and not the board or administration—are in charge of Columbia. . . . The substantive challenge is resetting the balance of power and reasserting the leadership of the school and letting the students and faculty know that for the first time in many decades, there will be order on campus and consequences for breaking the rules.”
If that doesn’t happen, “the administration is not going to let Columbia embarrass us,” the senior Trump administration official added. “We’ll be watching you.”
Among the many messages from Shipman and others announcing the new cave-in, I didn’t see any discussion of these changes. There were a lot of claims that Columbia was not giving up its independence, and it remains true that it is not Stephen Miller who is deciding to expel students. Instead he’ll be calling up the trustees and telling them they have to do it, since he “is not going to let Columbia embarrass us.” Actually, since everyone involved knows he can do this if displeased, he won’t have to do anything: they’ll be sure not to make any decisions Stephen Miller would not approve of.
The FAQ here asks everyone to
Please use this form to report violations stemming from demonstrations and protests under the Rules of University Conduct.
There, if you see anyone protesting the genocide in Gaza, you can file an “Alleged Protest/Demonstration Violation”.
It sounds like to me that you should be thanking Stand Columbia/Tao instead of bashing them since they (1) explain processes that you didn’t understand, and (2) flag changes that you — let’s be honest here — never would have noticed.
A Stand Columbia supporter,
Yes. Thanks!
Peter, any guidance from the trustees on what specific actions or language will get flagged as “antisemitic”? What constitutes a protest? Will walking silently to Pupin Hall in a group wearing Stop Genocide T-shirts get you detained or removed from the campus? How about a keffieh or something more identifiable, but not mentioning Israel or Jews in any way?
From the looks of Tan’s analysis it seems they are saying “this is private property and if we want to ban something, then it’s our prerogative”. This seems pretty open ended, and could include prohibitions on symbolic speech. Pictures of watermelons could land you in hot water.
Seriously, we have had questions from students and postdocs about safely attending events at Columbia, and previously other than bag checks and other inconveniences you deemed it safe enough. Now I am wondering if we should advise them not to go there at all.
Amit,
Good questions. No bag checks actually, this is not that kind of security check. The main reason for the security is id check to make sure that you’re a Columbia affiliate. The reason for the new harsh discipline policy/no masks, etc. is that they want to be able to immediately identify and suspend anyone involved in a pro-Palestinian demonstration and then expel them or suspend them for multiple years. The id of such people is deactivated and they then can’t get past the id check and back on to campus to participate in a protest.
Maybe a good way to understand what’s going on is that the whole problem started with right-wing news media accounts of the protests and that’s what they now desperately want to avoid. If you’re doing something that might cause a NY Post reporter to write a story about “new anti-Israel protests” at Columbia, they will hustle you off-campus as quickly as they can.
If you’re not intending to demonstrate against Israel, you should have no problem. I haven’t heard of people having problems with keffiyehs/t-shirts/watermelons/buttons, but also see very few people doing this.
Thank you Peter. One more question, what about faculty-led protests? Say some professors from Literature or Middle Eastern Studies decide to assert their constitutional rights to assembly and free speech. This seems highly likely, even I am aware of Edward Said’s _Orientalism_, and his shadow likely looms large over the humanities faculties at Columbia. I assume the trustees and their kangaroo court cannot take away tenure but if they can deactivate a faculty member’s ID then basically that’s the same thing, other than they are still getting a paycheck.
Amit,
Honestly, there has been very little organized protest from the faculty this past year, either about Gaza or about what the trustees have been doing. The one on-campus protest I can think of was organized by the group CUIMC Stands Up, see here
https://www.cuimcstandsup.org/events/cuimc-stands-up-rally-04142025
Other protests have been small and held outside the university gates so as to not be subject to university rules.
There are elaborate rules governing protests, which start by assuring us that we have the right to protest. I don’t though understand what rules a group must follow now to get approval for an on-campus protest, or why such things have been so rare during the past year.
Read this.
https://x.com/WKCosmo/status/1949150792763523171
Tes,
To address Kinney’s points.
What the Trump people are doing is completely illegal and very different than what other administrations have done in the past.
There’s a good argument that the power to control grant funding was abused in the past, by administrations which used this to pressure universities to do what they wanted. The way this was done typically was by issuing a “Dear Colleague” letter, which explained how the administration was going to interpret civil rights law. This put the universities on notice that they should follow this new interpretation, otherwise there might be an investigation opened, a legal process would ensue, and at the end of it there was a danger they could lose federal funding. This was a powerful threat.
Trump could legally have pursued this tactic. Actually, he did. Very soon after the inauguration for instance this
https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-sffa-v-harvard-109506.pdf
Dear Colleague letter was issued. A legal process was started, at the moment there’s an injunction stopping enforcement of it, see
https://www.leonalcala.com/post/legal-brief-federal-courts-block-u-s-department-of-educations-dei-guidance-in-three-cases
In Columbia’s case, Trump did something completely different. On March 7th he ordered the non-payment of \$400 million in grant money owed the University. This was completely illegal. The legal problem for Columbia was that this particular illegality is not so easy to get stopped in a timely manner. If you have a purely contractual dispute with the government, you need to file suit in the Court of Claims, which will start a long multiple year process. This Court will not do a summary judgment or issue injunctions.
Later, extortion letters were sent to Columbia making various demands, and last week’s news was that Columbia had given in to the extortion, agreeing to do a list of things in return for getting back the money contractually owed to it. The extortionist retains the right to again illegally withhold funds whenever he wants the university to do anything.
Many people were legitimately upset in the past by what was arguably abuse of the civil rights enforcement powers to make threats by Democratic administrations. But it’s really important to make the distinction between an administration that follows laws and the Constitution, and an autocratic dictatorship which breaks them.
Peter, how come you don’t submit this reply to Will’s thread? I’m interested in seeing a discussion of this between you two.
Tes,
I don’t do Twitter arguments. If Will is interested in discussing this further, maybe someone can encourage him to respond here.