Columbia University has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a precondition for restoring $400 million in federal funding that earlier this month the government had pulled, amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
More on Columbia’s capitulation can be found here: “Columbia bans face masks in protests and acquiesces to other Trump administration demands,” by Philissa Cramer, JTA, March 21, 2025:
(JTA) — Columbia University is banning the use of face masks by protesters and hiring dozens of police officers as it seeks to win back federal funding cut by the Trump administration to penalize the school for its pro-Palestinian protests.
Columbia also says it will review its admissions practices, citing “a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment.” The school had not previously disclosed the downturn, which follows both high-profile anti-Israel protests on campus and a Supreme Court ruling barring universities from weighing race in admissions decisions.
A ban on face masks and changes to admissions had been among the demands laid out last week by the Trump administration for the school to regain $400 million in federal grants, mostly for science research, cut over what it said were threats against Jewish students on Columbia’s campus….
Just in time, Columbia acted to satisfy most — though apparently not all — of the Trump administration’s demands for changes in its policies. It had been given a deadline, then that deadline had been extended, to provide its answer to the list of demands.
Columbia has agreed to hire 36 special police who will have the authority to arrest both students and non-students on campus. The university will also ban the wearing of face masks, which pro-Hamas demonstrators have used to hide their identities. These measures will make it easier to identify malefactors on campus, and to arrest those who engage in proscribed behavior, which this past year included harassing Jewish students and surrounding some who were thus briefly held hostage, disrupting classes taught by Israeli faculty members, and chanting antisemitic slogans calling for the disappearance of the Jewish state and its replacement by a 23rd Arab one — “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” and a genocidal threat directed at all Jews — “Intifada Now.”
But by far the most important demand is that concerning how Middle Eastern studies are taught at Columbia. Here the university commits to hiring a vice provost who will now be in charge of the relevant departments, taking away the authority of the professors who have proven to be solidly anti-Israel; their number includes Rashid Khalidi, Hamid Dabashi, and Joseph Massad, all of them deeply committed to the “cause of Palestine.” These three have been an unholy trinity, determined to hire only those who agree with that cause, and share their deep anti-Israel animus. They also make sure that courses on the Middle East present the Palestinians, not the Jews, as the indigenous inhabitants of the Land of Israel, though Jews were living on the land for the past 3500 years, while the first Muslim Arabs arrived in the area only in the seventh century. In their imaginative and sinister versions of history, “the Jews,” who had no historic connection to the land, simply stole it from its real owners, the Arabs, and it is the ferocious Israeli response to the understandable Arab attempt to take back the land that was stolen from them that explains the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Below is the paragraph where Columbia commits to appointing a Senior Vice Provost to take over the direction of Middle East studies, across several academic departments and programs. He or she will review the course offerings, and the substance of each course, for evidence of imbalance; and review the leadership — meaning that such professors as Khalidi, Dabashi, and Massad will be stripped of most of their malign authority to choose new faculty — until now, no pro-Israel scholars needed bother to apply — and of their ability to ensure all courses conform to their one-sided version of Middle Eastern history.
Here is the most important paragraph in Columbia’s letter to the government about the measures it will now take to assure a more balanced coverage of Israel and its Arab enemies:
Appointment of new Senior Vice Provost. As part of our ongoing efforts, we are appointing a new Senior Vice Provost this week with a focus on promoting excellence in Regional Studies. As part of this portfolio, the Senior Vice Provost, acting with the authority of the Provost Office, will conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting immediately with the Middle East. This review will include the Center for Palestine Studies; the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; the Middle East Institute; the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs; the School of International and Public Affairs Middle East Policy major; and other University programs focused on the Middle East (together, the “Middle East Programs”). In this role, the Senior Vice Provost will: (1) review the educational programs to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced; (2) review all aspects of leadership and curriculum; (3) steward the creation of new programs to address the full range of fields; (4) create a standard review process for the hiring of non-tenured faculty across the University, partnering with the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and the schools; (5) review the processes for approving curricular changes; (6) following academic procedures, make recommendations to the President and Provost about any necessary changes, academic restructuring, or investments that will ensure academic excellence and complementarity across all programs in the given academic areas.
I wonder what Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, and Hamid Dabashi are now thinking. Their scandalous reign is over. The time when they could bully Jewish students in the classroom, or assign a skewed reading list brimming with ani-Israel bias, or lecture in their classroom about the sheer wonderfulness of Hamas and the monstrousness of the Jewish state, and hire only faculty who, like them, were relentlessly anti-Israel, are now over. Fun while it lasted for these professorial bullies, but for them, the days of wine and roses are definitely over. Now the grownups are being put in charge of Middle East Studies at Columbia. And with the government ready to cut funding again for the university if it fails to deliver on its promises, Columbia is not going to take any chances. It will now hew to the straight and narrow. Its students, and our country, will be the better for it.
carpediadem says
Columbia should be put on probation for at least a year, make the changes and if one skerrick changes thev lose funding permanently.
So sick of these guys.
mgoldberg says
Yes…. why do they get off from their own criminal acts this last year and a half?
mgoldberg says
Yes…. why do they get off from their own criminal acts this last year and a half?
Keys says
Agree!!
No tolerance for “say you will when you won’t”.
mgoldberg says
But why would the new ‘provost’ be any less progressive than some or most of thee guys who’ve erased western civilizations great positive points. The leftists also cleverly erase all those achievements and I’ll wager that the provist will pander to those elements of ‘progressive’ thinking or at least ‘Liberal’ thinking to a large extent. And that doesn’t mean the scene changes all that much; Israel seen as an aggressor and arabs as victims of western civilization. The arresting of anyone who prevents others from studying or aattending is the key point to open up the tyranny of the jihad they’ve build now in the colleges.
Leonidas says
islam is as Hamas does! Fortunately
Islam ( submission)will collapse ,like USSR in 1989,if we DENOUNCE pseudo prophet criminal MUHAMMAD,who according to eye witnesses in his biography( Sira) and traditions( Hadith) he was a pedophile( wife Aisha was 9 yo), rapist, murderer, torturer , bandit (keeping20% of the booty for himself),liar and sex-slave trader, deserving no reverence but our contempt and also LIBERATE THE MUSLIM WOMEN from barbaric misogynistic Sharia Law.The Koran ( recitation)states women are dumb, less intelligent than men,wives must be beaten for disobedience by their hudbands ,all women will go to hell, unless in the last day their husband says he was pleased with her and all women must hide their curves and wear burkas ,so that men will not be aroused to rape them.Islam is a misogynistic ,violent , imperialist political ideology of Muslim supremacy ISLAMOFASCISM(>70%), DISGUISED AS A RELIGION(< 30%) that strives through violent Jihad and soft cultural Jihad of immigration ( dawa, Hijra)to subjugate the World.Jihadists are promised, if killed battling infidels-kafirs,) they will go to Paradise to enjoy 72 virgins ,taking along 70 of their relatives regardless of their sins!Muslim Immigration is Hijra( flight)to take over the country they settle in ,like Muhammad did to Yatrib-Medina.This, along with forced child marriages and four wives per man ( Bin Laden had 52 siblings and 16 children),the muslims will soon outnumber the local populations and will impose Sharia law .Withdraw from UN MIGRANT COMPACT ,that falsely claims immigration is a Human Right expecting Western countries to accept and provide for an endless number of muslim illegal immigrants ,thus islamizing them. Muslim “refugees “should stay in Turkey or vast rich Saudi Arabia ,until they can return to their countries.We must denounce islamic Sharia (=way)law of blasphemer,apostate ,homosexual , adulterer and hypocrite executions,misogyny,honor killings by stoning,hand amputations for theft,child brides,girls exclusion from schools,halal meat from tortured animals,clitorectomies,subjugation and segregation of women,burkas and Sharia banning of short skirts,bikinis,dancing,singing,painting ,sculptures of people,dogs,pork,alcohol and beauty contests .Demand gender equality for ALL muslim women.Punish severely those that kill apostates from Islam,blasphemers,adulterers or muslim hypocrites.Islam is incompatible with our freedom of speech, gender equality, values,way of life, Human Rights, Constitution, Republic and population stability needed to sustain Life on Earth.Tolerating intolerant Islam is cultural suicide!For more info on Islam go to YOU TUBE for: ApostateProphet,Exmuslims,David Wood,Ayan Hirsi Ali,BrigitteGabriel,BillWarner,Politicalislam.org,PamelaGeller,Jihadwatch,Nonie Darwish , Wafa Sultan,Richard Dawkins on Islam,Ani Cyrus , Geert Wilder,obsession – what the West needs to know.Also Google: Wikiislam, The religion of peace,barenakedislam, MEMRI etc.Watch the deposition of Ayan Hirsi Ali in Congress on"how to defeatIslam":https://www.hoover.org/research/challenge-dawa-political-islam-ideology-and-movement-and-how-counter-it
Devon Fremd says
To be clear (because you are never making a case when you misrepresent your opponent’s) the reading of the history of modern Israel promulgated by the anti-Israel propagandists at Columbia (and no one with any sense doubts that they are that) is based on the fact that, at the end of the First World War in 1918. Jews made up a small minority of the population on the ground in what is now regarded as Palestine. That minority was made to grow by large scale immigration undertaken with the express purpose of creating a modern state for the Jewish people in a region where Arabs had lived as the majority since the early seventh century.
It was perhaps not unreasonable for the Arabs there to suppose that if the region was to become a country, it would become their country, as happened to their neighbours in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. None of that adds up to “settler/colonizing”, none of it was done by conquest, and most of the newcomers bought land from Arab and Turkish landlords who were willing to sell it to them.
But those who take their case against modern Israel as far as these fashion-driven academics do are thinking of the replacement of a long-standing population with newcomers, after the First World War, not of a timeline on which 637 AD is much more recent that 1200 BC.
Leonidas says
The Balfour declaration of 1919 after the defeat and break up of the Ottoman Empire ordained a Jewish State in Palestine which in 1947 by UN decision was divided into a Jewish and Arab State . The Arabs refused the UN decision and they went to war several times to annihilate Israel but they were defeated each time.
gravenimage says
The British Mandate for Palstine was divided into Israel–and Jordan. Jordan is much larger than is Israel.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Since the Federal Department of Education is being wound up, why is the 400 million of federal funding even an option? Let Columbia approach Kathy Hochul for that money, since that responsibility has gone according to the requirements of the Tenth Amendment
Leonidas says
I read the 400 mill $ are to continue important research scientists are carrying out at Columbia U.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Something they can get from their endowments. Which until recently were taxed at only 1.4%. Now, it’s gonna match the corporate tax of 21%. Finally, these schools can be forced to use endowments towards helping students defray the cost of their education, as opposed to bankrolling all those woke causes
James Lincoln says
Leonidas,
The “research funding”, although important, needs to be consolidated.
The dozens and dozens of universities during research need to cooperate with one another to avoid duplication, waste, etc., not to mention overlap with CDC research, etc…
Sara says
About time they make those cowards take the masks off! Of course these “protestors” don’t want their faces to be shown – they are supporting evil. Maybe if mommy and daddy saw their face, they wouldn’t be going to the school. I believe policy alone will greatly decrease the “protests”.
gravenimage says
Columbia Capitulates
……………………….
Good to hear–but they should not have been enabling this savagry to begin with.