The Trump administration has decided to withdraw federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, worth $400 million — out of the school’s annual operating revenue of $1.3 billion — because of that school’s failure to adequately deal with antisemitism on its campus, and to secure the safety of Jewish students. Now Columbia, in response, promises to do everything that is asked of it by the federal government, and of course it hopes that then the $400 million worth of contracts and grants will be reinstated. Not so fast, grand panjandrums of Morningside Heights. The administrators at Columbia obviously don’t get it. That $400 million is gone for good. If all a school had to do, when charged by the government with not dealing appropriately with antisemitism, would be to change its ways, and deal with antisemitism properly, in order to ensure that whatever money that had been halted by the federal government would be reinstated, there would not be enough incentive — that is, enough of a punishment — to make sure that not only Columbia, but dozens of other schools that have failed to secure the safety and wellbeing of their Jewish students and faculty, will now do so. The federal government’s response has to leave a deep impression.
Columbia has a right to hope only for this: that by now enforcing policies that will protect Jewish students — including permanently expelling all those student stormtroopers marching around, those 20-year-old brownshirts calling for an end to Israel and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state (“From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free”), hurling grotesque antisemitic slurs at the Jewish state (“End the Genocide”), and calling for murderous violence against Israeli Jews (“Intifada Now”), there will be no further cuts in contracts and grants from the federal government. Those students should be expelled for surrounding and holding hostage, harassing, and even roughing up, Jewish students, for, writing antisemitic slurs on the walls of campus buildings, and for entering classrooms where Jewish professors are teaching and screaming about “genocide” while throwing antisemitic leaflets all over the room — it will not have even more federal grants cancelled.
And non-students taking part in these antisemitic demonstrations, though they cannot be expelled, can and should be arrested for trespassing on Columbia’s property, and where appropriate, for vandalism.
More on Columbia’s promise to punish antisemitic behavior can be found here: “Columbia University promises to address Trump’s concerns after $400 million pulled,” Reuters, March 8, 2025:
Columbia University’s interim president said the school is working to address the “legitimate concerns” of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration after $400 million of federal government grants and contracts to the university were canceled over allegations of antisemitism on campus.
In an announcement on Friday, the government cited what it described as antisemitic harassment on and near the school’s New York City campus as the reason for pulling the funding. The university has repeatedly been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza.
“I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president, said in a late-night message to alumni on Friday. “To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus.”
Trump administration pulls funding
The Trump administration said the canceled funding is only a portion of the $5 billion in government grants that has been committed to the school, but the school is bracing for a financial hit….
The withholding of federal contracts and grants worth $400 million from Columbia is only the first salvo in a much-needed campaign to stamp out antisemitic behavior, including harassment, that threatens the wellbeing of Jewish students on many campuses. It is meant not just to change the behavior of administrators at Columbia who have been so unforgivably lax in dealing with antisemitism on the campus, but to act as a warning to administrators at other universities, now put on notice that they must deal with the matter before the federal government comes down hard on them, just as it has now done with Columbia.
Civil rights groups say the immediate cuts are unconstitutional punishment for protected speech and likely to face legal challenges.
It’s not “protected speech” that the Trump administration is punishing. It’s what is done in addition to, or accompanying, such “speech.” As noted above, those acts include the following: surrounding Jewish students and not letting them leave, harassing them as they walk across campus, physically attacking them — that is much more than speech. So are the obscenities directed at the Jewish state or at Jews that are scrawled on the walls of campus buildings. Barging into classrooms while a class is going on, trying to shut down the teacher because he, or she, is Jewish or Israeli, and throwing antisemitic pamphlets into the room, is not “protected speech.” Lawyer up as best you can, ACLU and Students for Justice in Palestine, for you are about to find out what freedom of speech really means.
Yabbadabadoo says
Lemme do some basic math here… $400M/$1.3B = 0.0325% of Columbia’s budget. That’s not even a drop of water in a bucket. Time for the alumni to get serious and remove professors, staff, and board members.
Peacelover says
while tossing certain students/troublemakers,for good.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
$400 million is 30.77% of $1.3 billion.
L Bozzu says
You obviously did not learn enough math skills to attend Columbia
sporticus says
Yabba, are you using the old British billion (1000,000,000,000)?
One billion as 1000,000,000 is standard all over now in which case Columbia is losing just under of a third of a bucket or 30%.
Wellington says
Why would anyone of, a la Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility want to go to Columbia? It has become because of its own cowardice and moral idiocy a complete joke.
James Lincoln says
According to the feature article:
“The Trump administration said the canceled funding is only a portion of the $5 billion in government grants that has been committed to the school…”
Cancel the entire 5 billion!
Defund that cesspool of hate and “lower learning”!
࿗Infidel࿘ says
James
I just googled, and found out that until now, endowments were taxed at only 1.4%. Yeah, this from the schools who advocate higher taxes on the population at large. Looks like the Trump Administration last month proposed an Endowment tax of 21%, and that Elon Musk has been trying to lower it to 16%
I think that’s too low: they should be taxed at the top marginal rates, given the slush fund that they have. I’d go w/ 40%, and only erode that number for every endowment $ that actually goes into eroding the tuition fees of American students. Oh, and cut heavily the issuance of F1 visas (even though I was a beneficiary of that in 1992): let the countries they come from do something about their own education systems. Once these schools are forced to manage that money well, we’ll see an end to Academia being a vector of Leftist propaganda
James Lincoln says
Infidel,
Agree, endowments should be taxed as capital gains / ordinary income as they apply – just like for citizens.
And there is no reason for the US federal government to support schools that have billion-dollar plus endowments.
Billy says
Islam teaches and promotes discrimination, hatred, and terrorism as revealed in the Quran(Quran 98:6-7; 9:5,29, 111 and more).
Islam, a Terrorist-Criminal Enterprise, and its murderous Muslims continually fund, promote, and practice ideological subversion, propaganda, bigotry, discrimination, deceit, supremacy, segregation, hatred, violence, and terrorism as taught in Islamic Law and in Islam’s Quran, and Muslim actions should be legally challenged with a multi-faceted force of Western Laws like Muslims wield against Americans and Westerners(Quran 9:5,29; 49:15 and more).
Like a Foreign Terrorist Organization(FTO) designated by the USA Secretary of State, Islam is a MUSLIM TERRORIST ORGANIZATION(MTO) fighting against Non-Muslims and NOT A PEACEFUL religion under Western Law because Islam funds, teaches, and promotes a Terrorist Criminal Organization with Muslims as Terrorists for Allah(Quran 9:5,29; 49:15 and more).
Under Islam and Islamic Law, Muslims have the legal right to terrorize Non-Muslims because neglecting this DIVINE DUTY is a Crime against Allah; Jihad means warfare against Non-Muslims to ESTABLISH ISLAM’S RELIGION(Quran 3:151; 9:29; Muslim Law Manual: “Reliance of the Traveller”, o9.0 and more). More specifically, Islam, a terroristic-destructive way of life, is a Muslim Terrorist Ideology and Murderous, Criminal Enterprise of intolerance, continuous war, discrimination, segregation, supremacy, genocide, polygamy, propaganda, deceit, hatred, incitement, sedition, rape, terrorism, and violence against all Non-Muslims as taught in the Quran(Quran 2:216; 4:65,89,95; 5:14,64; 8:12,39,74; 9:5,21,29,36, 41,49,88,111,123; 21:92; 49:15 and more).
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Yesterday, I was talking to someone who works in Academia. She mentioned that the Trump Administration is now talking about taxing Endowments, and that it has had a chilling effect in schools, and resulted in a hiring freeze. Not just of staff, but faculty as well
Finally, Academia is being hit where it needs to be. While more companies are expanding their operations in the US, those schools that process our youth into completely worthless citizens are getting their oxen gored. I normally wouldn’t celebrate people losing their livelihoods, but this is one that just had to happen
Chelseaboy says
Colombia doesn’t say what it is going to do. Any sensible, immediate response would be to set out clearly the actions it will take to stop these neo Nazis.
Instead a few empty, vacuous words.
Chelseaboy says
Colombia doesn’t say what it is going to do. Any sensible, immediate response would be to set out clearly the actions it will take to stop these neo Nazis.
Instead a few empty, vacuous words.
jule says
But they are training for US intifada and to use our college kids as human shields.It doesn’t matter if US believes it or not, Islamists believe it. 2025 is now. Its what MB has been planning for years.
Kevin Kraemer says
You play, you pay, simple. Educated idiots!
James Lincoln says
More like “pseudo-educated”, Kevin.
Jacob Kovalio says
As expected, excellent Fitzgerald analysis.
Historically, full credit for turning Columbia into a “Bir Zeit U. on the Hudson” – a violent cauldron of Jihadi-Marxist antisemitism and anti-Zionism (political antisemitism), indispensible tools for the promotion of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, goes to Palestinianized-Egyptian E.W.Said (the historical fraudster and guru of orientalist and post-colonial propaganda) and Rashid Khalidi (the E.W.Said prof of Arab Studies) – both historical guides to B.H.Obama, together with racist and homophobic “vulgar propagandists” (a chomskyism) Youssef [Joseph] Massad ,Hamid Dabashi and failed international economic adviser Jeffrey Sachs.