Despite a $14 billion endowment, they sacrifice academic freedom, and permit an authoritarian president to dictate academic policy, for $400 million. To their eternal shame. Even worse than when it fired two professors during World War 1 for opposing the war.
Columbia University agreed on Friday to make changes to its protest rules, campus security policies and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which had refused to consider restoring $400 million in federal funding without an overhaul.
And in what could be most contentious move, administrators said they would appoint a senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department. The White House had demanded that the department be placed under academic receivership, an obscure step that administrators can take after extended periods of internal dysfunction.
College leaders, noting that such federal intervention is exceedingly rare, have warned that it could have catastrophic ramifications for academic freedom across the United States. Columbia did not refer to the move as receivership, but it appeared to resemble one.
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Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the university’s Middle Eastern studies department, said in a text message that “Columbia faculty are utterly shocked and profoundly disappointed by the trustees’ capitulation to the extortionate behavior of the federal government.”
“This is a shameful day in the history of Columbia,” Dr. Pollock said, adding that it would “endanger academic freedom, faculty governance and the excellence of the American university system.”
Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia math professor who described reading Dr. Armstrong’s letter with “profound disappointment and alarm,” called it “a giant step down a very dangerous road.”
He worried that the Middle Eastern studies department would effectively be run by “a member of Columbia’s thought police” who could interfere with anything from course offerings to faculty appointments. “It strikes at the heart of academic freedom,” Professor Thaddeus said.
