It’s been a minute since the Trump administration threatened Columbia University by pretending it cares deeply about antisemitism. So just in case the school started to believe its past concessions protect it from future attacks, the Department of Education launched a new salvo on Wednesday.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced that it notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the accreditor for Columbia, that the school is in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.
Therefore, according to the office—which used to actually investigate real civil rights issues before becoming a vehicle for President Donald Trump’s culture war efforts—Columbia no longer meets the standards for accreditation because it violated the law based on its treatment of Jewish students.
The threat comes after it was determined on May 22 that Columbia “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
And while the Notice of Violation that was sent to Columbia is chock-full of footnotes like a normal government investigative report, it contains no information as to how Columbia could comply—only vague threats of what will happen if it doesn’t.
It’s another attack on Columbia despite it bending the knee by allowing the Trump administration to set rules for on-campus protests, student discipline, and curriculum. Nothing about Columbia’s past compliance will ever be enough to protect it from these ongoing attacks.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon
This latest move is part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on accreditation in higher education. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s announcement about Columbia simpers that “accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid.”
That’s quite the statement from someone who seems to know nearly nothing about her own department. But McMahon is nothing if not a good mouthpiece for Trump, and her words are meant to remind everyone of his April executive order on reforming accreditation.
Trump campaigned on getting rid of accreditors, which sounds weird and niche until you remember that conservatives believe that higher education is infested with diversity and commies. So he promised to “fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.”
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Republicans tossed around threats about yanking accreditation, seemingly with very little sense of what accreditation is or who does it.
“Your accreditation is on the line. You’re not playing games any more or else you’re not a school any more,” Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana threatened Harvard University in October 2024.
The government doesn’t accredit any school and therefore can’t yank any accreditation. The federal government does certify accreditors, but while it's likely that the leftover remains of the Department of Education could approve new accreditors, getting rid of the existing ones isn’t that easy. These are vague, meaningless attacks that don’t have a lot to do with the actual requirements for certification of accreditors.
As the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions explained in a statement about Trump’s executive order, the Higher Education Act establishes due process requirements for recognition of accreditors, including reviews from multiple offices within the Department of Education. And it included a pointed reminder that “concerns about accreditor recognition can be escalated to federal court.”
Trump doesn’t just hate accreditors because they’re all wild-eyed leftists. He also hates them because they have a bad habit of requiring schools to prove that they aren’t scamming students. This is a guy who had to pay $25 million to settle claims that his fake school, Trump University, scammed people out of thousands of dollars. So tucked inside his attacks on accreditors, Trump also demands that they pretty much change their entire process.
President Donald Trump is seen promoting his fake college, Trump University, in 2005.
Oh, and the Department of Education will also launch an experimental site “to accelerate innovation and improve accountability by establishing new flexible and streamlined quality assurance pathways for higher education institutions that provide high-quality, high-value academic programs.”
This will inevitably lead to scammy for-profit schools taking advantage of the lack of scrutiny, which Republicans are totally fine with. Trump’s first-term Secretary of Education Betsy Devos made it more difficult for victims of scammy for-profit colleges to obtain student loan relief, and she functionally abandoned meaningful oversight of the for-profit sector.
We already know what it looks like when conservatives take over schools.
Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo was rewarded for inventing a moral panic against diversity with getting to wreck New College, a previously highly regarded public school in Florida. After Rufo and several cronies of Gov. Ron DeSantis went on a hiring spree of right-wingers, students left in droves. New College courted student athletes aggressively, neglecting to mention that the school didn’t even have a full athletic program. Administrators also preemptively lowered expected graduation rates, which they still couldn’t reach.
The Trump administration’s vision for academia is one where conservatives do exactly what they want with no consequences—and one where only white men thrive. Getting rid of meaningful accreditation is crucial for that.
And if it turns out that pretending to combat antisemitism is just another way to hurt Columbia, that’s just a bonus.
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