Not Even Wrong

Nothing much new happening today, a short summary of what is going on follows. I will be traveling the next ten days or so, likely much less posting.

On the visa front, a court stopped Trump from his plan to remove Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. The Trump people now say they will do “enhanced vetting” of all Harvard visas to look for “histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence” (and these days criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza is often considered “anti-Semitic harassment”). Unable to shut down visas to Harvard, they’re going after all student visas: pausing new appointments for all visa applications and threatening Chinese students in particular, based on connections to the Communist Party or working in certain research areas. For all of this, hard to know at this point if they intend to massively deny student visas or not. Probably they don’t know.

Stand Columbia, as part of its ongoing campaign to make the case that Columbia needs to bend the knee, has a long analysis of the foreign student situation at Columbia.

The current situation of Trump’s war with the universities is described in Universities quietly negotiating with White House aide to try to avoid Harvard’s fate, source says at CNN. Harvard won’t negotiate, so it’s war and the Trump is trying to find every means, legal and illegal, to destroy Harvard. But Harvard has a lot of money, influence and lawyers. May end up with another TACO.

The source familiar with the higher education response questioned the appetite to proceed at an aggressive pace.

“If you go after Harvard, how hard can you keep going? The universities are being played like a yo-yo for weeks and weeks and weeks. My guess is, at some point, the White House will lose interest in that. Once you’ve taken down Harvard, where are you going to go – Emory? They’re just as conscious of the brands as anybody else,” the source said.

Ultimately, the source added, the market rules: “What’s going to happen to Harvard or Columbia? Record applicants, record yield. I would bet you that if you talked to MAGA voters at Charlotte Country Day School or The Westminster Schools – they may have voted for Trump, but are they turning away from the Ivy League? Hell no. The schools are having record demand.”

The overall goal is “We have to bring these universities to their knees”, more specifically

“They want a name-brand university to make a deal like the law firms made a deal that covers not just antisemitism and protests, but DEI and intellectual diversity,”

Columbia has gone part-way with this, caving in on the “antisemitism and protests” front, with one factor influential pro-Israel trustees who were happy with that part of the demands. On the “DEI and intellectual diversity” front though, the Harvard demand letter shows that the Trump people are trying to get control not just of admissions and hiring, but also imposing MAGA students, faculty and staff on an institution. In response to this, supposedly many universities are “negotiating”. This includes Columbia, but our negotiating tactic is described as “playing dead”. For the rest

Asked if any of the schools are inclined to make such a deal, the source said, “Nobody wants to be the first, but the financial pressures are getting real.”

One problem for this effort (besides being completely illegal…) is that there’s now an ongoing campaign to destroy all universities, so it’s very unclear what caving-in to Trump would actually get you. The proposed budget has massive cuts in all grant funding everywhere, so getting your right to apply for grants restored at a time there aren’t any anymore is not much of an inducement. The attack on foreign students is on all of them, the proposed endowment tax is on all of them, etc. By starting on a campaign to destroy all universities, Trump has made it a lot harder to pressure any particular one. Who knows, the universities might even get together, join Harvard, and fight for a TACO.

Update: Why won’t Columbia do this?

Bogus accusations of “antisemitism” continue to be a central feature of the march of Fascism locally and globally. Starting from the local:

There’s an open letter from some of my colleagues which, while I don’t agree with all of it, very much gets the main point right:

Of particular concern is the weaponization and misuse of the charge of “antisemitism,” which has been irresponsibly and repeatedly invoked by the administrations of Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College against student protests related to the atrocities unfolding in Gaza.

An odd thing about the letter though is that as far as I can tell it is unsigned. It is posted on the AAUP blog by “Guest Blogger” with byline “CONCERNED FACULTY AT COLUMBIA, BARNARD, AND TEACHERS COLLEGE”, but no list of signatories. A main reason why bogus “antisemitism” accusations are so hard to fight is that people are scared. They are rightly concerned that if they say what is true about this they will come under attack from many directions as “antisemites” (if they also say anything about Gaza, it will be “antisemitic piece of shit”).

At the Wall Street Journal, there’s a call for federal criminal prosecutions of the Columbia students involved in the recent pro-Palestinian protest at Butler library:

Attorney General Pam Bondi should instruct the U.S. attorneys for the Southern and Eastern districts of New York to activate a federal law that criminalizes violence directed against the “federally protected activities” of Jewish students at Columbia and Brooklyn College.

Rise Up, Columbia has a law professor’s analysis of the recent Trump administration finding that Columbia is guilty of “antisemitism”:

We asked a member of our law faculty to read the Notice and comment. They found it shoddy, poorly argued, and unconvincing. (Remarkably, for example, the government believes that the cancellation of last year’s Commencement ceremony was… a civil rights violation.) The law professor does not think this Notice would stand up in court.

You can read more details there.

A recent NY Magazine article describes the Columbia board of trustees as having members aware the antisemitism charges are bogus (or at least overblown) but unwilling to stand up to a minority intent on using these to get policies implemented to suppress criticism of Israel. The leaders of this minority are described as Victor Mendelson and Shoshana Shendelman. Mendelson brags of his back-channel contacts with the Trump White House, which seems to me a good reason for him to be removed. No petition for that yet, but there is one for the removal of Shendelman. This is based on the information described in this article.

Moving out from Morningside Heights to the larger city, politically opportunistic bogus “antisemitism” charges are becoming the main topic in the ongoing mayoral campaign, see here. The leading candidate, Andrew Cuomo

recently joined a symbolic “legal team” defending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from war crimes charges

and is forcefully accusing his Jewish opponent Brad Lander of “antisemitism”. The other leading candidate, Eric Adams, is running not as a Democrat but on an independent “EndAntisemitism” ballot line.

In the wider US academic world, having so far lost to Harvard in court, the Trump administration is now pausing all interviews for visas to study in the US. Possibly the stop is just until they get a new system in place to monitor all social media of visa applicants for hostility to Trump and the MAGA agenda, or for “antisemitic” sympathy to what is happening to the Palestinians. If this stop lasts very long, it will mean few foreign students in the US this fall, only those who already have set up an interview in advance.

One might think this is insane and extreme, but two of the pillars of MAGA thought are hatred of foreigners and hatred of universities, so this has a lot of appeal to them as a two-fer. I’ll recommend again following political scientist Adam Przeworski’s ongoing diary of his thoughts on the evolving Fascist dictatorship. In his latest entry, he explains something about how Trump or Mussolini-style dictatorships work:

There is no semblance of law. Yes, there are many temporary restraining order and their number increases by the day. But the government is not restrained. It launches one illegal action after another, against immigrants, against law firms, universities, government agencies, individuals. Some of these actions are announced by executive orders, the legal scope of which is murky. Notably, while all these orders begin with “By the authority vested in me in the Constitution,” some continue to say “and by laws,” which are enumerated, other orders leave it at the Constitution because there are no laws enabling the particular action. The reaction of some people I interact with is often “But this is against the law.” So what? Just consider Columbia: it could legally contest the use of Title VI by the government but processing it in the courts would take years and money. The strategy of the MAGAs is to ignore laws and let any opposition to their actions simmer for an indefinite time in the courts…

Why? Why cut funds for cancer research of universities that have Middle Eastern centers with pro-Palestinian sympathies? Why gut the weather service that provides hurricane warnings? Why withdraw Global Entry privileges of someone who thought Trump lost the 2020 election? Why pursue a specialized medical journal for being “partisan”? Why let the measles epidemic expand? The list of the why’s is endless. These measures will not make Trump richer, so this is not a viable explanation. Some of government’s actions can be explained by its desire to reduce expenditures, some by the anti-elite impetus, some by its instinct to seek revenge. But so many appear to be just stupid, undertaken without a regard for the consequences, whether political or economic. Granted, every government makes mistakes. But I think there is something systematic about dictatorships.

In somewhat stylized terms, what may be happening with the Trump regime goes as follows. There is a Leader (Duce, Führer, Vozdh) who demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates. The subordinates know that they will be rewarded for implementing the will of the Leader. They compete for his attention. Lines demarcating their authority do not matter: the head of HHS Department tries to catch Leader’s attention by doing something that formally can be done only by DoE Department and if the Leader notices and likes this action, the head of the HHS jumps in his approval above the head of DoE. Sometimes the subordinates go farther than the Leader would want; sometimes they do something the Leader does not approve. Such mistakes, however, are not due to a lack of expertise, but only the uncertainty inherent in the impossibility of the Leader to fully articulate his will. Sometimes the Leader has to step in to adjudicate conflicts. Some of his underlings may be pushing tariffs while others may want free trade; some may be concerned about deficits while others believe that they will pay for themselves. Moreover, envy and jealousy cannot be avoided when the underlings compete for the Leader’s favor. Mussolini claimed that resolving such conflicts took most of his time. Yet, whenever loyalty is the only criterion of performance, chaos must ensue. The only purpose of the subordinates is to please the Leader. Formal authority, consideration of material consequences, or compassion have no place in their competition…

Does Trump really want to destroy American research universities? Does he have revenge feelings particularly against Columbia, Harvard, or Northwestern? Or is it just a guess by his overzealous acolytes?

The trustees at Columbia may think they are negotiating about “antisemitism” with Linda McMahon, but she makes clear what the goal really is: the universities can only continue to operate as research universities if, like her, they devote themselves to figuring out what Trump wants, and doing just that:

“Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they’re abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.”

The Columbia trustees are trying to negotiate with her a return to federal research funding. Will they agree that future research will be “in sync” with Trump?

Moving to the wider world, the genocidal Gaza campaign continues. The current plan (described here) is to finish flattening 3/4 of Gaza, to be taken over by Israel. The two million Palestinians would be imprisoned in the remaining 1/4 of the area and subjected to a starvation regime that would encourage them to leave. Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich describes the genocide he welcomes as

We are being blessed with the opportunity, thank god, of seeing an expansion of the borders of the Land of Israel, on all fronts. We are being blessed with the opportunity to blot-out the seed of Amalek, a process which is intensifying.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert writes that Israel is Committing War Crimes, so I guess he’s another example of “antisemitism”.

Update: Columbia has an update for foreign students here. Students who need a visa renewal, which needs to be done outside the US, are advised not to travel outside the US. Incoming students who already have appointments should be all right, but those who have not yet gotten an appointment may have a problem coming here in the fall if the stop on appointments is not lifted.

Update: There’s a new Harvard Law Review Forum paper coming out, about possible Title VI “antisemitism” lawsuits against universities. It concludes that grounds for such a lawsuit would be significantly weaker than generally assumed.

Update: This is really nuts. Rubio has announced that

The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

This may fit into Przeworski’s explanation above that what is happening is that Trump’s underlings are just doing crazy things they think he wants. Or maybe it is just a nutty order from the top.

And, around the same time, a court has unanimously ruled that Trump’s tariff stuff is all illegal. It’s just all illegality all the time, and it seems the courts are finally stepping up to say it’s illegal. What happens now?

Update: The NYT has an opinion piece about Columbia closing public access to its campus, including what used to be a public street. The reason for the closure is to stop any possibility someone might try a pro-Palestinian protest. According to Columbia, this ensures that we “feel welcome, safe and secure on our campus.” I just got into my office and for the record want to state that having to go through two different security checkpoints (getting on to campus, getting into the math building) does not make me feel “welcome, safe and secure.” Instead it makes me depressed, angry and forcefully reminded that I work for an institution single-mindedly devoted to lies about “antisemitism” and to collaborating with Fascism instead of joining the fight against it. In particular having to deal with a security guard to get into the math building, when the campus as a whole is locked down tight as a drum, and there are few people here anyway (summer school just started) is highly disturbing. There clearly is no rational reason for this, it’s the kind of thing totalitarian regimes do to make sure everyone knows they are in an environment where they better never step out of line.

Update: The latest opinion polling of the Israeli public shows very strong support for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Support for expelling all Palestinians from Gaza at is at 82% (above 90% among the religious), for expelling all Arab citizens of Israel is at 56%. Support for killing all the inhabitants of a conquered city (e.g. Gaza or the West Bank) is at 47% (60% or so among the religious). No polling numbers on what fraction of Israeli citizens want their Arab citizen neighbors killed.

Update: The judge in the Harvard visa case has (see here) extended the temporary restraining order and said she will issue an injunction stopping the Trump administration from canceling Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. As far as I can tell, this particular tactic of the Trump administration is at a dead end, they’re never going to get a court to allow it. The judge may also order that the Trump administration stop other tactics such as not issuing visas.

Update: The team at the Wall Street Journal acting as spokespersons for the Trump “antisemitism” people, have a long new profile of the people they’re working for. They end with their specialty, publishing anonymous threats from their sources:

Top Trump officials are closely monitoring the words and actions of university leaders. Columbia University interim President Claire Shipman in her recent commencement speech mentioned the absence of pro-Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, who is the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His detention has drawn protests.

The following day, the university received a notice of civil-rights violation. McMahon said the notice was in the works before Shipman’s speech.

“President Shipman is trying to balance different factions, but I was disappointed,” McMahon said. Naming Khalil wasn’t “necessary for her to say, considering all of the campus unrest that had happened,” McMahon said.

White House officials told Columbia it should be mindful during its search for a permanent president that such comments from university leaders would again jeopardize federal funding, a senior administration official said.

Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s civil-rights division, said “all these schools are in the penalty box, they’re all misbehaving.”

Harvard is taking an aggressive approach, she said.

Columbia, meanwhile, “they’re playing dead,” Dhillon said. “It doesn’t mean their intentions are any different.”

Update: In a speech yesterday, Marco Rubio announced

We have implemented a vigorous new visa policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community.

I gather that means that if you’re not a US citizen and have criticized Israel, especially if you’ve joined calls for a boycott, you will not be able to get a visa to visit or study here. I’m wondering how this is going to affect events like the 2026 ICM.

Update: According to CNN

The US State Department on Friday ordered all US embassies and consulates to “immediately begin additional vetting” for anyone seeking a visa to travel to Harvard University “for any purpose.”

This additional vetting mainly means going through your social media accounts to “appropriately identify such visa applicants with histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence”, which these days means criticizing Israel.

It looks like the efforts of the Columbia trustees to negotiate “in good faith” with the Fascist dictator have failed so far. I guess this is good news, because the alternative would be reading an announcement further solidifying our reputation as “Vichy on the Hudson”. Maybe the trustees will some day realize they don’t have any choice except to go to court and fight. In the meantime, according to the NYT:

“We understand this finding is part of our ongoing discussions with the government. Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on our campus,” a spokesman for Columbia said in a statement, adding that the school would continue to work with the government to address those issues.

The “Stand Columbia” group is solidifying its reputation as “Bend the knee, Columbia” by immediately coming out with a call for capitulation, without even knowing what we would be capitulating to.

Update: The Fox News story about this gets it right, with lede paragraph

The Trump administration on Thursday accused Columbia University of having violated federal law through its “deliberate indifference” toward anti-Israel protests that have been taking over the campus since Oct. 7, 2023.

This is not about the university allowing antisemitic attacks on students, it’s about Israel, with Columbia standing accused of allowing protests against the Israeli war on Gaza. Columbia was guilty of this until a year ago, but since then has had a policy of not allowing anti-Israel protests on campus, as the genocidal nature of the Gaza war becomes increasingly clear.

The New York Times has an excellent essay today by Steven Pinker, entitled Harvard Derangement Syndrome. This is about Harvard, not Columbia, but the two institutions are very similar, so most of what he writes applies here (except that they are now in open warfare with Trump, we’re trying to appease him).

Pinker has been one of Harvard’s most prominent critics on the subject of the excesses of identity politics, and he’s often been right about that. But about accusations of “antisemitism”, here’s what he has to say:

For what it’s worth, I have experienced no antisemitism in my two decades at Harvard, and nor have other prominent Jewish faculty members. My own discomfort instead is captured in a Crimson essay by the Harvard senior Jacob Miller, who called the claim that one in four Jewish students feels “physically unsafe” on campus “an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.” The obsession with antisemitism at Harvard represents, ironically, a surrender to the critical-social-justice credo that the only wrong worthy of condemnation is group-against-group bigotry. Instead of directly rebutting the flaws of the anti-Zionist platform, such as its approval of violence against civilians and its historical blind spots, critics have tried to tar it with the sin of antisemitism. But that can devolve into futile semantic disputation about the meaning of the word “antisemitism,” which, our council has argued, can lead to infringements of academic freedom.

Update: I haven’t always agreed with Matt Strassler about things, but he’s got it right

As far as I can see, the government is merely using Jewish students as pawns, pretending to attack Harvard on their behalf while in truth harboring no honest concern for their well-being. The fact that the horrors and nastiness surrounding the Gaza war are being exploited by the government as cover for an assault on academic freedom and scientific research is deeply cynical and exceedingly ugly.

Update: What I for a while mistakenly thought happened yesterday did happen today. Harvard went to court to challenge the removal of its ability to enroll foreign students and immediately got a temporary restraining order.

I have been told that one reason the Columbia trustees caved in March was that they had legal advice that Trump could do exactly this and that it would be a disaster for the university that they could do nothing about. We now know that this was very bad advice. So far, the court system is holding and absurdly illegal actions like this are often being immediately struck down. If, as seems all too possible, the trustees are about to cave-in further on the basis of legal advice that they have no choice because of things like this, they need to immediately fire some lawyers and rethink what they have been doing.

Update: Rise Up, Columbia has some analysis of the day’s events. They quote the opinion of a law school faculty member that the latest attempt to pressure Columbia is something that will quickly be enjoined or fall apart if the university does not cave, but goes to court:

It is very rare for an agency to complete the review this quickly, and to come to a final determination this quickly. That suggests to me that there were short cuts taken to prove the conclusion the Trump Administration wanted (similar to the Department of Education finding, which was legally insufficient and is invoked by reference in this press release). It would quickly be enjoined or fall apart, in my opinion, if Columbia filed suit instead of working with the administration to damage the university.

Update: To the extent the Trump administration has a strategy here, it’s explained by Christopher Rufo on twitter:

The strategy should be to barrage the Ivy League universities with civil rights investigations and negotiate toward consent decrees, placing their administrations under a federal anti-discrimination regime. Then dismantle DEI down to the foundations.

If Columbia agrees to a consent decree, the Trump plan is to use that to have a Trump appointee exercise control over the university. On the “anti-semitism” front, any criticism of Israel would be eliminated (this there probably are trustees happy to vote for). On the other “DEI” issues, this would be an excuse for Trump’s people to control admissions and hiring, as well as vetoing any overly “woke” course content.

Update: A late Friday communication from Shipman is here. No change: still negotiating, no consent decree, no going to court, no fighting Trump. All about the huge effort by the university to fight antisemitism. As for the ongoing negotiations, to figure out what’s going on you’ll have to read between these lines:

The finding is part of the process to resolve these investigations and seek a restoration of our vital research funding. While we disagree with the government’s conclusion, we are continuing to engage in a thoughtful and constructive manner in addressing these serious issues. It is not a signal that we are no longer working to resolve the issues with regard to our critical and long-standing partnership with the federal government…

As we move forward in our discussions with the government, we will continue to explore all strategies as we do the important work of addressing these serious issues.

Update: Bend the Knee, Columbia is out with a new long argument for why Columbia must immediately capitulate to Trump. The main part of the argument is about the tuition Columbia would lose if Trump does the same thing he did to Harvard, remove its ability to enroll foreign students. This argument I’ve been told was a significant factor in the initial cave-in last March. The obvious problem with this argument is that yesterday a federal judge immediately issued a temporary restraining order since the Trump action was absurdly illegal, and the same thing would happen if the Trump people try this tactic here. Not only that, but such temporary restraining orders are now often getting turned into permanent injunctions (see an analysis by a law professor here):

Here, Judge Burroughs will likely follow the path of Judges Beryl Howell and John Bates, who permanently enjoined the administration’s efforts to punish the law firm Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block, respectively, for speech and conduct that met with the president’s disapproval. Those rulings will likely echo in this decision as well, but not for the same reasons. Here, the failure of the administration to follow even the most basic of administrative steps required to take its desired action will likely doom the effort.

I had thought that the Bend the Knee, Columbia people were a possible counter-example to my increasing conviction that this is all ultimately about Gaza, since that wasn’t a motivation they discussed. Things have changed in the latest newsletter, where they now make explicit that they share Scott Aaronson’s motivation for collaboration with the Fascist dictator, that this is justified by the supposed fact that anti-Israel protesters here are intent on killing the Jews. Worse than that, the anti-Israel protesters are domestic terrorists and threaten national security. Discussing the recent murders in DC, the author writes:

The alleged perpetrator had been affiliated with a communist organization (which led protests at Columbia’s gates, and since disavowed him), and has now been praised by certain extremist groups as embodying “the highest expression of anti-Zionism” and “an act of solidarity and love.” One these groups (which has a following at Columbia) is now going further, calling for its members to be “completely willing and ready at all times to KILL.”

We previously wrote in these pages: “Meanwhile, these extremists are going beyond public displays of support for terrorism, to claiming they are actively in coordination with and ‘seeking instruction’ from actual terrorists… Left unchecked, we fear it is only a matter of time before some unhinged individual decides to stop ‘playing make-believe’ and turns to actual violence.”

Tragically, it appears that time has come. When those who commit acts of violence are celebrated rather than condemned, we cross a line—from protest into something far more sinister. What once may have felt like theoretical risk has now crystallized. This is no longer a matter of campus politics. It is a matter of domestic terrorism and national security.

Harvard has its own analog of our Bend the Knee people, the 1636 Forum, which is run by Sam Lessin, who has been on a campaign to stop criticism of Israel at Harvard for a while. His latest newsletter has a long explanation of how disastrous the Trump order about foreign students is for Harvard, that Harvard has no choice but to negotiate surrender. That the whole thing is absurdly illegal doesn’t seem to him worth mentioning, nor that courts will immediately put a stop to it.

Update: The Intercept has this story about what is going on with Shoshana Shendelman, one of the Columbia trustees.

Update: A story at Politico claims that the Trump administration is pausing all new interviews for student visas, and planning to add new screening of social media of all students applying for visas. Note that this is not specifically aimed at Harvard, but applies to all US educational institutions. Under the excuse of stopping pro-Palestinian terrorists, the plan may be to implement the larger MAGA goals of doing as much as possible to stop foreigners from coming to the US while at the same time doing as much as possible to harm US universities, seen as dominated by MAGA’s enemies.

Yesterday was the main and final graduation ceremony here at Columbia. Despite the NY Post labeling their coverage “arrests-diploma-burning-mayhem-and-chaos”, graduation went on here very peacefully, much the same as usual. Lots and lots and lots of happy students and proud parents and relatives. Main negative thing was some rain.

I wasn’t at the big ceremony, but as far as I can tell, the only thing even slightly unusual was some booing of acting president Claire Shipman. Until quite recently she had a rigid policy of refusing to even say the names of students like Mahmoud Khalil who had been imprisoned for pro-Palestinian activity. That’s changed, she is now saying his name at least, and some students evidently were shouting it to make sure she knew how they felt about this. There was a small demonstration outside the campus, on the other side of Broadway. I walked through it on the way to lunch, a small group with signs and some chanting.

There’s a breaking story from Harvard this afternoon. Dog-killer Kristi Noem has announced that

Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.

justifying this with the outrageous lie that

Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students. Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.

What Noem is doing is obviously completely illegal, and I assume Harvard’s lawyers are already going to court to fight. This is just one example of where this country is: a Fascist dictatorship is illegally trying to destroy one of the best and most world-respected institutions in the country. As in this and hundreds of other similar cases, the legislative branch refuses to do anything, so we’re all hoping the judiciary will hold the line and thwart the dictatorship. That Columbia is refusing to join the fight and still negotiating surrender to the dictatorship is deeply shameful and a big reason Shipman was getting booed yesterday.

Update: It took, minutes, not hours for a federal judge to block this insanity. If institutions are willing to fight and not cave-in, the judicial system may save us. When the Columbia cave-in happened, one of the main excuses I heard for it was that Columbia could not fight because if we did:

• Trump would cancel more grants.
• Trump would remove the university’s ability to have foreign students.
• Trump would remove Columbia student’s Pell grants.

After the cave-in, the grants were canceled anyway. The second threat was so obviously illegal that it’s unclear why you would take it seriously. Haven’t heard more about the third threat.

If my sources were accurately describing legal advice that Columbia was getting about the need to cave-in because of the danger to the ability to enroll foreign students, some highly-paid lawyers need to be fired immediately.

Update: Previous update unfortunately not accurate. It seems that today’s order from the federal judge has to do with a challenge to what the Trump administration had been doing earlier, canceling student visas because of pro-Palestinian activity or for other unknown reasons. I don’t know what effect it has on the latest illegal activity. Perhaps it will also keep current student’s visas from being canceled, but there will still be a problem with enrolling new students (until a different court order).

Update: Harvard goes to court to challenge this.

There’s an excellent New York magazine article out this morning that gets the story of what the Columbia trustees have been doing to the university right, with the brutal title How Trump Defeated Columbia: The inside story of an unconditional surrender. Unfortunately the article doesn’t have any information about what is going on now. I’m guessing the author has good sources informed about what the board was doing through the cave-in and the Armstrong resignation, not so good about what has happened since then.

Here’s the description of how the cave-in happened:

But the idea of a defiant legal response was a fantasy. Columbia’s board was already on the same wavelength as the Trump administration. On several of the task force’s demands — including banning masks, restricting protests, stripping disciplinary powers from the senate, and allowing campus police to arrest demonstrators — the group was ready to concede immediately. On March 21, it sent a letter to the government essentially surrendering. Perhaps reflecting an understanding that the letter would not go over well with the Columbia community, nobody signed it…

Faculty who interacted with Armstrong in this period say she was genuinely shocked that the world believed Columbia had caved. It made a certain sense, from the point of view of someone simply trying to survive minute by minute in a crisis: There had been a gun pointed at Columbia’s head, and to get it lowered, all she had to do was agree to some things her trustees already wanted…

Members of the board of trustees give different accounts of who broke up with whom. Some maintain that Armstrong was forced out; others say there was mutual agreement she could not remain. Either way, she was gone.

Here’s the description of the group of trustees who are driving this and their weak opposition:

Several people with knowledge of the board’s evolution described a dynamic in which a subset of members was convinced that Columbia had a dangerous concentration of antisemites and that strong action was needed to bring the campus back to order. That circle’s most prominent member is Victor Mendelson, part of a four-generation Columbia lineage, whose father was also a trustee. The billionaire Mendelsons run HEICO, a Florida-based aerospace company and defense contractor. There’s also Shoshana Shendelman, whose child is a current student, and to a quieter degree Greenwald, a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer who spent his career at Fried Frank and Goldman Sachs. A more moderate set includes Mark Gallogly, who co-founded the investment firm Centerbridge Partners and who has given millions to Democratic candidates for office; Kathy Surace-Smith, a lawyer and partial owner of the Seattle Mariners whose husband is the president of Microsoft; Abigail Black Elbaum, who runs a real-estate management firm; and Jonathan Rosand, a professor of neurology at Harvard. Two others were more clearly identified with the liberal-coded position that antisemitism was a concern but one that was being used disingenuously to stifle speech: Wanda Marie Holland Greene, who runs a progressive school for girls in San Francisco, and Li Lu, a leader of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square who became a billionaire investor…

Greene and Li quietly rotated off the board last summer, further tilting the balance. “The board lost two of its strong oppositional voices when they left,” a person who interacts with the group said.

Mendelson is a donor to Elise Stefanik and admits to being in direct communication with the Trump White House:

Mendelson recently visited an undergraduate seminar and told the students that as one of the panel’s few registered Republicans, “I’m the one the White House calls to yell at.”

Discussions amongst the board have been immediately leaked to the Trump administration and published by the Trump mouthpieces at the WSJ:

In a minuted meeting, with colleagues who were whispering to right-wing publications and Republicans in Washington, it was difficult for trustees to take the position that antisemitism was a small or medium-size problem — even if they honestly saw it that way…

During one session, the trustees had a preliminary discussion about granting arrest power to campus security officers. Within hours, it was in The Wall Street Journal — a leak that some interpreted as an effort to lock in that outcome.

It seems to me that it if the board had investigated this it would not have been hard to find out who was responsible. I don’t see how the board can allow people doing this kind of thing to remain in place. Why have they not taken action?

Mendelson clearly continues to have a great deal of influence on the board. He’s both a Vice-Chair and a member of the presidential search committee. That he’s taking calls from the White House to discuss what the board is doing seems to be grounds for his immediate removal from the board.

Also likely influential behind the scenes is board chair emeritus Jonathan Lavine, who is co-chair of the Presidential search committee. In text messages to board co-chair David Greenwald (see here), he referred to “the antisemites on the Senate” and dismissed pro-Palestinian protests as “supporting rape and terrorism”.

I hope this article has an impact with the rest of the current board, making it clear to them the disastrous direction in which they have taken the university, and encouraging them to change course, beginning with removing Victor Mendelson.

There’s a statement being signed by members of the Columbia faculty refusing to attend commencement in protest of the actions of the acting president and board of trustees.

Given that it has become clear that what is behind this Columbia story is what has happened and what is happening in Gaza, I’ll regularly include here some links relevant to the ongoing story of that genocidal campaign. Please do not submit comments arguing about this, I won’t moderate a discussion of whether slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people is a good thing or not.

Genocide through denial of food and health care.

Ethnic cleansing through the razing of all structures in parts of Gaza.

From Haaretz, ‘People Are Eating Weeds’: Israel’s New Gaza Offensive Intensifies Humanitarian Disaster:

The renewed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that began on Friday night has already resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of new refugees, a worsening risk of hunger, spreading disease and the closure of the enclave’s biggest hospitals.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, on Sunday alone, at least 125 Palestinians were killed, bringing the total since the start of the assault on Thursday to about 375…

Palestinian sources say one of the deadliest of the attacks, which have included aerial and artillery strikes, led to a fire in a displaced persons encampment in Mawasi. Footage from the scene showed a fire that had consumed the tents.

Residents, including children, were seen with severe burns while families searched for their loved ones amid the flames. In Deir al-Balah, five children were killed by a missile or shell that hit a street.

The attack on Mawasi was near a field hospital operated with the help of the Kuwaiti government. Following the attack, the hospital announced it was shutting down its surgical department due to damage to the hospital’s generators.

There were also massive attacks in the northern Gaza Strip, in the Jabalya area, where dozens of deaths were reported.

Other footage showed bodies lying on the floor of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry announced that the hospital was closing. Footage showed patients being led out on beds and in wheelchairs.

The hospital is the second major facility in Gaza to close its doors in recent days after the European Hospital in southern Gaza shut down over the weekend in the face of attacks in the surrounding area, as the Israel Defense Forces sought to kill Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar.

In addition, the Palestinian Civil Defense Organization announced that it had been forced to put out of commission 75 percent of its ambulances due to a lack of gasoline and that within three days, it would have no choice but to do the same to the remainder.

A coalition of humanitarian organizations estimates that more than 63,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in the past three days and that more than 500,000 have done so since Israel renewed the war in Gaza two months ago.

Update: The New York Times has a long article about “Project Esther.” This is a Heritage Foundation-sponsored effort to tar anyone protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza as a pro-Hamas terrorist (along the lines of what I’ve seen here from Scott Aaronson). They have campaigned for exactly the tactics being used by the Trump administration against Columbia and other universities.

The NYT describes the origin of Project Esther after the Hamas attack on Israel as follows:

Soon after, four well-connected, conservative supporters of Israel met virtually to address these events.

Only one was Jewish: Ellie Cohanim, Mr. Trump’s former antisemitism envoy. She said she was grateful when the three men reached out to her and affectionately called them her “Christian friends.” Two were leaders of Christian Zionist groups: Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project, and Mario Bramnick, the president of the Latino Coalition for Israel and an evangelical adviser to Mr. Trump. The fourth was James Carafano, senior counselor to the president at the Heritage Foundation.

Some evangelical Christians have increasingly aligned themselves with conservative political forces in Israel, supporting their claims of biblical dominion over contested Palestinian territories. Many feel a kinship with Israel because of shared religious heritage. But some also believe that supporting Israel will hasten biblical end times, or advance Christianity’s global influence.

A large group of American Jewish leaders has recently issued a statement warning about this campaign.

Update: Some good news from Columbia.

First the good news: a Vermont judge has ordered ICE to release Rumeysa Ozturk. This is yet more evidence that one does not need to bow to the dictatorship. The judicial system is still functional, so one can go to court to successfully challenge illegal behavior.

Now the bad news: the Columbia acting president and trustees still won’t do this. There’s a new message that just came in (5pm Friday is a typical time for these) from Shipman about Supporting and Strengthening Columbia’s Research Enterprise. It starts off

For the past several months, Columbia’s research enterprise has been confronting one of the most sustained and serious disruptions in its history. Major interruptions in federal funding, especially from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are affecting nearly every part of our research community. However, we are also responding with determination, urgency, and an unwavering commitment to what defines us as an institution.

The Trump administration on March 7 notified Columbia that its grants and contracts were being cancelled. Since this was clearly completely illegal, the obvious thing to do would have been to have Columbia’s lawyers immediately go to court and challenge this. Instead the trustees decided to agree with the Trump panel that the bogus antisemitism charges were accurate, announce that we’re guilty of the charges and seemingly willing to accept our punishment, not challenge it. The long and sorry story of how agreeing to the Trump demands led to nothing but more grant cancellations and more demands has now been going on for over two months. The only “urgency” in Columbia’s response was how fast it caved-in. As far as “unwavering commitment to what defines us as an institution”, what the trustees have done has permanently defined Columbia as the highest profile US institution to refuse to resist the new dictatorship as it tried to see how far it could push unconstitutional government by decree from the dictator.

Columbia has now waited so long that it may no longer even be possible to go to court. People have lost their jobs, labs are being closed, lab animals euthanized. I’m not a lawyer, but if you wait this long before doing anything, and spend the months publicly announcing your guilt and how convinced you are that the dictatorship is dealing with you in “good faith”, surely this must sooner or later destroy any possibility of getting a court to stop the illegality.

So, what is Columbia doing to “support and strengthen” research here? They’re still trying to negotiate a further cave-in:

We continue to engage with the federal government with the aim of restoring funding and reestablishing the flow of grant support in a manner that upholds and strengthens our institutional values.

They’re signing on to a lobbying effort about next year’s budget, both its size and ICR rates:

Through the Association of American Universities (AAU), we are also part of a coordinated national effort to push back on proposed cuts to NIH, National Science Foundation (NSF), and other agencies; reductions to facilities and administrative (F&A) reimbursements; and other policy changes that threaten the foundations of U.S. academic research. The AAU has launched a campaign aimed at educating the public on indirect costs, which is similar to the information we have posted about facilities and administrative costs at the University. These efforts are vital—not only to restoring funding, but also to reinforcing public trust in the research enterprise itself.

They are trying to replace some of the lost funding:

To support as much continuity as possible for our faculty, students, staff, and labs, we have launched two research stabilization funds:

• One, created with the support of NewYork-Presbyterian, is focused on Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons and the clinical and translational research taking place there.
• The other supports the broader university research community, with special attention to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows whose training grants have been affected.

These funds are not intended to replace federal support, but to serve as a bridge—allowing researchers to bring projects to completion, explore alternative funding, or pivot to new directions. The Office of the Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR) will oversee the application process, and more information is available on the EVPR website. Efforts to expand these funds through philanthropic support are already underway.

What’s also being done is what university administrations always do when a problem becomes urgent and needs to be immediately addressed: form committees. One new one is the Presidential Task Force on Columbia’s Research Mission, which will try to figure out what to do now that the money’s gone. The second is the Working Group on Strategic Engagement and Institutional Credibility, which is supposed to “change the narrative” and get us better PR. To change the narrative and restore the credibility they have wrecked, the trustees and president need not to form a PR committee, but to join Harvard and others fighting the dictatorship instead of continuing to appease it. It’s appalling that there’s no indication that this is even an option on the table.

Update: Harvard president Garber has issued a letter of response to the lunatic letter from McMahon. Columbia acting president Shipman should do some light editing and send something similar in Columbia’s name to McMahon.

Update: The bogus excuse of “antisemitism” continues to be the main tool of Trump’s war against Harvard. Here’s the latest. They also announced they are going after another antisemitic “prestigious university in the midwestern United States” without identifying it. Anyone know which midwestern center of antisemitism the Trump people are now going after?

Update: Worth reading is a blog post by Katharina Pistor and David Pozen on Columbia’s governance problems. It’s not just the Senate…

Update: DC court decision blocking the DOJ from cancelling several grants to the American Bar Association.

Update: Fund raising message today from Shipman. I don’t understand the idea of a call for help to maintain academic independence from someone who has already agreed to illegal demands, fired her predecessor to make Trump’s people happy, and is in the middle of negotiating to do more. Unfortunately this makes it look like Columbia going to court and fighting is not in the cards anytime soon, because if so, a fundraising message like this would wait until that announcement.

Update:(5/16/25) Situation stays the same. Columbia is “negotiating” with Trump, but no one knows what they are negotiating or who is representing Columbia in the negotiations. No one has any idea why Columbia will not go to court to try and get back the by now very large sums of grant money contracted but not paid. By no one I mean at all levels up to and including the provost. With graduation approaching, security is intense to try and stop any inconvenient protest about what is happening in Gaza, where large numbers of civilians were killed today. The acting president’s PR campaign is underway.

Update: The New York Times has a story about NASA “canceling the lease” of GISS in the building above Tom’s restaurant. NASA is moving the scientists out of the building for no sensible reason, since NASA can’t cancel the lease (which is through 2031 with the General Services Administration, which is still paying the rent).

Note: I’ve moved content from the previous post to this separate post, about the events today at Butler library. For early comments, see the last post, for newer ones on this topic please comment here.

Around 3:15pm, some students started a protest in a room in Butler library, and many are still there. I went over there to take a look (first heard about this from a blog commenter here…). Three helicopters hovering over the campus, otherwise everything normal except around the entrance to the library. A crowd has gathered there, including a small number of protestors, with the usual “Free Palestine” shouts. Someone with a bullhorn at a window in the room was saying that students were trapped in the library, public safety would not let them out. A few people in the crowd chanted “Let them out!”. When I got back, here’s the email sent out to the university:

Unfortunately, the University is dealing with a disruption in reading room 301 of Butler Library. Columbia’s Public Safety Team is responding and working to mitigate the situation. Individuals have been asked for identification, which will be recorded, and asked to disperse. They have been told that failure to comply will result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest. No individuals who have been protesting in the reading room have chosen, at this point, to identify themselves and depart. Individuals who were not involved in the protest have been allowed to leave. While this is isolated to one room in the library, it is completely unacceptable that some individuals are choosing to disrupt academic activities as our students are studying and preparing for final exams. These disruptions of our campus and academic activities will not be tolerated. Individuals found to be in violation of University Rules and policies will face disciplinary consequences. We ask our community members to please avoid the immediate area near Butler Library in the near term.

No idea what is going on in the library. There’s a crowd with cell-phones out trying to film what is going on inside. Every so often someone comes out, but no one going in. Sounds like the students are not occupying the library (they say they are trying to get out), but that public safety won’t let them out unless they identify themselves.

There’s reporting at the Columbia Spectator, which says that starting at 3:55

a Public Safety officer inside the reading room said over a speaker that protesters must present their IDs or would be subject to arrest for trespass.

A message from the acting president:

I want to update the community on the latest information regarding the disruption at Butler Library. The individuals who disrupted activities in Butler Reading Room 301 still refuse to identify themselves and leave the building. Due to the number of individuals participating in the disruption inside and outside of the building, a large group of people attempting to force their way into Butler Library creating a safety hazard, and what we believe to be the significant presence of individuals not affiliated with the University, Columbia has taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community.

Sadly, during the course of this disruption, two of our Columbia Public Safety Officers sustained injuries during a crowd surge when individuals attempted to force their way into the building and into Room 301. These actions are outrageous.

Individuals participating in the Reading Room 301 disruption were repeatedly asked for identification and to leave, and were repeatedly told that failure to comply would result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest for trespassing. We have been clear from the outset about applying our protocols and advising participants of the potential consequences of not complying. Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community.

Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies; this is especially unacceptable while our students study and prepare for final exams. Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today. We are resolute that calls for violence or harm have no place at our University. We will continue to keep our community apprised as the situation evolves.

Sincerely,

Claire Shipman
Acting President, Columbia University in the City of New York

I’ve written some more about what I saw in the comments. I was outside the entrance to the library around the time of the “crowd surge” that is said to have injured two of the public safety officers. From what I could see, the group of people pushing towards the building entrance included many journalists with cameras, as well as people who appeared to be just trying to push forward to try and get a better shot on their cell-phone. These people mostly did not seem to be protestors (e.g. no keffiyehs). I also doubt the claim above that these were people not affiliated with the university (the security here remains tight, and they looked like Columbia students).

In retrospect, I think a mistake the security people were making was that there were none of them outside the entrance. If a couple people had been politely asking people to stay back and not push towards the entrance, for everyone’s safety, that would have been helpful.

Update: On my walk home, the campus was completely peaceful, very few people now at the Butler entrance. Nothing happening at the campus entrance at 116th, but the NYPD had closed off much of 114th street, which is the south boundary of campus and has entrances from the back to Butler library. At the time they were clearly preparing for going into the library and arresting for trespassing those students who refused to identify themselves to campus security. Some protestors and a lot of lookers-on had gathered at 114th and Broadway. The most reliable outside protestors were there: the group of anti-Zionist Hasids. Somebody with a camera at 114th and Broadway (while I was walking past him) took a full trashcan, dumped all the trash into the street and turned over the trashcan so he could stand on it and get a better shot of what the NYPD were doing.

Update: I’m back in the office this morning and the campus and neighborhood are back to the usual peace and quiet. Butler library and the reading room there are open again. For today the university is only allowing guest passes requested by faculty, not those requested by students or staff. There seems to be some suspicion that non-Columbia affiliates yesterday got on campus through abuse of the guest pass system. Our acting president is a TV journalist, so she has the right background to put out statements on video, here’s the latest one.

Some thoughts on the events here yesterday:

• The actual disruption was rather small, basically just that Butler library was closed for several hours. It’s one of many places on campus students can study (classes recently ended and students are studying for final exams). Since few people these days read physical books, likely hardly anyone was inconvenienced by not being able to get a book there. The biggest disruption was the helicopters hovering above campus. Having three news helicopters and then an NYPD helicopter all in the airspace above the campus was both disruptively loud and seemed to me more than a little dangerous.
• The new policies the university has put in place to deal with disruptive demonstrations seem to have worked out exactly as planned. Those involved were offered the opportunity to identify themselves and leave, or to refuse to do so, stay and be arrested by the NYPD for trespassing. The NYPD arrived fairly quickly, made arrests and the campus was soon back to normal.
• There was no “antisemitic threat to Jewish students”, with the only interaction of the protestors with Jewish students the fact that likely some of them were Jewish.
• Fortunately, it seems that no one was seriously hurt. The most serious violence did not involve the occupation of the room in the library, but the actions of people at the main door to the building (more about this later).
• The group organizing this was CUAD, you can read their statement about how they were turning the library into “Basel Al-Araj Popular University”. Their program is not just to protest what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, for which they likely could get a large amount of support, but also to call for a much wider “anti-imperialist” struggle, demanding for instance “END COLUMBIA’S OCCUPATION OF HARLEM; RETURN LAND TO HARLEMITES AND OPEN THE GATES!”. Tactically, they do things like vandalizing the reading room while they were there, and engaging in delusional claims about their interactions with security people, for instance yesterday issuing the statement:
  

  “Despite over three hours of kettling and assault by Columbia Public Safety, we continue to hold the line,” the post read. “We are facing one of the largest militarized police forces in the world. Deputized Public Safety officers have choked and beaten us, but we have not wavered.”

  “We refuse to show our IDs under militarized arrest,” the post read. “We refuse to go down quietly.”

• When I left the campus last night, NYPD had blocked off part of 114th Street, bringing arrested protestors out the back of Butler. A group of people had gathered at the end of the street, shouting obscenities at the police and trying to taunt them into a violent reaction.
• Looking at X and Bluesky this morning, social media discussion is mostly either really stupid “Columbia is taken over by violent anti-semites, the university is doing nothing and deserves to be burned to the ground” commentary or the equally stupid “The NYPD and Columbia security are cracking the skulls of innocent students. The Fascist university deserves to be burned to the ground”. If you look hard you can find some actual true information there, but on the whole social media is a sewer wrecking our society.

Looking at the helicopters, the students in the reading room, people outside the front of the library with their video equipment, and those gathered at 114th and Broadway, what struck me is that there were an awful lot of people out there who very much wanted to see someone get hurt. Thanks to the Columbia security and NYPD people who did their job and stopped these people from getting what they wanted.

I still don’t understand one thing that happened, the violent confrontation in the entrance vestibule to Butler around 5pm. You can watch a video of this here. I was outside the building at exactly this time (in the video you see someone helping someone else get out, I saw them come out through the crowd from the other side). I took a picture from outside, here it is

At the time I didn’t know what was going on. There were some students shouting “Let Them Out” and a student with a bullhorn at a window above the entrance saying there were 120 students there trapped by security, which would not let them leave. The people I could see pushing to get closer to the entrance included some protestors in keffiyehs, but mostly what appeared to be curiousity-seekers trying to see into the lobby to see what was going on. Basically everyone had either a cell-phone or professional camera and was holding it high trying to video what was happening. For a second I was tempted to get closer to see what was going on, but decided that was a bad idea.

If you look at the video filmed inside the vestibule, there are a lot of security people trying to keep the door closed and stop anyone from coming into the building. At least one person is shouting at them and demanding entrance. The rest seem to be some combination of several people with press badges, several photographers, some other people who might want to try and get in the building, some who wanted to shout abuse at security while filming, and possibly several who were trapped by the crowd pushing from the outside that you see in the photo.

I’d be curious to read an actual report from one of the press people there. If anyone has seen such a thing, let me know. As discussed above, my general impression of this crowd in the vestibule is that just about everyone in it was consciously or not hoping for a violent confrontation with security, a few wanting to be part of it, most wanting to get a video of it.

Update: Another possible reason the president and trustees are anxious to revamp the Senate is that current rules require her to consult with the Executive Committee of the Senate before bringing the police on campus, something that likely did not happen yesterday.

Update: The Trump Task Force approves.

Update: There’s an article in the Nation which may answer some of my questions about the violence going on in the Butler vestibule. A picture of the scene is captioned “Students attempting to retrieve personal belongings from the library, protesters, journalists, and legal observers, struggled against Public Safety to be let into Butler.” I’m finding it hard to believe that any sane student trying to get back their stuff thought it a good idea to try and fight their way through a doorway held closed by a large group of public safety officers. “protestors, journalists and legal observers” does sound plausible: most people were shooting video the whole time. More from the article:

Outside the library, Public Safety employed similarly aggressive tactics on the critical mass gathering at Butler’s main doors. Students attempting to retrieve personal belongings from the library, protesters, journalists, and legal observers elbowed their way into the library vestibule before being violently shoved by officers attempting to hinder further entry. One protester ended up on the floor trampled and injured, before two fellow demonstrators removed her from the area.

Ian Borim, a student who was present at Butler’s exterior, says this is the worst violence from Public Safety officers he has witnessed to date. “I truly saw the university in crisis,” he commented. Indeed, up until recently, it was highly atypical for Public Safety to put hands on students…

Out of “urgent concern for the well being of students,” Borim asked multiple Public Safety officials who was in charge, and how students may identify the new special patrol with arrest powers. They refused to respond. Later, when he propped open the handcuffed door with his hands and legs to locate a Public Safety representative who might help mediate the situation, officers shut the door on him. “His arm is in there! Do you not care about the safety of your students?” cried one observer.

“The actions wouldn’t keep escalating if…the administration didn’t just repeatedly take authoritarian decisions in how it handles advocacy for…Palestine,” said Borim. “There is an underlying assumption that…student protesters are just insubordinates that need to be forced into compliance. That’s the approach that the administration has been taking for the past two years, and it’s not really working for them or anyone else.”…

Several public safety officers pushed and barricaded credentialed journalists attempting to enter the premises.

From the Nation story, I’m guessing the Ashli Babbitt figure was Ian Borim, whose behavior is described by

when he propped open the handcuffed door with his hands and legs to locate a Public Safety representative who might help mediate the situation, officers shut the door on him. “His arm is in there! Do you not care about the safety of your students?” cried one observer.

Also in the vestibule I guess were “credentialed journalists attempting to enter the premises”. From the video they’re next to the protester who ended up on the floor trampled and injured. Can they report who trampled and injured the protester since they were standing right there?

Update: I just watched the youtube video again, after reading the Nation article. I don’t have much of an opinion about what the right discipline is for students protesting by taking over a study room, but the violent behavior by the students in that video seems to me much, much worse.

Update: News reports (e.g. this one) say 80 students arrested for trespassing, and that the university put 65 current students on “interim suspension” and banned 33 others (alumni, affiliates, from other institutions) from campus. If you believe Fox News, those arrested were largely (65 out of 80) women.

Update: Ian Borim writes in here to explain that what was described in the Nation happened a little bit later than the video. He’s right that the description of him interacting with a door closed by handcuffs was not what was happening in the video as I assumed. My apologies for getting that wrong.

This morning we received a long message from the acting president, entitled Preserving Columbia’s Critical Research Capabilities. Here’s a summary:

• It’s a complete mystery to me, but the trustees still refuse to go to court to challenge the defunding of research grants, somehow because they think they are negotiating this, even though it has for a long time been clear that negotiating with Trump is not going to lead to anything but humiliation. The message has:
  

  As many of you are aware, the University is engaged in a two-pronged effort related to grants terminated by the federal government. The first prong focuses on our continued efforts to restore our partnerships with government agencies that support critical research… Columbia’s leadership continues discussions with the federal government in support of resuming activity on these research awards and additional other awards that have remained active, but unpaid.

  The Wall Street Journal has an “Exclusive” article claiming that Trump’s people are negotiating a consent decree with Columbia:

  Columbia leaders are negotiating with the government and weighing what to do, the people said. The university’s board is undecided on whether to accept a consent decree, they said. For a consent decree to take effect, Columbia would have to agree to enter it.

  The government has told the school that it can either negotiate and accept a consent decree, or face a court battle that could end up with the school facing more public scrutiny and in the end the same kind of legal agreement to make changes, perhaps with worse terms, they said.

  With a consent decree, the government is seeking viewpoint diversity among Columbia’s faculty and that the school not consider race in admissions, the people said.

  The article also includes:

  A Columbia spokesperson said: “This story is based entirely on hearsay and does not hold merit.” She pointed to a statement issued last month from acting university president Claire Shipman, who said that Columbia would reject any agreement that would require relinquishing its independence.

  The article is the latest of many “Exclusive”s by two WSJ journalists, Douglas Belkin and Liz Essley White, who have been simply putting out as “news” delusional statements trying to pressure Columbia from one of Trump’s people, very likely Sean Keveney, the lawyer responsible for the “mistake” letter sent to Harvard. This is actually the second bogus “Exclusive” news about a consent decree, the first was here nearly a month ago.

• Much of the message is concerned with what the university is now doing to contend with the reality that grant funding is gone for now (and will be until they go to court and get a court judgement…):
  

  Separately and in parallel, our Deans have carefully reviewed and prioritized our research activity to develop a plan for managing the affected research. We asked each principal investigator of a terminated award to develop a Research Action Plan (RAP) for review at the school level and to inform a school-based approach. During this review period, the University continued to fund those individuals whose salaries and stipends were previously funded with federal support on now-terminated awards…

  Moving forward, we will be running lighter footprints of research infrastructure in some areas and, in others, maintaining a level of research continuity as we pursue alternate funding sources. In some cases, schools and departments are winding down activity but remain prepared to reestablish capabilities if support is restored. Across the research portfolio we have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination. This represents about 20% of the individuals who are funded in some manner by the terminated grants…

  As schools and departments moved through the process of reviewing priorities related to terminated awards, it became clear that we need to be prepared to make additional investments to secure the strength of our research enterprise as we navigate future periods of uncertainty and change. Additional complexities and risks include the process and funding for obtaining new awards and continuations of existing research projects. To that end, the University has established a Research Stabilization Fund to navigate these future funding risks and lend support to our scientific community in multiple forms. These resources will be made available through an application process for internal grants to scientists to support their work for a limited time as they seek alternate sources of funding or complete the components of their research to enable publication of results. In addition, the University will contribute funds to schools over the next year to support our commitments to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows on terminated training grants, an area that has been severely impacted by terminations of federal support. The Stabilization Fund and Other Resources webpage developed by the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research provides more details about these funds and other resources on funding opportunities for the research community.

• The message also explains that the university now faces serious budget problems going forward, and announces various steps being taken to deal with it, including a salary freeze:
  

  We will continue to make prudent budget decisions that will ensure long-term financial stability across the University, including making significant budget reductions within the University’s central administration. Across the University, we have set parameters to keep most salaries at their current level, without increases for the next fiscal year, with some schools and units providing a modest pool for employees at the lower end of their salary distribution. We have also developed programs to further streamline our workforce through attrition and are preparing to launch a voluntary retirement incentive program, the details of which will be shared next week.

In case anyone is still tempted to believe that the Trump people are negotiating in good faith and seriously addressing real issues, Harvard yesterday received an absurd illiterate letter from Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment executive now responsible for education in the US. The first accusation against Harvard is that it has a course to help students with weak math backgrounds:

Where do many of these “students” come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country — and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?

Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing “remedial math” program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this “acclaimed university”? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?

Update: New from the Columbia Journalism Review, a disturbing story about student disciplinary procedures at Barnard.

Update: New from the New York Times, a story about how Columbia was taken in by a crooked game of Prisoner’s Dilemma.

A few weeks ago, several prominent American universities and law firms found themselves in what seemed to be a classic prisoner’s dilemma, courtesy of President Trump…

Columbia University made a deal with the administration. So did some of the largest law firms in the country. Recent changes, however, suggest that the dilemma is starting to look very different…

But crucially, one assumption in the prisoner’s dilemma is that the jailer is trustworthy. There is an explicit promise that confessing will allow prisoners to avoid the longest sentence.

In the real world, however, instead of rewarding those who capitulated early, the Trump administration pressured them even more.

Columbia University, for example, agreed to concessions that included imposing new oversight over its Middle Eastern studies department and creating a security force empowered to make arrests. But that was not enough to restore the more than $400 million in grants that the Trump administration had canceled, or to prevent the administration from making even more demands.

The Times story also addresses another problem created by behavior like Columbia’s:

Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said she has observed “burgeoning moral distress” among her membership in recent months. “Campus leaders feel like they’re being coerced into making decisions they believe are unethical, but they feel they have no choice,” she said. “In many instances, that moral distress has morphed into a moral injury that results from the continual erosion of a moral compass.”

Update: In recent days the security checkpoint at the gate nearest the math building has become more difficult to get through, as people have to pass through two different devices with their ids. No one knows (including the people working the security checkpoint) why this new security layer has been introduced. We’re seeing lines of students waiting to get in, people who can’t get in this gate, have to go around to the main gate to get access. Only protest activity on campus in recent weeks a small vigil for our imprisoned students.

Update: Yet another NYT article about Columbia today, this time about the campaign by the trustees to revamp the university senate, which some of them see as “antisemitic” and responsible for obstructing the necessary rigorous discipline of students involved in last year’s protests and building occupation. From the article:

There also appears to be at least some agreement between Columbia’s trustees and those in Washington who feel that support for the student protests was antisemitic, a position that angers university senators, who feel they are being slurred.

Since the administration has a lot going on right now (see above…), it’s odd that the trustees are making it a priority to deal with obscure long-term governance issues like that of how the senate works. The only way I see to understand this is that this is part of the ongoing negotiation about “antisemitism”, which now appears to be a 3-way one involving the Trump people, powerful pro-Israel trustees and donors, and the rest of the university. Last year Jonathan Lavine, now co-chair of the presidential search committee, sent a text message to David Greenwald, co-chair of the board, about “the antisemites on the Senate”.

I’m finding it very difficult to understand why the trustees are still refusing to go to court to stop grant cancellations, supposedly because this would interfere with negotiations with Trump. Given everything happening, why would anyone in their right mind still think that Trump was someone you could sensibly negotiate with? The only reason I can think of is that some of the trustees and donors still find the pressure from the Fascist dictatorship useful to make progress on their own agenda of getting rid of problems at Columbia like “the antisemites on the Senate”.

Update: Josh Marshall has an informative story about how the NIH grant cancellations are being implemented. There’s no stop work order or notification, the university just finds out at the end of the month that it won’t be paid. All universities except Harvard haven’t gone to court, hoping there is something they can do which will keep Trump happy and get the payments restarted. They are telling the researchers involved not to say anything, so the public isn’t hearing about the impacts of these cancellations. Only in the Columbia case has the university been presented with a set of demands. For the others, they’re in the dark even about when they’ll hear what might cause funds to flow again.

It looks like the obvious thing they should all be doing (if they weren’t too paralyzed, fearful and hopeful there is some way to sell out to the dictatorship) is join forces and all go to court together.

Update: There’s a new statement from the Trustees about their plan to revamp the Senate. Nothing in the statement is particularly objectionable (the Senate has been ineffective and maybe needs reform), but there’s no explanation why this obscure governance issue seems to be the highest priority of the trustees at a time the university is facing financial disaster and an existential threat from outside. That some trustees see the Senate (and in particular the chair of its Executive Committee) as a bunch of “antisemites” may or may not be the explanation. For some comments about all this, see here.

This article at the Atlantic points out the obvious: that “antisemitism” was always a bogus pretext is confirmed by the new crazy letter from McMahon (written by Trump?) which drops the pretext completely.