The Situation at Columbia IV

Not much news from Columbia this week, the Fascist dictatorship was successful at getting the president of Columbia removed and has now moved on to Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Hopefully the leadership of those institutions is more willing to fight Fascism than Columbia’s. Or, at least, they may have noticed that if you do what Columbia did you’ll bring shame on your institution, and still not get your money back.

During the past week I’ve been trying without success to find anyone who knows anything about what is going on with Columbia’s leadership and its dealings with the Trump administration. The acting president of Columbia has just issued a statement, entitled Listening, Learning and Starting the Conversation, video here. In this posting I’ll try and do a close reading of the statement. Shipman’s text is the part in italics, my interpretation of what she’s saying follows.

First, the commitments the University made to address antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination, which were outlined on March 21, are now my commitments, and work is underway to continue their implementation. We are not changing course. I believe the plans, many of which were already underway, are the right thing to do, and good for our institution.

The previous president (Katrina Armstrong) was fired for insufficient dedication to implementing the cave-in to Trump. I’m not going to make her mistake. We should all be enthusiastic about the cave-in, which is “good for our institution”.

Second, we are proceeding, with integrity and care, in our discussions with the federal government about restoring our research funding.

Even with the cave-in, they still won’t give us the money back. They’re continuing to illegally use the money to try and force us to do more things against our principles, but we have to be really careful not to annoy them by resisting. We’re still too afraid to try and deal with their illegal behavior by going to court.

Third, I also want to acknowledge the deep fear and uncertainty being felt at this moment in our international community. I see you, and I hear you, and the University administration is, and I am, deeply concerned for all our international students and scholars…

We are committed to supporting our international community in any way possible for us. I’ve asked our team to substantially increase our funding and hours for our International Student and Scholars Office (ISSO), so that our advisors are more readily available to help…

Let me also make this clear—Columbia doesn’t have the ultimate authority, and we’re committed to following the law.

We are not going to do anything like what Tufts is doing for its imprisoned student. We’re not going to help any of our students who get dragged out of their dorms or off the streets, we’re not even going to mention their names. As far as we’re concerned, using bogus accusations that our students are terrorists to arrest, imprison and deport them is perfectly legal.

I’ll also take this moment to put some rumors to rest. No member of the leadership team or the Board of Trustees ever notified ICE about any members of our community. Full stop.

There was a March 10 Forward article with the text:

“Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist who previously shared a list of campus protesters with federal immigration authorities, said that he was in Washington, D.C., for meetings with members of Congress during the Barnard library demonstration and discussed Khalil with aides to Sens. Ted Cruz and John Fetterman who promised to “escalate” the issue. He said that some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.

“This unfolded very quickly because it was obvious,” Glick said in an interview Monday. “Everybody was upset,” he recalled of his meetings on the Hill. “The guy was making it too easy for us.”

Here I’m going with a non-denial denial. I won’t deny this, instead I’ll vigorously deny something different (trustees reported Khalil to ICE).