Columbia’s genuflection to Trump may haunt it, even as some good will come

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne’s masterpiece, Hester Prynne publicly acknowledges her sin and wears the red “A” as a gesture of defiance and pride. It soon becomes a symbol of strength and compassion. Compelled by outsiders to accept the humiliating label, she does the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Dr. Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia University, seems to be in Hester’s shoes at the moment. Her sin is not adultery, of course, but rather it is capitulating to a vindictive, petty tyrant who is just at the beginning of a war on higher education. Armstrong has become both a casualty of that struggle and a contributor to it.

Certainly, there can be little argument that some of the gestures Armstrong is making are long overdue – and, indeed, had been under way before Trump’s meddling. In essence, the good doctor is doing some right things for the wrong reasons.

Recall that Armstrong has succumbed to Trump’s $400 million extortion effort. Trump cut that amount of money from a reported $5 billion in federal funds that goes to the private Ivy League school, but then said he might restore the money if the school knuckled under to a string of demands.

Significantly, these demands included putting a particular Middle Eastern studies department into “receivership,” i.e., taking control of it away from departmental faculty and putting it under another university administrator. Typically, this is done when the department is judged to be dysfunctional, usually paralyzed by in-fighting or other problems that render it unable to function.

It’s not done, generally, for political or intellectual reasons.

But the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department (MESAAS), the one Trump targeted, is an interdisciplinary unit that has long been a hotbed of anti-Zionism. One professor there, Joseph Massad, referred to Hamas’s barbarities on Oct. 7, 2023, as “awesome” and “stunning,” for instance, and he waxed poetic that they could lead to the destruction of Israel, as former Columbia graduate student Liel Liebovitz, an editor at Tablet, put it.

In turning the Middle Eastern studies program into a “bastion of anti-Semitic propaganda,” Massad is hardly alone, Liebovitz reported. There are many profs like him. Consider just one other, Hamid Dabashi, who over the last 20 years has attacked “rich and powerful” Zionists who he said controlled the American government. In a 2014 article for Al Jazeera, Dabashi compared Gaza with Auschwitz and Israelis with Nazis, according to Leibovitz. The two academics have been active in anti-Israel campus activities, including moderating events by Students for Justice in Palestine, a group the university suspended for inciting violence against Jewish students.

For more about Hamas enthusiasts at Columbia, see here.

Disgusted by the likes of Massad, a longtime adjunct professor at Columbia’s School International and Public Affairs, Lawrence “Muzzy” Rosenblatt, went so far as to quit the university last December. He was revolted that Massad was slated to teach a class on Zionism and Israel.

“This would be akin to having a White Nationalist teach about the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black equality, or having a climate denier teach about the impact of global warming, or a misogynist teach about Feminism,” Rosenblatt wrote in his resignation letter. “While Massad has a right to think what he thinks, and speak what he believes, Columbia has a responsibility to teach objectively and fairly. At best perhaps one could tolerate a class on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict co-taught from the many diverse Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, though not by someone who advocates for the eradication of a group of people.”

“Columbia has lost not only its moral compass, but its intellectual one,” Rosenblatt wrote.

So, now Armstrong has agreed to put an array of departments that deal with Middle Eastern studies, including MESAAS, under control of a new Senior Vice Provost. That is a “receivership” in all but name.

The SVP will review course offerings at MESAAS, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (IIJS), the Middle East Institute. the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs, the School of International and Public Affairs Middle East Policy major and other University programs focused on the Middle East “to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced.” The SVP will recommend changes, as needed, to top administrators.

As detailed in a university statement, Columbia will also review coursework in other departments to assure “excellence and fairness in Middle East studies.” Even before Trump’s extortion effort, the university had reviews under way in the Arts & Sciences curriculum for classes dealing with the history of Israel and Zionism. Columbia also has invited visiting faculty and postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies to extend their teaching until new tenure-line faculty are hired, part of an effort to expand intellectual diversity among the faculty.

Armstrong also agreed to accept a definition of antisemitism recommended last August by a university task force. This refers to “prejudice, discrimination, hate, or violence directed at Jews, including Jewish Israelis. Antisemitism can manifest in a range of ways, including as ethnic slurs, epithets, and caricatures; stereotypes; antisemitic tropes and symbols; Holocaust denial; targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them; exclusion or discrimination based on Jewish identity or ancestry or real or perceived ties to Israel; and certain double standards applied to Israel.”

Presumably, students and faculty can be disciplined for antisemitism, as defined above. Indeed, the university did expel and in other ways take action against an undetermined number of students for some actions in last spring’s demonstrations.

Some critics take issue with the Columbia definition. An official of the free-speech organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, for instance, derided it as “vague and sweeping enough that it will imperil speech otherwise protected by the First Amendment.” He added that the federal government “shouldn’t pressure any college, private or public, to censor speech critical of any country.”

Whether one accepts the definition or not, these are appropriate efforts on Columbia’s part and some of them preceded Trump’s demands and exceed them. Even as she is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, some good will come out of Armstrong’s surrender.

Other points on which she has yielded, however, are more problematic. Is the requirement that student demonstrators be required to shun masks an intolerable interference with free speech? Is a review of admission policies, ostensibly with an eye toward not favoring some groups over others, really just a fig leaf for reducing diversity efforts? Is the adoption of “institutional neutrality” really just a refusal to publicly take stances on controversial matters for fear of offending Trump or others?

Beyond those details, there is a larger question: should a private university be brought to heel by a thin-skinned, grudge-bearing authoritarian who seems to be acting more out of personal animus than any commitment to intellectual fairness or real hostility to antisemitism? How petty is he, you might ask?

Consider the magic figure has been $400 million that Trump ordered cut. That figure seems like a number plucked from the air.

Certainly, it doesn’t reflect the value of grants and other federal funds the university gets. That tally, if the White House can be believed, is closer to $5 billion. So why didn’t Trump cancel $1 billion or more, something closer to the full amount? He named no specific programs for slashing and didn’t identify any particular cuts he wanted that would have added up to $400 million.

And why would the former middling New York real estate developer and failed casino magnate single out the New York school for such special treatment? Beyond the pro-Palestinian demonstrations of last year – an upheaval that has been largely resolved — what about Columbia put it in his gunsights in his national assault on higher education – a war in which he can now claim quite the high-profile scalp?

The New York Times, in a bit of smart reporting, has provided some answers.

Back around 2000, Trump tried to sell Columbia a parcel of land a couple miles away from the main campus, a parcel between Lincoln Center and the Hudson River, the newspaper reported. His asking price for what he called “Columbia Prime” was $400 million. The university had Goldman Sachs look over the deal. The firm’s valuation: $65 million to $90 million.

Outraged, Trump stormed out of a meeting with trustees. When Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger opted to expand elsewhere, Trump publicly labeled Bollinger – a lawyer who had clerked for a Supreme Court Justice and who went on to run Columbia for two decades — “a dummy” and “a total moron.” Ever the self-aggrandizer, Trump – who had been a disappointing student at the University of Pennsylvania for a couple years — wrote in a letter to a pair of Columbia student journalists: “Columbia Prime was a great idea thought of by a great man, which ultimately fizzled due to poor leadership at Columbia,” scribbling on it “Bollinger is terrible!”

Now, one key question is whether Trump has wrung all his vengeance out of Columbia. Recall that his administration called agreement to his demands just a “precondition” for negotiations about the $400 million. Will there be more demands, especially now that he has forced Columbia to roll over?

An Atlantic piece suggests Trump will just be emboldened. “Surrendering to Donald Trump, however, would be a serious error,” writer David A. Graham argued. “The first impact would be on Columbia itself, which would be granting control to an administration that has been frank about its desire to knock universities down a few notches.” He noted that Armstrong’s predecessor, Minouche Shafik, sought to placate GOP critics last spring, satisfying no one and losing her job in the process. In addition, he wrote, Trump’s pattern is to turn on both those who criticize as well as appease him.

“We are appeasing an angry king,” journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote about Trump in 2019. “And the usual result of appeasement is that the angry king banks every concession and, empowered and emboldened by his success, gets more aggressive and more power hungry.”

Moreover, while combatting entrenched antisemitism among some Columbia faculty members is overdue and appropriate, the precedent created by bowing to Trump’s meddling is alarming. As the president of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber wrote in The Atlantic, the government’s “recent attack” on Columbia presents “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s” and urged universities to speak up in defense of their rights.

“Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge,” Eisgruber wrote. “They, too, should demand a stop to the government’s unwarranted intrusion on academic freedom at Columbia.”

And, as FIRE attorney Tyler Coward contended: “The federal government abandoned its existing process to brow-beat Columbia — and Columbia folded. Higher education reform shouldn’t resemble a shakedown. Colleges and universities shouldn’t be bullied into accepting speech-restrictive demands because the government dangles a $400 million check over an institution’s head …. Shaking under government pressure, Columbia crumbled. If Columbia — with its immense resources and influence — can’t stand up to government demands that threaten free speech, what are other colleges to do?”

For better or worse, Armstrong will now forever wear an academic scarlet “A.” It will not represent defiance, but genuflection, not standing up for academic independence, but kowtowing to a bully. And, for all the needed good that her mandated changes will do, the letter will not be something she can wear with pride.