Columbia University, a chapter of the American College Professors’ Association, urged officials there to reject the Trump administration’s request, including putting an academic department under the leadership of the election, abolishing the university’s judicial committee and granting security employee arrest agencies.
“Compliance will destroy Columbia itself, depriving shared control of academic and student affairs from faculty and administration, and using mandatory statutory orders outside the institution to replace the university’s deliberation practices and structures,” the AAUP chapter said in a statement Tuesday. “We do not see compliance eases the hostility of the White House.”
The Trump administration announced that on March 7, the university “continues to do nothing” due to the continued harassment of Jewish students at the university, canceling about $400 million in federal grants and Colombia’s contract. Then, in a letter last week, federal officials listed “we will take the next step as a prerequisite for formal negotiations on the ongoing financial relationship between Columbia University and the U.S. government.” They set a March 20 deadline to comply with the requirements, which also included mask bans, changes to hospital admissions plans, and more.
“The government’s demand, like a letter of ransom, requires that the university must sacrifice what principles and the ideological position it must take to restore research funding,” the Colombian AAUP statement said. As for the justified reasons for fighting anti-Semitism, the AAUP chapter said the university has taken “many actions that have accommodated its Jewish students over the past year, sometimes at the expense of other campus groups’ dissatisfaction.”
The AAUP chapter said that “the attack on Colombia will be a role model for attacks on other universities across the country” and urged colleagues to speak out and “marche in the streets.”
The White House did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
