Capitulation: the act of surrendering, giving up, or yielding. You are lucky if you haven’t been bullied in your life—in school, at work, in a relationship. The working-class streets where I played after school—actually during every spare moment I could escape my family’s roach-infested three-room apartment—had a good number of bullies. My high school, De Witt Clinton, filled with boy-men, was probably the toughest in the city and had more than its fair share.
These days, we have a president who has successfully bullied so many of those he has come across in life, especially his political rivals. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, for example, despite Trump’s repeated humiliations, have become slavish sycophants, supporting even the most moronic things that come of his mouth without a moment’s hesitation. Trump’s former lawyers, whom he so often viciously chastised in public, have been rewarded for surrendering their dignity with jobs at the Department of Justice where they are more than willing to faithfully serve him rather than the nation.
Much of the rest of the world—especially Europe, whom Trump is trying his best to bully these days—are far more aware than most Americans of the true cost of submission. They have not forgotten the price they paid at the hands of Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Mussolini in Italy, and, of course, Stalin and Putin in Russia.
Talk to anyone who grew up under Soviet occupation and they will tell you how everything about their lives was poisoned. How neighbors reported on one another, how what you could listen to, read, talk about was constricted, controlled. How life itself was dangerous. Ask yourselves: Which way were the machine guns pointed atop the Berlin Wall?
I can remember in 1956 when ordinary Hungarians filled the streets of Budapest and threw rocks at the invading Soviet tanks. In 1968, I was protesting outside the Soviet embassy in London as the tanks went into Czechoslovakia. Today, as brave Ukrainians, outnumbered and out-bombed, risk their lives each day to save their freedom and independence, we are witnessing the surrender of some of America’s most prestigious universities, law firms, and media companies to Donald Trump.
These MAGA-certified bigots and bullies, who argue with a straight face that the 2020 election was stolen and that the criminals of January 6 who beat and bloodied Capitol police were patriots, somehow imagine themselves qualified to demand reparations and apologies from Columbia, Brown, and Harvard. However, these universities have failed their Jewish students; the Trump appointees are the least qualified to help remedy that failure.
So, it is very painful to watch Columbia follow in the cowardly footsteps of CBS and Skadden Arps because with each capitulation, Donald Trump and MAGA are emboldened, delirious that they are getting away with it. And what does it say about us that prestigious universities and powerful law firms and media conglomerates wilt before the narcissistic tyranny of incompetents, that we have to look away from our colleges and universities to the cartoonists/filmmakers at South Park and their “Sermon on the ‘Mount” to find the bravely told truth that, indeed, the emperor has no clothes?
Trump tells us that the problem is Columbia’s tolerance of antisemitism. And soon after his inauguration, he issued “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”:
The executive action declares:
It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.
Forgive me for interrupting, but this seems a perfect time for Donald Trump to invoke his Supreme Court-given grant of immunity: He, unlike Columbia, is immune from any such prosecution.
But back to his executive action:
(a) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the head of each executive department or agency (agency) shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions within the jurisdiction of that agency, beyond those already implemented under Executive Order 13899, that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism …
(c) The Attorney General is encouraged to employ appropriate civil-rights enforcement authorities, such as 18 U.S.C. 241, to combat anti-Semitism …
(d) The report submitted by the Secretary of Education under this section shall additionally include an inventory and an analysis of all Title VI complaints and administrative actions, including in K-12 education, related to anti-Semitism — pending or resolved after October 7, 2023 — within the Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
(e) In addition to identifying relevant authorities to curb or combat anti-Semitism generally required by this section, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with each other, shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.
[Emphasis added.]
It did not take long for “the aliens” to appear. But I can remember from my childhood when Jews were the aliens, unfit for country clubs, to be neighbors, even.
To make sure the message was received, the White House also issued an additional explanation reminding us of President Trump’s campaign commitment to be a friend and protector of the Jewish community, adding his promise to:
- Protect the civil rights of our Jewish citizens: “My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
- Aggressively enforce the law, protect public order, and prosecute antisemitic crimes: “I will issue clear orders to my Attorney General to aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews.”
- Deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Having made it through McCarthyism, let me address the charge that the campus protestors had pro-jihadist sympathies and antisemitic bias. One of the realities, good and bad, is that protest movements and demonstrations attract a wide variety of people, with all sorts of agendas and differing ideas of what needs to happen. Some people, for example, feel compelled to bang their drums, despite the fact they haven’t learned how to drum, or to shout and inconvenience the innocent. Occasionally, an idiot or agent provocateur will throw rocks or bottles.
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is a perfect example of a broad coalition of folks who, while agreeing to work together, in reality, had different ideas about how to most effectively respond to segregation and the ongoing discrimination against people of color. Though he attended, Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam referred to it as the Farce on Washington, while John Lewis and the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were clearly impatient with the slow pace of the coalition-building of Martin Luther King. I bring this up because it seems that, based on a lot of faulty information, many believe that the campus protests were rife with anti-Jewish bias and an expression of support for Hamas. I won’t deny that many protests failed to sufficiently denounce the barbarity and immorality of the Hamas attack on innocent Israeli civilians, the rape and savagery, but given that mistake, there has to be room in a democracy to express opposition to the violence perpetrated on civilians in Gaza. As always in war, it is the citizens who are the most vulnerable. Witness those slaughtered at a music festival.
Exploiting the situation, and without offering any proof, the White House called the demonstrators “pro-jihadist,” claiming that protestors were “celebrating Hamas’ mass rape, kidnapping and murder” and that they “obstructed synagogues, and assaulted worshippers.” There is a significant difference between believing that a two-state solution might bring an end to this war and criticizing the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for abandoning that possibility and endorsing brutality and criminality. In reality, not that they can safely affirm it, but not all Palestinians favor Hamas, and not all Israelis support what their government is doing in Gaza. And there is certainly no correlation between political criticism and religious bias.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press did some fact-checking about the demonstrations:
The Associated Press writes:
The Associated Press on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, reported on social media posts falsely claiming that pro-Palestine rallies at UCLA, Penn and other college campuses are calling for ‘Jewish genocide.’ AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The chant uttered during recent demonstrations is being misrepresented. Protestors aren’t saying ‘We want Jewish genocide,’ but ‘Israel, we charge you with genocide.’ Experts and advocates say it’s a typical refrain heard at pro-Palestinian rallies.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing videos they claim show college students calling for the extermination of Jewish people as they protest the Israel-Hamas war on campuses across the country. One video shows a group of people chanting protest slogans as they marched through the University of California, Los Angeles, campus last week. In UCLA hundreds of students chanting ‘Israel Israel you can’t hide, we want Jewish genocide’, wrote one Instagram user in a post sharing the video last week. ‘This is not 1930s Germany, this is in Los Angeles October 26th 2023!’ … But the anti-Israel chants heard during the pro-Palestine rallies are being misquoted, Jewish and Palestinian groups say. The protestors are actually chanting, ‘Israel, Israel, you can’t hide: We charge you with genocide,’ the Anti-Defamation League, which frequently speaks out against anti-Semitism and extremism, confirmed in an email Tuesday.
[Emphasis added.]
In fact, the Anti-Defamation League issued its own attempt to correct some of the misleading reporting:
FALSE NARRATIVE: Antisemitic students left chalked message at Stanford University event. A photo circulating on X, Instagram and other platforms showed an antisemitic statement written in chalk outside a sit-in for Palestine at Stanford University. The message read, ‘Come chat about how Jewish babies should be burned alive,’ followed by a smiley face.
REALITY: While the chalk writing was real, the intent was misunderstood. According to Stanford University President Richard Saller, the message was written by a member of the Jewish community who was trying to make a sarcastic statement against the pro-Palestine event. This individual later apologized and erased the message.
Hare is another report the White House managed to ignore:
… many of the student groups behind the protests – including Jewish activists voicing their support for a cease-fire in Gaza – said that individuals making inflammatory remarks do not represent their groups or their values concerning the war in Gaza. ‘At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life,’ read a statement from Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of the groups involved in the protests. ‘As a diverse group united by love and justice, we demand our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.’
Some Jewish students have long warned against conflating antisemitism with views critical of Israel’s government and blanket portrayals of all protesters as antisemitic. ‘It is unacceptable for school administration and politicians … to co-opt our shared identity to silence Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and Jewish students,’ said MIT Jews for Ceasefire, Harvard Jews for Palestine, and University of Pennsylvania Chavurah in a December 2023 statement to Congress. ‘These actions only serve to obfuscate real cases of antisemitism and put Jewish students at even greater risk.’
[Emphasis added.]
In fact, a very recent development within Israel reveals the clear distinction between criticism of the political and military decisions of the Israeli government from the issue of religious bias and antisemitism. On July 28, 2025, The New York Times reported that two of Israel’s most prominent human rights organization issued a statement accusing the government of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza:
The Times writes:
The two groups were B’Tselem, a rights monitor that documents the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians, and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel. Their announcement was the first time major Israeli rights groups have publicly concluded that the Gaza war is a genocide, an assessment previously reached by some organizations like Amnesty International. In a report titled ‘Our Genocide,’ B’Tselem cited the devastating effects of Israel’s war on ordinary Palestinians to support their claim: the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; the razing of huge areas of Palestinian cities; the forced displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s two million people; the restriction of food and other vital supplies. All together, the Israeli campaign has amounted to ‘coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,’ the organization wrote. ‘In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.’
Israel rejected the accusations as ‘baseless.’ David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesman, said that Israeli troops were targeting Palestinian militants, not civilians. If Israel truly intended to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, the country would not have facilitated nearly two million tons of aid to the territory, he said … Speaking at the International Court of Justice in January 2024, Tal Becker, a member of Israel’s legal defense, said that Israel was fighting Hamas, not targeting Palestinians wholesale. ‘What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts, and to do so in accordance with the law,’ Mr. Becker told the court. Genocide has a specific definition in international law: particular acts carried out with intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. The accusation hits a painful nerve for Israel, a state founded after Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate European Jewry.
Back to Columbia University. On August 30, 2024, Columbia issued a damning portrait of its failure to address bias and hate: “Columbia University Student Experiences of Antisemitism and Recommendations for Promoting Shared Values and Inclusion Task Force on Antisemitism.”
If so many Jewish students at Columbia felt/feel unsafe, everything needs to be done to rectify that. Columbia has a fundamental responsibility to protect all members of its community, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. And there is no excuse for failure. The very idea of an institution devoted to learning demands that it always be a safe space: for exploration, for discussion, for debate, for critical thinking, for differences of opinion and analysis, for freedom of expression. Yet, Columbia failed:
The demonstrations that roiled our campuses during the past academic year uncovered deep disagreements about the mission of our University. During those months, consensus around the University’s formal rules and informal norms of behavior broke down, interfering with our charge to educate students and engage in research. In addition, the testimonies of hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students have made clear that the University community has not treated them with the standards of civility, respect, and fairness it promises to all its students. After October 7, many Jewish and Israeli students began to report multiple instances of harassment, verbal abuse and ostracism, and in some cases physical violence.
Given the volume of these reports, the Task Force invited all students—not just Jewish and Israeli students—to tell us their stories. Over the course of the spring, nearly five hundred students offered testimonials, at over 20 listening sessions, which provided invaluable insights into the campus climate during these troubled times. These student stories are heartbreaking, and make clear that the University has an obligation to act.
This report recounts student experiences in a wide variety of venues — day-to-day encounters, including dorm life and social media; clubs; and the classroom. Unfortunately, some members of the Columbia community have been unwilling to acknowledge the antisemitism many students have experienced — the way repeated violations of University policy and norms have affected them, and the compliance issues this climate has created with respect to federal, state, and local anti-discrimination law. Many of the events reported in the testimonials took place well before the establishment of the encampments and the takeover of Hamilton Hall; the experiences reported during that period were even more extreme …
Students also reported that their efforts to seek redress from the University for the hostility and bigotry they were encountering were often unsuccessful … The experiences of these students demonstrated that there is an urgent need to reshape everyday social norms across the campuses of Columbia University. We need to promote a richer ethic of pluralism, which would encourage greater tolerance of and respect for differences in religion, culture, and national origin. If we were really to succeed in promoting tolerance, students would come to understand and value these differences.
Columbia has been willing to hold up a mirror to its mistakes. But, as always, two seemingly contradictory truths can occupy the same space. Columbia’s failure is undeniable, but the Truskmumpian departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Justice are in no way qualified to effectively make the kinds of changes that will make things better. In fact, given his extensive history of acceptance of and comfort with virulent antisemitism, we are witnessing an outrageous act of arrogance and audacity, of chutzpah coming from Donald Trump. Sadly, we shouldn’t be shocked that he and his enablers are using the charge of bias to advance their desire to destroy independent, liberal, and tolerant higher education in America and to extract revenge from some of the institutions that have harbored critics of the MAGA agenda, the worst breeding grounds for the insidiously “woke” desire for diversity, equity and inclusion.
Not surprisingly, on March 3, 2025, with the presidential proclamation as justification, the Trump administration mobilized a variety of federal agencies to threaten college campuses, including Columbia:
The administration declared:
Given Columbia’s ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students, the Federal Government’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is considering Stop Work Orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia University and the Federal Government. The task force will also conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.
‘Anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,’ said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ‘In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence. Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.’
So says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vax extremist determined to make it ever harder to stop and treat plagues and save lives.
The threat to stop payment on $51.4 million worth of grants that Columbia had successfully won was quickly followed by the announcement that the government was cancelling $400 million in grants:
Today, the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Education (ED), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students … The Task Force is continuing to review and coordinate across federal agencies to identify additional cancellations that could be made swiftly. DOJ, HHS, ED, and GSA are taking this action as members of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Columbia University currently holds more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments …
‘Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses – only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,’ said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. ‘Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.’ …
‘Freezing the funds is one of the tools we are using to respond to this spike in anti-Semitism. This is only the beginning,’ said Leo Terrell, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and head of the DOJ Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. ‘Cancelling these taxpayer funds is our strongest signal yet that the Federal Government is not going to be party to an educational institution like Columbia that does not protect Jewish students and staff.’
Unfortunately, chronicling life in Truskmumpia requires having to wade through the rising waters of hypocrisy:
The Washington Post reminds us that Donald Trump has a history of attacking American Jews and that he can’t help but separate his own sympathies with Netanyahu, a fellow authoritarian, from the prerogatives of Jews to distinguish between their faith and the agenda of one of Israel’s political parties. In fact, Trump has regularly spoken about American Jews as if Israel is their country, rather than the United States.
This fundamental ignorance and, if you ask me, true-blue antisemitism has repeatedly prompted Trump to accuse American Jews of a lack of patriotism, blaming them for failing to adequately support the nation of Israel (or rather Netanyahu’s Israel). Adding, as The Washington Post notes:
On Truth Social, the former president attacked American Jews for being insufficiently supportive of him. ‘Wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of [Trump’s record on Israel] than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.,’ Trump said. Trump wagered that he was so popular in Israel that he could be elected prime minister, and added: ‘U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!’ …
Trump’s comments lean on the familiar antisemitic trope that American Jews have a dual loyalty to Israel. But while this stereotype is a favorite of Trump’s — and one he has deployed increasingly since leaving office — it’s hardly the only one he has offered during his political career. Here’s a rundown of the various tropes Trump has trafficked in. ‘Your country,’ ‘your prime minister’ and ‘your ambassador.’
Much like the migrants he is rounding up, it seems Donald Trump imagines that the country of American Jews is actually Israel, while his is the United States.
The Post reminds us:
The most popular antisemitic trope in politics is that Jews control things behind the scenes — often by virtue of their money and cunning. And Trump has also leaned into this. During another RJC [Republican Jewish Coalition] event in 2015 — at a time when some in the party weren’t behind his candidacy — he repeatedly told those assembled that he didn’t want their money. He did so no fewer than five times. ‘Again, I don’t want your money, therefore you’re probably not going to support me, because stupidly you want to give money,’ he said.
Later in the campaign, Trump tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by money with the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” inside a six-pointed star, the shape of the Star of David. Trump also ran an ad featuring several prominent Jews — George Soros, Janet L. Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein — while warning of ‘global special interests.’ And in the December 2021 interview, Trump offered perhaps his most suggestive comments on this front.
‘It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite,’ he said … In 2020, The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that Trump has said after speaking to Jewish leaders on the phone that they ‘are only in it for themselves’ and ‘stick together’ in ethnic allegiance. And he’s often suggested that ethnic allegiance should extend to him, because of Jewish members of his family.
Dana Milbank of The Washington Post went further in a column titled “Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.”
Milbank wrote:
In the final hours, the mask came off. Donald Trump and his surrogates have been playing footsie with American neo-Nazis for months: tweeting their memes, retweeting their messages, appearing on their radio shows. After an Oct. 13 speech in which Trump warned that Hillary Clinton ‘meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty’ and that ‘a global power structure’ is conspiring against ordinary Americans, the Anti-Defamation League urged Trump to ‘avoid rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews.’
Well, Trump just gave his reply. On Friday, he released a closing ad for his campaign repeating offending lines from that speech, this time illustrated with images of prominent Jews: financier George Soros (accompanying the words ‘those who control the levers of power’), Fed Chair Janet Yellen (with the words ‘global special interests’) and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (following the ‘global power structure’ quote). The ad shows Hillary Clinton and says she partners ‘with these people who don’t have your good in mind.’ … Then we had Trump’s tweet of an image, previously found on an anti-Semitic message board, of a Star of David atop a pile of cash; Trump later objected to his campaign’s decision to remove the image.
Trump himself has been raising the anti-Semitic ante: On Oct. 2, talking about the ‘blood suckers’ who back international trade and, on Oct. 13, the ‘global power structure’ secretly scheming … If Trump didn’t recognize the anti-Semitic tropes then, he has no such excuse now, after the widespread complaints from the ADL and others about the laced language of the Oct. 13 speech. This new ad isn’t subtle — Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style propaganda, as Al Franken put it. I agree with Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall when he says this ‘is intentional and by design.’ There have been too many instances to be otherwise.
In case you are tempted to forgive all this as the sins of the past, Donald Trump just recently appointed Darren Beattie to head the Institute of Peace.
Beattie has a record of sympathizing with white nationalists and had previously been fired in the first Trump administration. According to the Associated Press:
The move to install Darren Beattie as the institute’s new acting president is seen as the latest step in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the embattled organization, which was founded as an independent, non-profit think tank. It is funded by Congress to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts across the globe …
Beattie, who currently serves as the under secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department and will continue on in that role, was fired during Trump’s first term after CNN reported that he had spoken at a 2016 conference attended by white nationalists. He defended the speech he delivered as containing nothing objectionable. A former academic who taught at Duke University, Beattie also founded a right-wing website that shared conspiracies about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and has a long history of posting inflammatory statements on social media.
Back to Columbia, on July 26, 2025, The Washington Post reported that the university and the Trump administration had reached an agreement:
The Post wrote:
An agreement between Columbia University and the White House this week is an unprecedented intrusion that could erode the independence of universities, observers say … Columbia University agreed to pay more than $200 million to settle allegations of civil rights violations from the Trump administration. It agreed to a long list of changes on campus. But one concession struck some observers as particularly troubling: an outside monitor to assure the school complies.
To critics, the deal represents an unprecedented governmental intrusion into the affairs of a private university that could erode the independence of universities across the country. The White House has said it sees this agreement as a template for other schools that it is investigating for allegations of antisemitism and racial discrimination.
Much of the oversight will relate to diversity, equity and inclusion, as the Trump administration seeks to stamp out any effort by Columbia to increase racial diversity in its student body, faculty or staff. The monitor will also be charged with assuring that university programs do not promote ‘unlawful DEI goals’ — a term that is not defined.
The New York Times offered some details:
Just after Memorial Day, Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, went to see Linda E. McMahon, President Trump’s education secretary. The institution and the Trump administration were in a standoff over antisemitism on campus, and most of Columbia’s $1.3 billion in federal research funding was in jeopardy. It was a tough meeting, but there were some surprisingly collaborative moments. Ms. McMahon said she wasn’t interested in destroying the university. She empathized with how hard it was to run a large organization. She wanted to talk about issues beyond antisemitism, like the need to tolerate a spectrum of voices on campuses.
Rather than dismiss those concerns out of hand, Ms. Shipman, a former journalist who was co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees before stepping in as acting president, listened. It was a telling moment that helped produce the seismic events of Wednesday. On that evening, it was revealed that Columbia and the Trump administration had reached a settlement that allows hundreds of millions of dollars of federal research funding to begin flowing again to Columbia. The deal ends civil rights investigations into antisemitism at the university. In exchange, Columbia will pay a fine of $200 million to the government, and an additional $21 million to settle employment discrimination claims. An independent monitor will report to the government about the university’s compliance with the deal.
[Emphasis added.]
The Times continued:
The settlement was instantly pilloried by many inside Columbia and beyond as caving in to the Trump administration. The very tactic of withholding scientific research money to pressure Columbia over campus unrest was probably illegal, a Massachusetts judge had already found. But some on campus, particularly those concerned about the fate of scientific research, welcomed the deal, which they hoped would let Columbia regain its footing.
‘I completely understand the desire for a simple narrative: capitulation versus courage, or talking versus fighting … Look, as a former journalist, I gravitate toward those themes myself. But I guess we all know that real-life situations are deeply complex. And I really would argue that protecting our principles, slowly and carefully while we stabilize the institution, requires courage too and is far from capitulation.’
[Emphasis added.]
With all due respect to Claire Shipman, acceding to the Trump administration’s disingenuous charges—without a robust and detailed rebuttal and legal challenge—is a betrayal of the very purpose of an institution of higher learning. Clearly, the Trump administration manipulated the fact that Jewish students felt unheard and unprotected and used that reality to assault the very independence of Columbia. What about the search for truth? And what about Columbia’s motto: “In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen” (“In Thy light shall we see light”)?
This is some of what Columbia agreed to:
Columbia shall, consistent with its announcement on March 21, 2025, appoint new faculty members with joint positions in both the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the departments or fields of economics, political science, or SIPA. These faculty members will contribute to a robust and intellectually diverse academic environment.
Does Columbia really need the Trump administration’s help hiring competent faculty and intellectually diverse faculty?
To further support Jewish life and the wellbeing of Jewish students on campus, Columbia will add an additional administrator (‘Student Liaison’), reporting to the head of University Life, who will serve as a liaison to students concerning antisemitism issues, advise the University’s agreement Administrator and other University leaders and make recommendations to University leaders about ways to improve and to support Jewish students.
So how about a liaison for Muslim students? For students of color? Not on your life. Because at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on colleges and universities is the determination to undo the advances of the civil rights movements of the last many decades for people of color, for women, for the LGBTQ+ community. You might imagine that any college and university committed to the “light” would embrace the fight for diversity. But here is the critical concession:
Columbia shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts. For example, Columbia will not provide benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association or element within the entire Columbia University system … Accordingly, Columbia will provide a timely report to the Resolution Monitor7 summarizing its compliance with this obligation, including an assurance that Columbia has acted responsibly to ensure its programs do not promote unlawful DEI goals.
[Emphasis added.]
If you ask me, Claire Shipman ought to be embarrassed that Columbia accepted the administration’s skewed and thoroughly false narrative about DEI. But the great thing about liars and hypocrites is their inability to maintain the lie over the long haul. So much for antisemitism. Because it didn’t take long for Linda McMahon, once wrestling magnate now born again as our Truskmumpian secretary of education, to crow about bringing another institution of higher learning to its knees.
Here is The New York Times’ report about the Trump administration’s settlement with Brown University:
The Trump administration depicted the deal as an ideological victory. In a statement on Wednesday, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, argued that the deal would be part of a ‘lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come … The Trump administration is successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions,’ Ms. McMahon said.
So much for the pretense that this has anything to do with creating a safe space for Jews. Their successful bullying of our colleges and universities is all about the Project 2025 agenda of smashing liberalism and solidifying the anti-democratic agenda of the far right. That so many American institutions have surrendered without a serious fight means we are ever closer to authoritarianism. And they can now join the Supreme Court in the American Hall of Shame.
