This week I’m very happy to not be at Columbia, and not in the US, enjoying spending the week at the Perimeter Institute at a conference in honor of Lee Smolin. Since there’s a little bit of Columbia news and I have some free time, here’s an update.
The Trump people have just announced that they have sent a letter to Columbia’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, accusing Columbia of being in violation of civil rights law. My initial reaction is that this is good news since it implies both that Columbia hasn’t further caved-in yet and makes clear that the Trump people have run out of ammunition.
The two things they have done that are very damaging are taking away grant funding and causing potential problems with foreign student visas. The Columbia trustees learned from the first cave-in that even if you do what he wants, Trump isn’t going to give the money back (he just took more away after the cave-in). Also, the proposed budget eliminates most such funding in the future anyway. Agreeing to more Trump demands seems unlikely to get the university anything other than more humiliation.
On the student visa front, the threat is to all universities, so nothing in particular Columbia can do about it. We’ll find out over the summer what fraction of foreign students who have accepted admission offers will be able to enroll in the fall.
The other Trump threats have turned out to be empty. He threatened to tell the IRS to take away Harvard’s tax exempt non-profit status, but that seems to be so clearly illegal that it won’t happen. Then he tried to take away Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, but about 15 minutes later Harvard had a restraining order stopping this and should soon have some sort of injunction. Columbia got a letter saying we’re in violation of Title VI based on bogus accusations, but since they’ve already taken funding away, that was not only done illegally, but also had no effect. Sending a letter to an accreditor telling them about the bogus Title VI accusation seems also something with no effect. Maybe there’s a long-term plan to take over the accreditation agencies and use them to gain control of all US colleges and universities, but that’s both a long ways off and likely to be struck down by the courts.
Harvard two days ago went to court asking for a summary judgment on the funding issues. It remains a huge mystery why the Columbia trustees have not done the same thing.
Remember that all of this is based on the supposed terrible antisemitism problems at Columbia and Harvard, meaning that there have been protests against Israel’s ever more obviously genocidal campaign of killing and starving the Palestinians in Gaza. If you want to know the details of how the starvation program is working, see here. The problem with committing genocide against a helpless population is not that they’ll fight back, but that the international community will turn against you and you’ll become a pariah nation. This is happening, and being met with an ever more frantic campaign of collaborating with our Fascist dictatorship in accusing anyone who points out what is happening of “antisemitism”.
Update: New York Times coverage here, which includes:
“This is another semi-random attack against a celebrity institution,” said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, an association that includes many colleges and universities in its membership. “They are trying once again to skirt due process in order to score political points.”
Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a Washington think tank, said she thought the letter was both a threat to Middle States, and to Columbia, about federal aid.
But she said that the Department of Education does not have the authority to determine what violates the accreditation group’s standards. Only the accrediting body can do that, which would require its own review of what is alleged.
The Trump people have this fantasy that they will take control of the accreditation agencies, and through them gain control of the universities. Unlike Columbia, presumably the MSCHE will not just cave-in to Trump, it seems highly unlikely they’ll remove Columbia’s accrediation. The threat is more that Trump may then come after them, but if so, like Harvard, they’ll have no choice but to fight, and likely will do well in court.
Bend the Knee, Columbia as usual is convinced that Columbia must do whatever Trump wants.
Update: The craziness is just endless. No new foreign students at Harvard. A new travel ban. We’ll see what the courts have to say.
Given the travel ban, I hope the IMU has contingency plans for the 2026 ICM, and may even want to start implementing them.
Update: A Forbes article also argues this is really an attack on the accreditor more than on Columbia.
Update: Harvard has amended its complaint about the student visa craziness. I’m betting it won’t be very long before they’ll have an injunction. The courts are not going to rule that nothing can be done about this sort of outrageous attempt to exercise dictatorial powers to try and gain control of or destroy a university.
In any case, Trump seems to have found some other powerful institution to go to war with today, Harvard may just be another TACO.
Update: Again, about 15 minutes for Harvard to get a TRO stopping for now the latest Trump visa illegality. As I’ve written before, one reason I was given for the original Columbia cave-in was that the trustees had legal advice that nothing could be done if Trump went after foreign student visas. I hope the trustees now have some new lawyers…
In addition, Harvard’s lawsuit argues that this is illegal retaliation for their refusal to allow Trump to take over the university. The Columbia cave-in and decision to refuse to go to court but instead to negotiate with the dictator means they don’t have the same grounds for a lawsuit that Harvard has. Columbia needs to change tactics and join Harvard in fighting now.
(Note: the references to “15 minutes” are metaphorical. True times more like a couple hours.)
Update: The Washington Post reports that the State Department has resumed processing visas for Harvard students, so Harvard’s going to court to fight this particular piece of illegality so far is successful.
Update: The mystery continues: why are the trustees do devoted to not fighting with Trump that they won’t even join an amicus brief for the Harvard lawsuit?
