\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s landmark settlement with Columbia University threatens the institution\u2019s independence and academic freedom, higher education experts say. Many warn that the agreement marks a threat not only to higher education, but also to democracy at large.<\/p>\n
The agreement, announced Wednesday, comes after Columbia faced months of intense pressure from the White House to address alleged antisemitism on campus and agree to a number of demands. It\u2019s the latest example of how this administration is pushing the boundaries of its authority to secure changes that conservatives have long sought in higher ed.<\/p>\n
In the end, Columbia agreed to comply with the government\u2019s extensive demands while forking over more than $200\u00a0million to unlock $400\u00a0million in federal grants.<\/p>\n
Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the long-anticipated deal as an example of \u201ccommonsense reform,\u201d saying in a statement that Americans have \u201cwatched in horror\u201d for decades as the most esteemed campuses were occupied by \u201canti-western teachings and a leftist groupthink.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cColumbia\u2019s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit and civil debate,\u201d she added. \u201cI believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
But some higher education faculty, legal experts and free speech advocates say the settlement is unlawful, pointing to the quick investigation, vague allegations and unprecedented way federal funds were retracted before Columbia had a chance to appeal. Some went as far as to compare the executive actions to past power grabs by authoritarian leaders in countries like Hungary, Turkey and Brazil.<\/p>\n
The very real danger is that if elite institutions choose to submit to the authority of the Trump administration, the whole rest of the industry will follow.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at New America<\/p>\n
Columbia\u2019s capitulation \u201crepresents the upending of a decades-long partnership between the government and higher education in which colleges and universities nevertheless retained academic freedom, institutional autonomy and shared governance,\u201d said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. \u201cIt signals a rise in authoritarian populism in which higher education is positioned as the enemy in a fight against corrupt, inefficient and elite institutions that are out of touch with the needs of the working class.\u201d<\/p>\n
A federal taskforce convened to combat antisemitism first presented the university with the sweeping list of demands in March. The decision was simple: comply or permanently lose the federal funds that were frozen a week prior. The Ivy League institution agreed a week later to nearly all of the president\u2019s demands. But the funds remained frozen.<\/p>\n
McMahon and other Trump administration officials signed the agreement with Columbia.<\/p>\n
Brendan Smialowski\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Though Columbia was on the \u201cright track,\u201d McMahon and other task force members said the university had a long way to go. While talks with Columbia continued, the task force turned its focus to Harvard University and made similar demands. The Crimson, however, rejected the task force\u2019s mandates and sued after it froze more than $2.7\u00a0billion in federal funds.<\/p>\n
Many higher education leaders say that Columbia had a choice and chickened out. But regardless, they add, Trump\u2019s ultimatum amounted to extortion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you applaud or despise the terms of the deal, the way in which the government is operating, and getting universities like Columbia to make these deals is fundamentally coercive,\u201d said David Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia. \u201cTherefore, it poses a significant threat to the future of higher education as well as the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pozen and others fear that this will only further embolden Trump to take similar strikes at more institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very real danger is that if elite institutions choose to submit to the authority of the Trump administration, the whole rest of the industry will follow,\u201d said Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at New America, a left-leaning think tank. \u201cIt will be like a stack of dominoes one falling after the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has said the measures taken against Columbia were necessary to address antisemitism on the campus as officials accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students and later said Columbia violated federal civil rights law.<\/p>\n
As part of the settlement, Columbia is paying $21\u00a0million to address allegations that Jewish employees faced discrimination. The agreement also requires the university to hire a student liaison to support Jewish students.<\/p>\n
But the settlement goes beyond antisemitism and focuses on unrelated campus policies. For example, starting in paragraph 16, the administration says that Columbia students cannot reference race in admissions essays and mandates that the university must provide annual data showing both rejected and admitted students broken down by racial demographics, grade point averages and test scores.<\/p>\n
When campuses like Columbia and Harvard allowed antisemitism to run amok, the consequences were going to follow. The chickens had come home to roost.\u201d <\/p>\n
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute<\/p>\n
The settlement also requires similar data concerning the admission of international students, bans the participation of transgender women in female sports and calls for Columbia to establish a process to ensure that all students \u201care committed to the longstanding traditions of American universities, including civil discourse, free inquiry, open debate, and the fundamental values of equality and respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Carey\u2019s view, by buckling to the Trump administration, Columbia surrendered its identity as a private institution\u2014and so would any other university that follows suit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe essence of an independent university is deciding who is part of your academic community, and Columbia University has surrendered that,\u201d he said, referring to the admissions provisions.<\/p>\n
Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that, in addition to admission practices, this settlement and its \u201cblatant disregard for federal law\u201d will upend academia\u2019s core commitment to fostering First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reforms themselves require Columbia students to commit to laudable values like free inquiry and open debate,\u201d Creeley wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. <\/em>\u201cBut demanding students commit to vague goals like \u2018equality and respect\u2019 leaves far too much room for abuse, just like the civility oaths, DEI statements, and other types of compelled speech FIRE has long opposed.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia math professor and president of the faculty union chapter, said though administrators insist they won\u2019t allow the government to interfere, that assurance doesn\u2019t mean such acts won\u2019t occur.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents and scholars at American universities must be free to think and speak their minds,\u201d he wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cThe settlement\u00a0\u2026 risks imperiling this freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the terms of the settlement itself, education advocates are primarily concerned with the process used to reach the agreement, which they said didn\u2019t follow procedural norms.<\/p>\n Pozen, the Columbia law professor, outlined in a blog post Wednesday night how the task force bypassed nearly all statutory requirements of such an investigation.<\/p>\n This administration must return to following the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education<\/p>\n Past administrations, Pozen explained, have pushed the boundaries of regulation, utilizing more guidance letters and fewer formal rule-making sessions with public comment. But even those enforcement strategies consisted of policies that applied to all institutions and were based on thorough investigations, not rushed accusations, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cThe means being used to push through these reforms are as unprincipled as they are unprecedented,\u201d Pozen wrote. \u201cHigher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Conservative higher education experts who support the administration\u2019s approach acknowledged that it lacked due process, but also argued that Columbia deserved the stipulations and financial penalty it faced.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen campuses like Columbia and Harvard allowed antisemitism to run amok, the consequences were going to follow,\u201d said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. \u201cThe chickens had come home to roost.\u201d<\/p>\n Hess added that the Trump administration was not the first to \u201cshort circuit\u201d regulatory processes, citing the Biden administration\u2019s loan forgiveness campaign and Obama\u2019s use of the gender equity law, Title IX, to combat sexual assault as examples.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a time when concern for legal requirements and norms is increasingly dismissed across the political spectrum,\u201d so to chastise one administration for skipping steps and not the other is problematic, he said. \u201cI continue to be deeply troubled every time [the procedural statutes] are broken. But you cannot have asymmetrical expectations for the parties in these kinds of debates.\u201d<\/p>\n While a few figures, including former Harvard president and treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, applauded the resolution, many faculty members and higher education leaders expressed fear that their institutions could be next.<\/p>\n Columbia\u2019s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit and civil debate.\u201d<\/p>\n Education Secretary Linda McMahon<\/p>\n Kirsten Weld, a history professor and president of the Harvard faculty union chapter, said she is \u201cvery concerned\u201d and rejects any suggestion that Columbia\u2019s settlement should be a \u201cblueprint\u201d for her own institution\u2019s negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is about deploying the coercive power of the federal government to dictate to universities, faculty, and students what they should teach, research, and learn, on ideological grounds,\u201d she wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.<\/em> \u201cIt is a dangerous abuse of federal regulatory and civil rights enforcement authority to obtain\u00a0\u2026 what it would otherwise be unable to mandate through proper legislative channels.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, also suggested via email that \u201cthis cannot be a template for the government\u2019s approach to American higher education.\u201d<\/p>\n This administration \u201creached a conclusion before an investigation and levied a penalty without affording Columbia due process\u2014that is chilling,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis administration must return to following the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n But many policy experts are doubtful that will happen any time soon.<\/p>\n When looking beyond just Harvard and Columbia, one thing becomes clear, said Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, the president is inciting an \u201coutright attack\u201d on higher education, and he has no plans of slowing down.<\/p>\n From the political ousting of University of Virginia president James Ryan to the legislative termination of countless academic programs in Indiana with little to no faculty input, Baker identified one defining thread: curtailing the power of democratic institutions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in a very dangerous time, both for U.S. higher education, but more importantly for our country,\u201d she explained. \u201cThese types of outright attacks on colleges and universities are typically the moves of autocrats and dictators, often seen as signs of authoritarian takeovers.\u201d<\/p>\n She later added, \u201cif one wanted to overthrow our constitutional republic, these are the types of moves you would make.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration\u2019s landmark settlement with Columbia University threatens the institution\u2019s independence and academic freedom, higher education experts say. Many warn that the agreement marks a threat not only to higher education, but also to democracy at large. The agreement, announced Wednesday, comes after Columbia faced months of intense pressure from the White House to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[5298,495,2276,2823,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-12606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-columbia","9":"tag-higher","10":"tag-offers","11":"tag-settlement","12":"tag-warning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ditching Due Process<\/h2>\n
Shifting the Political Paradigm<\/h2>\n