Columbia University Caves to Trump’s Demands
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Columbia University will agree to President Donald Trump’s demands in the hopes that he will reinstate $400 million in federal grants he rescinded earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
“Columbia agreed to ban masks, empower 36 campus police officers with new powers to arrest students and appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies,” the Journal stated.
Trump withdrew the school’s funding over what he said was the institution’s failure to fight anti-Semitism on campus after scores of students held pro-Palestine demonstrations last year amid Israel’s war in Gaza. The protests prompted House Republicans to call multiple university presidents to testify before Congress, where Republicans berated them. Several of them ultimately resigned, including Columbia’s.
An anonymous administrator at the university told the Journal that the school considered taking legal action, but decided that the fight would be difficult to win.
The decision comes two weeks after a recent Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, was taken by federal agents from his university-owned home in front of his pregnant wife, who is an American citizen. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, has not been charged with a crime, and is being held in a detention facility in Louisiana after her organized pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus last year. And last week, federal agents arrested a second activist, Leqaa Kordia, who protested at the school. Authorities claim she overstayed her visa.
“Although Columbia stands among the country’s wealthiest universities, with an endowment of about $15 billion, it wouldn’t take long for it to cease to operate in any recognizable form without government money,” the paper said.
Also on Friday, The New York Times published a report about another battle Trump had waged on Columbia – 25 years ago. Trump sought to partner with Columbia by offering some real estate two miles from the campus in Manhattan. Administrations were initially open to the idea, but it fell through:
But in negotiations, he frequently changed his demands, even as reports would appear in Mr. Trump’s favored tabloid, The New York Post, claiming that Columbia was close to buying it.
In private, he tossed around numerous prices, topping out at $400 million, according to a Columbia official from that era, a figure that an anonymous source leaked to The Post a few times.
No matter the amount, Mr. Trump said to Columbia officials, the university would be getting such a great deal that it should also rename its business school the Donald J. Trump School of Business.
The price demanded by Trump reportedly topped out at $400 million.
