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The Trump administration has sent a letter to Columbia University’s interim president and board of trustees that includes a list of demands the school must meet if it wants the administration to reverse its cancellation of $400 million in federal funds Columbia was authorized to receive.
The letter, sent Thursday, is an ultimatum that demands Columbia make changes and impose policies to align it with the MAGA movement’s political views. It is essentially a ransom note, outlining steps Columbia must take “as a precondition for formal negotiations” on restoring the millions in government funding the university had been awarded.
Among the steps the administration demands is that Columbia place its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department under academic receivership, which would effectively give control over the program to a chair outside of Columbia’s faculty — a move that smacks of textbook racism. But the administration’s list of demands goes much further, requiring that Columbia:
- hand out expulsions or multiyear suspensions to demonstrators who participated in pro-Palestinian protests inside Hamilton Hall last year. (The university appears to have already taken steps in this direction.)
- abolish its University Judicial Board and “centralize all disciplinary processes,” including expulsions and suspensions, under the university president.
- ban masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate others,” and require any masked individuals to display their Columbia ID.
- adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism the administration formally adopted in Trump’s first term and has revived in his second.
- institute “time, place, and manner rules,” which are basically restrictions around protests.
- “empower” its security with “full law enforcement authority,” including authorizing the “arrest and removal of agitators” who foster an “unsafe or hostile work or study environment.”
- develop a “plan” to investigate and punish student groups “engaged in violations of University policy” — like some forms of protest, perhaps.
- “reform” its admissions processes, which as already undergone homogenizing changes in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling against racially conscious admissions policies.
Read the administration's letter below:
The executive director of Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute, Jameel Jaffer, condemned the letter as part of an effort to "subjugate universities to official power” in a statement on Friday.
This authoritarian power-grab at Columbia aligns with a broader conservative push to impose its political will on American universities, which Vice President JD Vance has previously called “the enemy.” The Trump administration recently opened dozens of investigations into universities it claims are running diversity programs that discriminate against white and Asian students.
And the administration recently arrested and is attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and Columbia University student who engaged in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus last year.
Trump’s administration is treating American campuses, which foster curiosity and independent thought, just as his vice president described them — as the enemy. In this culture war, it appears as though Columbia University is going to be the administration’s first hostage.