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After halting some 400 million dollars in federal money, kidnapping a pro-Palestinan former student with a green card — and threatening to deport him, Donald Trump and his administration are now threatening Columbia University. Again.
According to the Associated Press, Trump officials have ordered academic department leadership to be removed if they want their money back.
“Federal officials told the university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under ‘academic receivership for a minimum of five years,’” a letter sent to university officials said.
“The demand was among several described as conditions for receiving federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations of antisemitism.”
“Receivership is a nice way of basically saying get rid of the department,” Joan Scott, a historian and member of the academic freedom committee of the American Association of University Professors, told AP.
The move is unprecedented as no administration has involved themselves in university business, but that was before America elected a fake dictator who believes that being pro-Palestine is equivalent to being pro-Hamas and therefore antisemitic.
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The Trump administration has already withheld Columbia University funding and walked onto campus and arrested and detained student activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is a permanent resident of the country. That didn’t stop Donald Trump’s Gestapo-like actions, which have reportedly included revoking Khalil’s green card and deporting him back to Syria, where he was born.
“It’s an escalation of a kind that is unheard of,” Scott told AP. “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.”
Donald Trump’s been threatening to withhold funding to all universities that don’t get in line with the White House’s messaging, including the exclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports and the dismantling of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Some 50 universities have found themselves in the Trump administration’s crosshairs for possible DEI violations.
The letter also states that, despite Covid still being a thing, Columbia must ban all masks on campus and “adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ‘reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.’”
Columbia University will likely comply because they care deeply about the money.
They’ve already bent the knee by announcing March 13 that all students who participated in protests last spring will face punishment “…ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions.”
The letter “obliterates the boundary between institutional autonomy and federal control,” Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, told AP.
Donald Trump does this thing where he creates a beef and then resolves the beef that he created by exerting his presidential powers. So because Trump has decided that pro-Palestine protests are unsafe for Jewish students, he holds up federal funding to the university until the school complies with his demands.
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It’s all a hustle for this sleight-of-hand street magician disguised as a world leader. The university claims that they are reviewing the letter, which is another way of saying they will comply with whatever demands Trump makes.
“We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” Columbia said in a statement to AP.
But no one knows what any of this means, and universities across the country — especially those that depend on federal funding are watching to see how this all plays out.
“Half of this stuff you can’t just do and the other half is insane,” Joseph Howley, a Columbia professor of classics, told AP. “If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.”
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