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Trump’s attempt to take over Columbia University, briefly explained
The administration demanded Columbia make sweeping policies and governance changes — or lose billions in federal funds.
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
What’s the latest? After canceling $400 million in federal grants for Columbia University last week, Trump officials sent a letter demanding the school make sweeping changes to its policies and governance or risk losing the rest of its federal money.
What are the demands? Broadly, to punish protesters of Israel’s war in Gaza severely, with expulsions or years-long suspensions.
The letter, from Trump’s “Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism,” also demands Columbia put the college president’s office directly in charge of discipline, make a plan to hold student groups “accountable,” write new rules to prevent “disruption” of campus life by protests, take the Middle Eastern Studies department away from its current leadership, and completely overhaul its admissions process.
Is this legal? No, according to Cornell law professor Michael Dorf. The federal government can cut off funding to punish civil rights violations, but only after a lengthy process. So far, though, Columbia hasn’t challenged this in court, hoping instead to seek a compromise — and perhaps fearing a lawsuit would trigger even worse retribution.
Why is this happening? Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has claimed that, since the protests began, Jewish students at Columbia “have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses” and that university officials’ purported inaction in protecting them amounts to a violation of civil rights law. Critics argue, though, that this is a blatant effort to use federal power to chill criticism of Israel.
This is also part of a larger Trump administration strategy of using federal funds as leverage against universities they view as incubators of “woke” progressivism. Back in 2021, Senate candidate JD Vance said it was time to “honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” More recently, activist Christopher Rufo called for using the cut-off of federal funds to put universities into “an existential terror” and better “discipline” them.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
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