Because the Trump administration’s assaults on college funding—and pupil freedom—escalate, the White Home is now reportedly attempting to direct a federal choose to implement any deal it reaches with Columbia College beneath a consent decree, which might impose authorized oversight over the college’s compliance with Trump’s agenda for years to return.
Columbia has already yielded to President Donald Trump’s will after he revoked $400 million in grants and contracts from the college, alleging that the college had failed to guard Jewish college students from antisemitism on campus. The administration has additionally focused for deportation college students who participated in final yr’s protests in opposition to the conflict in Gaza.
On Friday, a courtroom in Louisiana is set to rule on the discharge of 1 such former graduate pupil, a inexperienced card holder named Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in early March. The administration has not made any criminal claims in opposition to Khalil. As a substitute, it has stated in courtroom paperwork that his removing is predicated on “previous, present, or anticipated beliefs, statements, or associations which might be in any other case lawful,” however which Secretary of State Marco Rubio believes “compromise a compelling US overseas coverage curiosity.”
But within the face of those assaults on its funding and pupil physique, Columbia has nonetheless bent over backward to appease the Trump administration, agreeing to overtake its protest insurance policies and set up oversight of its Center Japanese research division, amongst different issues. However these concessions have, to this point, been voluntary. A consent decree would make them legally binding—a transfer that one historian of upper training advised The Wall Avenue Journal can be “unprecedented in its expansiveness.” Columbia would wish to voluntarily enter right into a consent decree. However when tens of millions of {dollars} in federal funding are held for ransom, its choice isn’t essentially voluntary.
Whereas the Trump administration is clearly attempting to make an instance of Columbia, it’s removed from the one college dealing with this type of monetary coercion. Simply this week, the administration froze $1 billion in funding for Cornell College and one other $790 million for Northwestern College.
