Trump's College Crackdown
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Why did Trump target Columbia University?
Earlier this month, the Trump administration gave Columbia University an ultimatum. Get tougher on student protests, or else lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
How dependent are universities like Columbia on federal funding?
Universities are, especially a research university like Columbia, is dependent on the federal government. The federal government has the capacity to shut the tap off. So the school can't operate without the federal government. And that gave the federal government huge leverage.
That's our colleague Doug Belkin, who covers higher education. Trump's ultimatum put the storied university between a rock and a hard place, and kicked off a big debate inside the school.
— If we allow the president to dictate how we work inside the campus, we give away academic freedom. And they're really anxious to protect that. So that's why this choice was so difficult to make, because you're pitting gold versus principle.
What was Columbia's internal response to Trump's demands?
But on Friday, after an intense internal debate, Columbia gave in and agreed to make the changes Trump wanted. How big of a deal could this showdown be for America's colleges and universities?
It's like two tectonic plates slamming into each other. And it has the potential to change higher education significantly going forward. We are absolutely in a generational shift. I think we're probably in a once-in-50-year shift. This decision will resonate for a long time to come.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Monday, March 24th. Coming up on the show, why Colombia gave in to Trump. Columbia University got into Trump's crosshairs last year when protests broke out over Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Students camped out for weeks. At one point, some of them occupied a school building. They were calling for a ceasefire and for the university to divest from companies doing business with Israel. And even some faculty joined in.
You've got all of this faculty that very much believe that protest is critical. The ability to speak freely is critical. They believe that these kids are doing the right thing. Some of them are teaching that this is part of, you know, how the world needs to be a better place.
But the protests made other students uneasy.
And a lot of Jewish students begin to feel like they're not safe. They're being screamed at. They don't want to go to class. At one point, a rabbi from Hillel says, don't come back to the campus. We can't protect you. It gets pretty ugly.
The school's leadership came under intense criticism, especially from conservatives, like then-candidate Donald Trump, who said Columbia didn't do enough to rein in the protests and crack down on anti-Semitism.
Columbia University was a great school. It's been, you know, badly damaged, I think, reputationally. But the person that heads it up, a woman, she waited so long. She was so weak. She was so afraid.
Columbia's president, Manoush Shafiq, ended up resigning. And Trump seized on the protests as evidence that college campuses are too left-leaning.
So he campaigns on this notion that elite universities have been taken over by Marxist left-wing ideologues. And he is going to stop it. And the way he's going to do it is he's going to cancel the federal funds.
My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that if you do not end anti-Semitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal tax credit. Support.
Now that Trump's in office, he's putting his money where his mouth is. And he started withholding federal funding at colleges across the country, including Columbia.
And so he says, I'm canceling $400 million in contracts and grants. And it's connected to your inability to rein in anti-Semitism on campus.
So it seems like he's sort of following through on a campaign promise to kind of smack down colleges a little bit and change their culture.
That's exactly what he's doing. He has identified an institution in this country that a lot of Republicans are not happy with, and he has leveraged that to his political benefit.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why did Trump target Columbia University?
0:05–0:19
2
How dependent are universities like Columbia on federal funding?
0:19–1:06
3
What was Columbia's internal response to Trump's demands?
1:06–5:00
4
What were the main demands made by Trump to Columbia?
5:00–8:33
5
How did Columbia's decision impact its departments?
8:33–10:12
6
What are the broader implications for academic freedom?
10:12–15:26