{"id":886,"date":"2025-03-26T07:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/26\/columbia-faculty-protests-as-trump-officials-hail-university-concessions-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T07:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:12:20","slug":"columbia-faculty-protests-as-trump-officials-hail-university-concessions-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/26\/columbia-faculty-protests-as-trump-officials-hail-university-concessions-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia Faculty Protests as Trump Officials Hail University Concessions – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While some professors rallied to criticize the changes, federal officials called the university\u2019s actions a \u201cpositive first step\u201d in maintaining a financial relationship.<\/p>\n

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Columbia University faculty members on Monday condemned the university\u2019s response to demands from the Trump administration.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Marco Postigo Storel for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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The Trump administration on Monday welcomed concessions by Columbia University<\/a> to tighten disciplinary procedures and assert more control over academic departments in response to charges of antisemitism, saying the actions represent a \u201cpositive first step in the university maintaining a financial relationship with the United States government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing the loss of about $400 million in federal research funding<\/a>, Columbia has pledged that masked demonstrators must show identification when asked, that protests will generally not be allowed in academic buildings and that several dozen public security officers will be empowered to make arrests. The Trump administration\u2019s statement on Monday was its first extensive response to Columbia\u2019s announcement about concessions three days earlier.<\/p>\n

The changes are being made<\/a> in response to Trump administration claims that antisemitism, particularly as a part of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, has been insufficiently checked on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cColumbia is demonstrating appropriate cooperation with the Trump administration\u2019s requirements, and we look forward to a lasting resolution,\u201d Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. She added that she had been communicating with Columbia\u2019s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, during the last few weeks and that she appreciated \u201cher leadership and commitment to advance truly meaningful reforms on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, the road to restoring funding is long. The Trump administration regards the actions Columbia has announced as a \u201cprecondition\u201d to formal talks to restore canceled federal grants and contracts, which largely affect scientific and medical research.<\/p>\n

\u201cColumbia\u2019s early steps are a positive sign, but they must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end antisemitism and protect all students and faculty on their campus through permanent and structural reform,\u201d said Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, which is part of the General Services Administration, one of the agencies calling for changes at Columbia.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Monday, at least 50 professors turned out in a steady drizzle outside the campus gates to protest the funding cuts and what they criticized as Columbia\u2019s conciliatory response. The professors said they hoped to be the vanguard of a resistance movement among academics that remains, for now, at an early stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to stand up, all of us,\u201d said Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia and vice president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, speaking to the crowd. \u201cWe need to organize, from the grass roots to the national level. If we lead, our leaders will follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The protesting professors included a biomedical researcher who spoke on behalf of colleagues who had been laid off because of the funding cuts and a professor who studies autocratic regimes and protest movements. They held up signs with slogans including \u201cProtect Academic Freedom\u201d and \u201cColumbia Fight Back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat is happening to Columbia now is what the erosion of democracy looks like,\u201d said Virginia Page Fortna, a political science professor.<\/p>\n

Calling on their knowledge of history and university governance, the professors said that the attacks against Columbia resembled steps commonly taken by authoritarian leaders. They said that Columbia\u2019s concessions had weakened academic independence by consolidating power in the office of the university president.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve studied what\u2019s happened to universities in authoritarianism,\u201d said Anya Schiffrin, a senior lecturer at Columbia\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen what happened in Spain under Franco, in Turkey, in India and in Hungary. It\u2019s a mistake to think it won\u2019t happen here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The professors said they were particularly upset at the concessions that reduced faculty power, a concept that academics call \u201cshared governance.\u201d They said those changes would make it easier for the university to bend to political will.<\/p>\n

The Columbia University Judicial Board, which federal officials have said was too slow and lenient in its punishment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, will now be overseen by the school\u2019s administration, not by its University Senate<\/a>, a 111-member deliberative body that includes faculty and staff members and students. The Columbia president will decide all appeals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A new vice provost will review curriculum and hiring processes for several university departments, including a Middle East Studies department that the Trump administration demanded be put into \u201cacademic receivership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samantha Slater, a Columbia spokeswoman, said in a statement that the university \u201cis fully committed to the steps we announced last week to continue to combat antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and harassment. Our focus will always be on our core mission to teach, create, and advance knowledge while protecting free expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

The professors demonstrating on Monday, who said they were working on recruiting more people to the ranks of academic freedom activism, acknowledged that they could not operate at the speed of Elon Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and other Trump White House \u201cshock and awe\u201d tactics. But they said they wanted to try.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstitutions respond more slowly, and that\u2019s just the reality,\u201d Professor Thaddeus said. \u201cWe are going to respond vigorously, just on a time frame of weeks or months, not days.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City. More about Sharon Otterman<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A version of this article appears in print on \u00a0<\/span>, Section <\/p>\n

A<\/p>\n

, Page <\/p>\n

19<\/p>\n

of the New York edition<\/p>\n

with the headline: <\/p>\n

Columbia Faculty Protests As Trump Officials Praise University\u2019s Concessions. Order Reprints<\/a> | Today\u2019s Paper<\/a> | Subscribe<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT While some professors rallied to criticize the changes, federal officials called the university\u2019s actions a \u201cpositive first step\u201d in maintaining a financial relationship. Columbia University faculty members on Monday condemned the university\u2019s response to demands from the Trump administration.Credit…Marco Postigo Storel for The New York Times Published March 24, 2025Updated March 25, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}