Spritzler training film on how to "crush" your testimony.
No, she's no longer the President. I know, I'm shocked as you.
Columbia Learns a Hard Lesson
The university betrayed its Jewish students—and its core mission—and is now paying the price.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ
Updated March 23, 2025 6:14 pm ET
Columbia University’s decision Friday to bend to the Trump Administration’s governance demands has shocked the academy far and wide, and it is an unprecedented sanction. But perhaps it will also shock our academic elites into recognizing that they have courted this political backlash by too often abandoning their central mission of free inquiry.
The Trump Administration withdrew $400 million in funding from Columbia and issued a list of demands as the price of restoring the money. Columbia’s president, Katrina Armstrong, seemingly agreed to every one in an extraordinary four-page letter to the school community. Many in academia are calling this an act of surrender, but she had little choice if she wants the money.
***
Many of the steps Columbia is now promising should have been made long ago in its own best interest. Restricting masks means rule-breakers have to take responsibility for their actions. Clear rules—clearly enforced—about time, place and manner restrictions on campus speech will raise the cost for those who want to block speakers they dislike.
The school will also incorporate into formal policy the definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s own Antisemitism Taskforce last year, which makes you wonder why it hasn’t already. And it will adopt so-called institutional neutrality “institution-wide.” This means the school itself, and presumably academic departments, won’t take sides on political controversies of the day.
This principle is associated with the University of Chicago and is being adopted by much of academia. The test will be whether it is enforced throughout the institution. All of these reforms will be controversial only among those who think a university is an ivory foxhole from which to launch political movements or indoctrinate students.
More notable are Columbia’s concessions on academic study, admissions and faculty hiring. The school has agreed to appoint a new senior vice provost to “conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting immediately with the Middle East.”
Ms. Armstrong’s statement goes into some detail about what this review will mean, and it includes “hiring of non-tenured faculty.” These instructors have been among the leading agitators of anti-Jewish protests.
This doesn’t go as far as putting the department into a form of government “receivership.” But presumably the Trump Administration will monitor how the school proceeds as it decides whether to restore funding. Conservatives should also be wary of government dictation of curricula because the left will do the same thing if it returns to power. Do we want the next secretary of Education telling Notre Dame or Yeshiva how much religion can influence their courses of study?
As for those who are appalled by any strings on federal money, what did they expect after events of recent decades? American universities were once widely respected as citadels of learning that were the best in the world. Taxpayers were content to leave them alone, even as the schools became ever more dependent on federal dollars.
But over time too many universities have become intellectual monocultures that refuse to allow alternative points of view. The public saw conservative speakers shouted down on campus, if they were invited at all. Leftist critical theory and anti-Western, anti-American views often dominate curricula.
Then last spring the schools erupted into a display of antisemitism that presidents and trustees seemed unable or unwilling to control or discipline. Traditional liberal elites shrank under pressure from the left. Americans can’t be expected to hand a blank financial check to schools that promote values that are inimical to their own.
***
The Columbia sanctions, and perhaps others to follow, are a warning to schools to return to their traditional mission. That is, in the famous Matthew Arnold phrase, to examine and transmit to the next generation the best that has been thought or said.
Way back in 1988, these columns wrote about curriculum changes at Stanford that abandoned instruction in Western civilization in favor of studies focused on race, gender and class. That shift was novel at the time, but now this is the core curriculum of too many humanities and social-science departments.
This is not what Americans want to subsidize with scarce dollars, and schools would be wise to reform themselves or abandon federal money.
Comments