IBL News | New York
Columbia University agreed yesterday to the Trump administration’s list of demands to start negotiations on restoring $400 million in federal funding for medical and scientific research projects.
On March 7, the U.S. Government canceled the university’s federal grants, accusing the New York-based institution of “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
The Trump administration had ordered the school to implement a mask ban at protests, discipline protesters, and reform admissions, among other demands.
Columbia University was seen as the epicenter of student-led pro-Palestinian demonstrations that overtook life at college campuses nationwide.
Yesterday, the institution agreed to ban students from wearing masks at protests, hire 36 new campus security officers who will be able to arrest students and appoint a new senior vice provost to oversee the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies.
Columbia also committed to “greater institutional neutrality” and “working with a faculty committee to establish an institution-wide policy implementing this stance.” The university added that it will review its admissions procedures to “ensure unbiased admission processes,” as the Trump administration requested.
On Thursday, 41 of the roughly 100 members of the university’s history department warned the university against allowing the administration to interfere in its policy. They compared the administration’s actions to attempts by “authoritarian regimes” to seek control over independent academic institutions.
Amid the negotiations over the grants, federal immigration officials apprehended at least two Columbia students who participated in the student-led protest, including 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil. A doctoral student from India, Ranjani Srinivasan, also fled to Canada after her student visa was revoked.
