Columbia University Grows a Pair, Sort Of
Fear is Contagious, But So is Courage
An open letter from Claire Shipman, Acting President, Columbia University in the City of New York (emphasis added):
Dear Members of the Columbia Community:
Over the past few weeks, days, indeed over the past few hours, you have no doubt seen and heard much about Columbia and the future of higher education. This is an extraordinary and difficult time for our University. We face unprecedented pressures, with no easy answers and many uncertainties. That combination is creating significant anxiety for our community, and we must, as we navigate this moment, stay true to our core mission as an educational and research institution, and true to our community.
I’ve heard deep concern about when and whether we will get our research funding back, what form an agreement with the government would take, whether we would have to compromise our values to reach such an agreement, and what we’re doing to support our international students right now. Let me attempt to address each of these issues.
As we have shared before, the University has been engaged in what we continue to believe to be good faith discussions with the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. We have sought to address allegations of antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination on our campuses, and provide a path to restoring a partnership with the federal government that supports our vital research mission, while also protecting the University’s academic and operational integrity and independence.
Those discussions have not concluded, and we have not reached any agreement with the government at this point. Some of the government’s requests have aligned with policies and practices that we believe are important to advancing our mission, particularly to provide a safe and inclusive campus community. I stand firmly behind the commitments we outlined on March 21, and all the work that has been done to date. Other ideas, including overly prescriptive requests about our governance, how we conduct our presidential search process, and how specifically to address viewpoint diversity issues are not subject to negotiation.
To be clear, our institution may decide at any point, on its own, to make difficult decisions that are in Columbia’s best interests. Any good institution must do that. Where the government – or any stakeholder – has legitimate interest in critical issues for our healthy functioning, we will listen and respond. But we would reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community. We would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire. And yes, to put minds at ease, though we seek to continue constructive dialogue with the government, we would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.
Like many of you, I read with great interest the message from Harvard refusing the federal government’s demands for changes to policies and practices that would strike at the very heart of that university’s venerable mission. In this moment, a continued public conversation about the value and principles of higher education is enormously useful. I am especially concerned that many Americans have lost faith and trust in higher education. We should continue the hard work of understanding why. At the same time, we must more clearly explain what we here, at Columbia, know instinctively about the vital contributions we make to the world.
I want to turn to our international students, who are essential to our unique and powerful ecosystem, and who are experiencing enormous distress. We have been following with great concern the various actions being taken by the federal government toward members of our community. We know this has provoked not only anxiety, but multiple new, day-to-day challenges for our international student community. For that reason, the University launched a new University fund, supported by my office, our Board of Trustees, and generous alumni, to assist students who need help managing unanticipated expenses and other challenges right now.
This comes alongside our recently announced commitment of additional resources to our International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO) to expand their ability to help our international students, through logistical, legal, and mental health support, including a significant expansion of hours and staff resources. I’m pleased to announce a new websitededicated to these efforts.
We are navigating a turbulent time for higher education. The challenges ahead of us are formidable. Knowing Columbia as I do, and as you do, I am confident that we will get through this to serve our students, faculty, staff, and society for centuries to come.
Sincerely,
Claire Shipman
Acting President, Columbia University in the City of New York
Princeton’s President Dares to Speak Up for Columbia
Christopher L. Eisgruber (The Atlantic), The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia: American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.
Please excuse a brief point of personal privilege: my undergraduate degree is from Princeton, and, between us, my wife and I have a bunch of degrees from Columbia. (To be more precise, I have one degree from Columbia, and she has so many that I can’t remember them all.)
Yesterday, Ed Luce of the Financial Times warned that The US establishment is scared of its own shadow: Fear and muddied thinking are stopping Trump’s opponents from acting in defense of a democracy in peril.
Well, that’s as may be. But, I am very happy to say, Princeton’s president did not get the memo. I salute him and I honor him.
President Eisengruber of Princeton writes,
The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world.
The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.
The rise of the American research university in the 20th century depended on many factors, including two crucial turning points. The first, at the start of the century, was the development of strong principles of academic freedom that allowed people and ideas to be judged by scholarly standards, not according to the whims or interests of powerful trustees, donors, or political officials. Stanford’s dismissal in 1900 of Edward Ross—an economics professor who had incited controversy with his remarks about, among other topics, Asian immigrants and the labor practices of a railroad run by the university’s founders—catalyzeda movement to protect the rights of faculty members to pursue, publish, and teach controversial ideas. Significant governance reforms took place in the same period, shifting control of professorial appointments from boards of trustees to presidents and faculties.
The second turning point came during World War II, when Vannevar Bush, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, created the modern partnership between the federal government and the country’s research universities. Bush recognized that by sponsoring research at universities, the United States could lead the world in discoveries and innovations. Over time, American universities became responsible for a large portion of the government’s scientific programs, accepting tens of billions of dollars a year to perform research that would make the country stronger and improve the lives of its citizens.
These two developments had an important connection. The government’s successful collaboration with American universities depended on its respect for academic freedom, which, for decades, presidents and legislators from both political parties largely observed. That freedom attracted the world’s finest scholars and facilitated the unfettered pursuit of knowledge.
Robust federal funding helped make American universities the world’s best, but it also created a huge risk. Universities had acquired a public patron more powerful than any private donor; their budgets became heavily dependent on that single source. If the United States government ever repudiated the principle of academic freedom, it could bully universities by threatening to withdraw funding unless they changed their curricula, research programs, and personnel decisions.
That’s what the Trump administration did this month when it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia without the legally required due process. The government toldColumbia that the money would be restored only if the university met various conditions, which included placing its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department “under academic receivership” and making unspecified but “comprehensive” reforms to its student admissions and international-recruiting practices.
Recent events have raised legitimate concerns about anti-Semitism at Columbia. The government can respond to those concerns without infringing on academic freedom. The principles of that freedom do not give faculty or students the right to disrupt university operations or violate campus rules. Nor does this freedom allow faculty to violate the scholarly standards of their discipline or compel students into political activity. To the extent that the government has grounds to investigate, it should use the processes required by law to do so, and it should allow Columbia to defend itself. Instead, the government is using grants that apply to Columbia science departments as a cudgel to force changes to a completely unrelated department that the government apparently regards as objectionable.
Nobody should suppose that this will stop at Columbia or with the specific academic programs targeted by the government’s letter. Precisely because great research universities are centers of independent, creative thought, they generate arguments and ideas that challenge political power across fields as varied as international relations, biology, economics, and history. If government officials think that stifling such criticism is politically acceptable and legally permissible, some people in authority will inevitably yield to the temptation to do so.
Nor should those who might revile the views expressed by some Columbia faculty members, or who dislike the university’s admission policies, take any comfort from this assault on academic freedom. Universities are now under attack from the right; in the future, left-leaning politicians may demand that universities do their bidding. Under such circumstances, the safest appointments may be the blandest ones—and brilliant scholars, those whom the world most needs, are rarely bland.
The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.
The universities cannot, however, prevail alone. Strong, independent academic institutions produce new technologies and insights that catalyze economic growth, save lives, improve well-being, and overcome injustices. Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge. They, too, should demand a stop to the government’s unwarranted intrusion on academic freedom at Columbia.
Facing MAGA 