Columbia University cedes to Trump’s demands with series of reforms

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Columbia University will overhaul aspects of its governance following pressure from the Trump administration that has stoked fears of restrictions on academic freedom across the US.

Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, on Friday outlined a series of measures — including centralising disciplinary procedures against students and appointing a senior official to “review” its regional studies programmes, starting with those covering the Middle East.

“At all times, we are guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make,” Armstrong said in a statement

The move, which was criticised by the Ivy League institution’s faculty and national academic associations, followed a fierce campaign led by Republicans alleging antisemitism on its New York City campus sparked by protests following Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack in Israel and the Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza.

Federal officials withdrew $400mn in funding from Columbia earlier this month and threatened to cut future financial support unless the university swiftly met a series of demands for reform.

That sparked a week of intense negotiations which included pressure by Columbia’s lawyers to prevent academic associations launching legal challenges to the validity of the Trump administration’s demands.

The measures announced on Friday included initiatives such as centralising student discipline, banning masks that hide the identities of protesters and appointing a senior vice-provost to review “all aspects” of leadership, curriculum and non-tenured faculty appointments and ensure programme offerings are “comprehensive and balanced”.

However, the university stopped short of meeting the government’s demands to impose formal “academic receivership” on the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies for five years and abolishing its judicial board. Instead, the president will have much tighter control over the board’s membership.

Michael Thaddeus, vice-president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, called the measures “profoundly disappointing and alarming”.

Speaking in a personal capacity, he said: “The appointment of a new senior vice-provost for regional studies must not be used to police the content of research and teaching on contentious topics at Columbia. That would strike at the heart of our academic freedom.”

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said: “This undermines the strength of American higher education, which presupposes freedom from unwarranted governmental intrusion and undue political influence over the curriculum.”

In a nod to concerns from Republicans and some academics that many American universities have become dominated by faculty with more progressive opinions, Columbia also pledged that its searches for new faculty “will be expanded to ensure intellectual diversity across our course offerings and scholarship”.

It noted there had been a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrolment, and said “we will closely examine those issues”.