The long-awaited second cave-in by the Columbia trustees to Trump demands was announced yesterday, details here. A few initial comments:
the agreement grows out of the executive branch’s first-ever cutoff of congressionally appropriated funds to a university, so as to punish that university and impel it to adopt sweeping reforms, without any pretense of following the congressionally mandated procedures. Lawyers have been debating the exact circumstances under which the executive branch may freeze particular grants and contracts to particular schools. Yet as far as I’m aware, no lawyer outside the government has even attempted to defend the legality of the initial cutoff that brought Columbia to its knees and, thereafter, to the “negotiating” table.
We’re now governed not by laws and courts, but by a dictator, who can at any moment take illegal actions to try and compel you to do what he wants. Laws and courts are replaced by extorted “agreements” like this one, where the dictator agrees to leave you alone (for now) in return for your agreement to a specific list of demands.
“Columbia couldn’t tolerate the administration holding up billions of dollars in current and future grants, so they paid what is essentially ransom,” said Michael C. Dorf, a professor of law at Cornell University. “The ransom that they ended up paying strikes me as a pretty good value if you decide you’re going to pay ransom. But the problem with paying ransom is that it incentivizes the taking of more hostages.”
In early April the trustees were about to sign off on a second cave-in much more onerous than the one announced yesterday, but stopped this when they saw that Harvard was going to fight. They can argue that the set of facts Harvard was facing was different, but there’s no denying that their choice not to fight but to capitulate to extortion by the new dictatorship did damage to US democracy, while Harvard’s decision to fight reversed some of that damage (at least for now).
What Harvard has done has helped Columbia and other institutions a great deal by blunting the dictator’s onslaught. What Columbia has done has hurt all other universities, as the success here of illegal dictatorial action will encourage its use against others. This wider campaign surely is just about to get started, maybe could have been stopped by a Columbia refusal to give in.
Nothing in this Agreement prevents the United States (even during the period of the Agreement) from conducting subsequent compliance reviews, investigations, defunding or litigation related to Columbia’s actions occurring after the Effective Date of the this Agreement.
So, the trustees explicitly agree that if Columbia does anything Trump doesn’t like, he can defund the university again. Instead of going to court to fight illegality, the agreement explicitly acknowledges that the illegality is a tactic that can be used against Columbia at any time it offends the dictator. What this means in practice is every university decision from now on will be made through the lens of “will this upset Steven Miller?”
Will the university gates be reopened, or will we live in security lockdown forever?
Our next president will have to meet with Steven Miller’s approval, and be willing to run the university in a way that will not annoy Steven Miller. Who is that going to be?
As the genocide in Gaza proceeds, will anyone at Columbia be protesting this on campus?
The trustees have agreed to a discipline process designed to achieve the expulsion of anti-genocide demonstrators. This requires the participation of the provost, some administrators, deans and faculty. Will we be told who has agreed to do this dirty work?
There’s a lot of good commentary about this coming out. The NYT published this piece by Suresh Naidu. Some people at CUIMC have created a wonderful satirical version of Columbia Spectator, call The Specter. They’re covering the cave-in with Columbia Buys Back Its Federal Grants and Sells Off Its Spine.
Update: Stand Columbia (Tao Tan) is ecstatic. Illegal dictatorial action has gotten him changes at Columbia he has always wanted. The only problem he sees is that maybe they won’t be as much as he wants, so he is creating a Stand Columbia Society Scorecard so that, in the case of insufficient devotion to the new order, Steven Miller will get a heads up that he needs to pull funding again.
Lawrence Summers is also very happy that extortion by the dictatorship is getting him what he wants. “the best day higher education has had in the last year.”!!