With $400 Million as the Big Stick…
The admin of the University has negotiated the Federal Government to get money…..
Thus setting a example for conditions that some in Higher Education WILL HAVE TO bend to get money from the Trump Government coffers….
The Trump administration on Monday welcomed concessions by Columbia University to tighten disciplinary procedures and assert more control over academic departments in response to charges of antisemitism, saying the actions represent a “positive first step in the university maintaining a financial relationship with the United States government.”
Facing the loss of about $400 million in federal research funding, Columbia has pledged that masked demonstrators must show identification when asked, that protests will generally not be allowed in academic buildings and that several dozen public security officers will be empowered to make arrests. The Trump administration’s statement on Monday was its first extensive response to Columbia’s announcement about concessions three days earlier.
The changes are being made in response to Trump administration claims that antisemitism, particularly as a part of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, has been insufficiently checked on campus.
“Columbia is demonstrating appropriate cooperation with the Trump administration’s requirements, and we look forward to a lasting resolution,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. She added that she had been communicating with Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, during the last few weeks and that she appreciated “her leadership and commitment to advance truly meaningful reforms on campus.”…
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Earlier on Monday, at least 50 professors turned out in a steady drizzle outside the campus gates to protest the funding cuts and what they criticized as Columbia’s conciliatory response. The professors said they hoped to be the vanguard of a resistance movement among academics that remains, for now, at an early stage.
“We need to stand up, all of us,” said Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia and vice president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, speaking to the crowd. “We need to organize, from the grass roots to the national level. If we lead, our leaders will follow.”
The protesting professors included a biomedical researcher who spoke on behalf of colleagues who had been laid off because of the funding cuts and a professor who studies autocratic regimes and protest movements. They held up signs with slogans including “Protect Academic Freedom” and “Columbia Fight Back.”….
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