Editors at National Review Online assess the Trump administration’s settlement with Columbia University.
In March, the Trump administration shocked academia by abruptly canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of federal research grants to Columbia, Harvard, and other elite universities. The administration’s stated reasoning was entirely just: For decades — in a way that became unavoidably visible to many Americans only in the wake of the October 7 Hamas massacre — university administrators have allowed their campuses to become teeming hives of antisemitism, where theories of racial hatred and exclusion are bolstered by the ideological support structure of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” standards common to all these institutions.
Last Wednesday, one major domino fell — and more may yet fall. Columbia University announced that it had finally reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore $400 million in canceled federal funding. Earlier this year, Columbia had already agreed to a series of concessions — among them a ban on wearing masks on campus, the empowerment of police to make arrests, and putting the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies under intellectual receivership.
That, however, was prelude to this final agreement: On top of the earlier changes, Columbia will pay $200 million to settle potential federal antidiscrimination claims and another $21 million to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and appoint a “jointly selected independent monitor” to oversee Columbia’s compliance. (This is a significant de-escalation from the administration’s original demand for Columbia to be governed under a judicial consent decree.) Normalcy will return to Columbia — for now.
Progressive activists are already raising hue and cry over how Columbia has “bent the knee” to the Trump administration, just as progressives did when the University of Pennsylvania officially announced it would adhere to Title IX and exclude men from women’s sports. Academics have gnashed their teeth and wailed about the need to “defend our institutions.” And nearly all of it is tired cant.
