Columbia Students Return to a Changed University

Last week was spring break for students at Columbia University. That means students were off campus when the school effectively conceded to the Trump administration and promised to put in place many changes to how things operate going forward.

Columbia University students were stepping into a new campus environment Monday after their university announced sweeping policy changes while they were away on spring break, seemingly bowing to the Trump administration’s demands over the release of $400 million in federal funding to the school…

The new rules effectively ban protests inside and immediately outside academic buildings, and all demonstration activity is subject to the university’s antidiscrimination and anti-harassment policies.

The university hired 36 new campus police officers specifically trained to deal with protests with powers to remove or arrest protesters as part of the changes, and it will continue to cooperate with the New York Police Department as needed.

Anyone who engages in protests or demonstrations must, when asked, show their university ID and are banned from wearing face coverings for the purpose of “concealing one’s identity,” according to the university’s statement released Friday.

The no masks rule could be especially problematic to the pro-Hamas extremists who have been running amok on campus. Like Antifa, CUAD (the coalition of groups organizing the protests) has used face covering to avoid accountability for actions which violate school rules or break the law. If students had to protest without the masks they might be less likely to take extreme actions that could result in suspension or expulsion.

Naturally, CUAD is angry about this and has made a bunch of statements expressing their outrage. On the mask ban, the group rather implausibly claims “In pursuit of surveilling and crushing Palestinian activism, Columbia chooses to further stigmatize one of the few protections individuals have against mass-disabling pandemics like COVID. Refuse. Mask up.”

The latest screed ends with a call for a kind of strike today: “Do not work. Do not go to class. Monday March 24.”

Progressives outside Columbia are also reacting:

One former Democratic candidate for New York governor, Cynthia Nixon, said Columbia had abandoned the Constitution. Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, a national faculty rights group, described the move as the greatest incursion into academic freedom and free speech since Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s crusade against communism in the 1950s.

But it turns out those kind of arguments are less compelling when your government funding is on the line. The chair of Columbia’s biology department made the point that a lot of the big talkers don’t have any skin in the game at this moment.

Brent R. Stockwell, the chair of Columbia’s department of biological sciences, said that many people “simply do not understand that a modern research institution cannot exist without federal funding.” He pointed to the importance of research in the sciences and its potential to produce medical breakthroughs and improvements to the lives of everyday Americans.

“There is no scenario in which Columbia can exist in any way in its current form if the government funding is completely withdrawn,” he said. “Is having a dialogue a capitulation? I would say it is not.”

Dr. Stockwell added: “It is frustrating to me that people at other academic institutions who are not subject to these pressures are saying, ‘Columbia should fight the good fight.’ They are happy to give up our funding for their values.”

Nearly all colleges, public and private, are at risk when it comes to funding. That means the example being made at Columbia can be repeated as many times as necessary until administrators nationwide get the message. Robert Kelchen, a professor who researches university financing explained this in an interview with Slate.

The power is essentially the same for every college in the country that gets federal funding, and it does not make a difference whether it’s public or private. If the federal government is giving money to students for research, all that money can be taken away. And that’s the leverage that the federal government has over the vast majority of higher ed. Some large universities can get well over $1 billion a year in total revenue from the federal government…

The National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture—basically any federal agency that gives out money has some kind of leverage, and it’s all being coordinated in a way that we haven’t seen previously…

Really, the only thing that college leaders can do is try to explain why the work is valuable and important. And that’s a difficult point to make with the public and an impossible point to make with an administration that has made removing any mention of DEI a policy. It’s just a battle that colleges have absolutely no chance of winning.

Columbia made the only sensible choice and, so far, it seems to be working.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Sunday that policy changes made by Columbia University, as demanded by the Trump administration, have put it “on the right track” to regain access to millions in federal funding.

“They have worked very hard in a very short period of time,” McMahon said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“And I believe that they are on the right track so that we can now move forward,” she added.

Whether they stay on the right track will come down to enforcement of the rules now in place. This has been the problem at Columbia and other schools since October 2023. There was ample opportunity to take action against students who were violating the rules, the schools just refused to do it. 

With a walkout/protest planned for today, Columbia gets another chance to get serious. So far, it’s not looking too good.

Welcome back from spring break @Columbia. Despite erroneous reports of a “mask ban” and “capitulation”, protests (with masks!) are continuing, an unapproved banner is hanging off of Dodge Hall, and no protestors have been asked to identify themselves. Capitulation in name only. pic.twitter.com/aIhZKt2ufX

— Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students ✡️🇮🇱 (@CUJewsIsraelis) March 24, 2025