An Expensive Education Lesson for Columbia to Learn

Yesterday, the administrators of Columbia University, and its President, Claire Shipman, finally came to their senses. It cost the university $220MM to learn the cost of allowing anti-semitism to rage uncontrolled on its campus for the last two years.

 

The Ivy League university is pledging to reverse racially discriminatory practices and resolve civil rights violations against Jewish students, and others who defend them. How long it will last is unclear until we see what happens when the school year begins.

The settlement, under which Columbia will agree to submit to independent monitoring to ensure it is complying with merit-based hiring and admissions requirements, is likely to put pressure on other schools, like Harvard, that have crossed the White House over tolerance of extreme Jew-hatred on campus since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas against Israel.

The resolution comes after just four months of negotiations between Columbia and Trump, striking a stark contrast with Harvard, which decided to drag the administration into court for stripping the school of $2.6 billion in grants and other funding.

The Ivy League school has also agreed to end all programming that discriminated against faculty or students, bringing it into full compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-based affirmative action, and create some yet-to-be-announced faculty positions in the name of broadening intellectual diversity.

The settlement further calls for Columbia to maintain a trained security force to block demonstrations in academic spaces and coordinate with the NYPD to prevent a repeat of the takeover of Hamilton Hall by anti-Israel rioters in the spring of 2024, while the university will impose a complete ban on masked protests. Facial coverings will still be allowed for medical or religious reasons.

Disciplinary rules will no longer be governed by the faculty senate but rather by the Office of the Provost. On Tuesday, Columbia announced that dozens of students were going to be suspended or penalized, and a handful expelled, for a recent disruptive library demonstration and anti-Israel tent encampment that engulfed the campus last year.

Additionally, the Morningside Heights school will comply with Title IX and no longer force women to compete with biological men in sports or use their locker rooms, housing or other facilities.

Finally, most of the $400 million in research grant money and the more than $1.2 billion of frozen federal funding yanked from the prestigious school, representing roughly 8% of its taxpayer funding, will be returned.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” said Columbia acting president Claire Shipman.

“The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track. Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”

The final agreement declared: “Columbia may not use personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination.”

We will see how strongly the University will keep its word to hold the students accountable before the campus devolves once again into chaos. It will be a much more costly result this time if students’ education becomes once again a terrorist haven.

The university, its facuty and its student body are on notice.