In Dirty Deal with Trump, Columbia University Betrays Its Students and Mission

Jewish Voice for Peace condemns in the strongest terms Columbia University’s complete capitulation to the Trump administration. On July 23rd, Columbia agreed to pay $220 million to settle a series of investigations by the Trump administration. While the deal restores Columbia’s eligibility for federal funding, it does so at the expense of students, faculty and staff who will face new draconian restrictions on their academic freedoms and Constitutional rights.

Over the past six months, JVP has repeatedly warned that the Trump administration is manufacturing false charges of antisemitism as a cynical ploy to fundamentally reshape higher education and, through it, American society. The Trump regime, which platforms white supremacists and neo-Nazi sympathizers, does not truly care for Jewish safety. Columbia’s agreement confirms our worst fears. The deal mandates measures to silence research, teaching and criticism of the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and system of apartheid. In addition, it includes broad limitations on the right to protest, reduces protections for trans students, places severe restrictions on international students and their rights, and establishes an effective ban on any considerations of diversity in hiring, promotions or admissions.

This is the latest in a series of recent moves by Columbia University that flagrantly — and falsely — invoke Jewish safety in an effort to appease authoritarian forces, including: the mass suspension of student protesters, the adoption of the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism, draconian antidemocratic reforms to its disciplinary procedures, attacks on shared governance, new ideological tests for academic departments, silence in the face of ICE kidnapping one of its students, and shuttering its campus to the public. We refuse to allow Jewish identities and histories to be used as fuel for such heinous attacks on our fundamental rights.

These policies do nothing to advance Jewish safety. To the contrary, as the vast majority of Jews recognize, they endanger our community by making us the face of a broad right-wing attack on higher education, movements for social justice, and communities of color. This is especially the case on college campuses, where a great and growing number of young Jews, called by the social justice traditions of our faith, are mobilizing in an effort to end our universities and our government’s support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Jewish Voice for Peace urges other colleges and universities not to follow Columbia University’s dangerous example and to instead recommit themselves to academic inquiry free of outside political interference and to the pursuit of a more just and equal world. As the Trump administration pursues an authoritarian project at home and finances an ongoing genocide in Gaza, it is incumbent upon universities to recognize and respond to this historical moment with concrete actions.

Anonymous undergraduate Columbia University student, JVP-Columbia member:

“It is frankly terrifying to see how easily and shamelessly Columbia has thrown its international students, its students of color and its transgender students under the bus. The implementation of these fascist policies is not capitulation — it is exactly what Columbia has wanted to do all along. Even with all the dangers this agreement poses to us, we know that it pales in comparison to the suffering the Israeli government is inflicting upon Gaza. Columbia is trying to stop us from speaking out against forced starvation, but we know nothing is more important than fighting for the people of Palestine, and we will not be silenced when Gaza needs us to speak up.”

Joseph Howley, Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University, JVP Academic Council:

“In a crisis of authoritarian attacks on democracy, universities have one job: standing up to tyrants. Columbia not only neglected that basic duty to the rest of society, but also sold out its own proud heritage of protest and social justice by making a deal that leaves every student, staff and faculty member studying and teaching under the threat that Trump will be back to shake us down again if someone with the right connections doesn’t like what gets said on campus or in a classroom. At a moment when Israel’s policies have hundreds of thousands of Gazans on the brink of starvation, the White House and Columbia’s Board are more focused on ending DEI and making it illegal to criticize the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

Jonah Rubin, Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing, Jewish Voice for Peace:

“Columbia has betrayed its core mission and set a dangerous precedent for the entire higher education sector. The once-great university is quickly transforming itself into an appendage of the MAGA movement, agreeing to anti-Palestinian, xenophobic, transphobic, racist, pro-genocide ideology. History will not forget their role in facilitating the rise of authoritarianism at home and genocide in Gaza.”

JVP staff, members and students are available to speak with media