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A group of Columbia University’s top law scholars has warned that a Trump administration threat to further cut the university’s federal funding contains “glaring legal problems”, as pressure grows to fight back against demands for changes to how the university is run.
The threat came after Columbia became a flashpoint in US protests over Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Large-scale pro-Palestinian campus protests last year included the takeover of a university building, an issue that the Trump administration has taken up as it seeks to wield power over colleges.
Seven senior legal academics at Columbia argued this weekend on the specialist blog Balkinization that a letter last Thursday from officials in Washington contained “legal infirmities” relating to academic freedom and due process in the constitution and Civil Rights Act.
After the US government cancelled $400mn of federal funding this month, the General Services Administration and departments of health and education wrote to the university seeking compliance by March 20 on tough new measures against alleged antisemitism as “a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship”. Columbia received $2.5bn of federal grants last year.
Accusing the Ivy League university of failing to protect students and staff from antisemitism, they demanded an overhaul of admissions and disciplinary processes and the placing of the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department into so-called academic receivership, in which an outside chair is imposed.
However, David Pozen, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law, and his fellow authors wrote: “These demands threaten not only Columbia’s funding for critical academic research but also fundamental legal principles and the mission of colleges and universities across the country.”
They added: “The letter offers no explanation of the alleged violations, no mention of a completed investigation, and no account of how Columbia has been deliberately indifferent to ongoing antisemitic discrimination or harassment on its campus.”
Their intervention will add weight to calls for legal pushback by the university, at a time when many higher education leaders have preferred to avoid public criticism of the Trump administration even as they are forced to cut budgets and activities.
Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, has previously said that “we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”.
The turmoil over the Gaza war at Columbia had already prompted dozens of arrests and the resignation of its former president, Minouche Shafik, last year.
But since Donald Trump took office, his administration has sought more changes at the university, while immigration authorities have arrested a pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate who holds a US green card.
Barbara Snyder, president of the Association of American Universities, warned that the $400mn in cuts would harm medical and scientific research and would not end discrimination. She called it “an unforced error and a gift to [the US’s] potential adversaries”.
Columbia is still struggling to tally the nature and extent of the grants cancelled early in March, which were communicated directly by federal funders to individual researchers.
They covered a broad range of activities including life-saving medical research and academic fields with no obvious connection to the Trump administration’s criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion policies or the issue of antisemitism.
Elaine Smolen, a visiting assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia, called “devastating” the abrupt cancelling of $2.5mn of funding for training programmes for current and incoming students to teach deaf children.
“Our students are confused, scared and not sure what the future will hold,” she said. “Many are deaf and hard of hearing themselves. This will have huge effects on children waiting for teachers.”
Other US academics who have received cancellations of federal funding in recent weeks have sought to fight back. Legal challenges are currently under way over the cancellations of DEI-related grants and an attempt to impose a cap of 15 per cent on indirect costs associated with all grants from the National Institutes of Health.
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