Columbia University is at the heart of Trump’s punishment of pro-Palestinian students who staged protests last year [Getty/file photo]
The Trump administration has demanded that Columbia University make dramatic changes to its admissions and student discipline policy before discussions can take place on reversing the cancellation of $400 million in federal funds, US media reported on Thursday.
Some of the administration’s demands include the restructuring of Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department, and that it is placed under “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years.
The university must provide a concrete plan outlining such changes in line with Trump’s demands.
Academic receivership refers to the appointment of an external authority to take charge of a department if it is judged unable to manage itself effectively. This can also include a possible hiring and firing process.
“We expect your immediate compliance,” officials from the General Services Administration, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services said in a letter to Columbia University.
The Trump administration has also demanded that the New York-based university adopt a new definition of anti-semitism in line with that espoused by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The IHRA’s definition has drawn criticism over the years for conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.
Additionally, the administration has urged Columbia to “hold accountable individual students and student groups operating as members of, or recognising, groups violating the university’s policy”. This measure could put students advocating for Palestine or any other cause at risk of disciplinary action.
Columbia must also continue its disciplinary actions for students who participated in encampments including the one at Hamilton Hall – renamed Hind’s Hall by protesting students after a six-year-old girl shot dead by the Israeli army in Gaza.
The university said on Thursday it punished a number of students relating to the Gaza War protests of April 2024, including suspending and expulsing them, as well as temporarily revoking their degrees.
The university said it disciplined the students following a review of the “severity of behaviour at these events”. Columbia declined to state the number of students being disciplined and did not provide their names to protect their privacy.
Columbia has claimed that the students who barricaded themselves inside Hind’s Hall in April last year engaged in acts of vandalism and several were arrested by police who were called to the scene at the time.
The Trump administration also demanded that Columbia University must enforce a ban on the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate”, and deploy full law enforcement on campus to arrest anyone accused of “fostering an unsafe or hostile work or study environment”.
The institution has been ordered to respond to the administration within a week as “a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government”.
In its letter addressed to Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong, the Trump administration accused Columbia of “fundamentally failing to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment”.
Last week, Trump said he would cancel the $400 million in federal grants and contracts due to the university’s alleged failure to “combat antisemitism” and for allowing “illegal protests” to take place on campus, referring to last spring’s student-led Gaza war demonstrations.
Trump’s letter was sent to the university after Columbia’s counsel asked to “discuss the next steps” following the president’s decision to revoke the funds.
Punishment of pro-Palestinian students on university campuses
This comes after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday in response to an order from the Trump administration to revoke Palestinian Columbia graduate residency permit and deport him.
Khalil was an active student protester and lead negotiator during the Gaza war protests which swept Columbia and other US universities last year.
During his presidential campaign and upon return to office, Trump had pledged to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters under an executive order dealing with “antisemitism”. The US president has repeatedly accused pro-Palestinian demonstrators of being “antisemitic” and “promoting Hamas”.
Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States as a green card holder, is currently detained without charge in an immigration centre in Louisiana, over 2,000 km away from New York where he resides with his wife, who is eight months pregnant.
Khalil’s ordeal has been widely condemned by student protesters, lawyers, and some members of the Democratic Party, who say his arrest violates freedom of speech and the First Amendment.
Tensions are running high in the US following Khalil’s detention and Trump’s crackdown on protesters who demonstrated against Israel’s devastating war on Gaza on university campuses, urging their educational institutions to divest from Israel.
This week, pro-Palestinian Yale scholar Helyeh Doutaghi said she was placed on leave by the university after an AI-generated article published on a pro-Israel website referred to her as a “terrorist” in an apparent smear campaign against her, which resulted in death threats being sent to her.
Trump has threatened a total of 60 universities with harsh consequences as they undergo probes into allegations of antisemitism.
