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Columbia U Prez Gets Flak From Faculty For Not Fighting Harder Against Trump
Recalcitrant faculty at Columbia University who are concerned about “academic freedom” are reportedly criticizing Columbia University interim President Katrina Armstrong for not fighting harder against President Donald Trump, who wants to eradicate anti-Semitism from the school’s campus.
Over the weekend, Armstrong met with roughly 75 faculty leaders. The university president said that Columbia is being investigated by six federal agencies, which could lead to all federal funding being pulled from the Ivy League school, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon stated. “Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”
At the weekend meeting, Armstrong, who noted that the university receives over $1 billion annually in federal funding, stated, “The ability of the federal administration to leverage other forms of federal funding in an immediate fashion is really potentially devastating to our students in particular. I think it is a really critical risk for us to understand.” She reportedly said she “could not agree more” that the school was being characterized unfairly.
According to the Journal, faculty in STEM fields — the group most devastated by cuts in funding — are upset because they believe the faculty in the arts and humanities have helped foment the anti-Semitism on campus. Conversely, arts and social sciences professors have expressed concerns about their “civil liberties.”
“Some criticized Armstrong for not taking a harder line with President Trump,” the Journal reported.
One defiant professor hyperventilated that Trump’s actions were “the biggest crisis since the founding of the republic,” complaining that Armstrong had not gathered professors to make a unified statement against Trump’s actions.
Despite the fact that Columbia had written a letter to the Trump administration agreeing to ban masks during unauthorized protests, Armstrong told faculty no mask ban existed. On Monday, a student group wore keffiyehs and face masks. “The protesters handed out fliers listing their demands, including establishing Columbia as a sanctuary campus, with protections from deportation or detention,” according to the Journal.
“This impossible situation that we’ve been put through, I think has tested us all and certainly tested me in ways that I have never anticipated being tested,” Armstrong concluded.
On Tuesday, when she was asked, “What happens if it emerges that Columbia is not meeting the demands and complying with the agreements that they said they would?”, McMahon replied, “My answer is pretty simple. They have to abide and comply with the terms that we have set down and [we’ve] talked with them and they’ve agreed to. And that was kind of the basis to get them to the real first step of total negotiations to restore the funding — that, in and of itself, was not to reinstall, to reinstate the funding. So they’ll have to do that. And we certainly hope that, hope that they will, and I’ve had no indication from President Armstrong anything would be contrary to that.”