Again and again, Columbia has shown a willingness to throw students, faculty, free speech, and academic freedom under the bus in acquiescence to a right-wing, pro-Israel narrative that treats support for Palestinians as an affront to Jewish safety.
For all Columbia’s appeasement, President Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university.
There is no appeasing a political force like the Trumpian right, intent on a program of destruction. And there is no appeasing a nationalist Zionist worldview that, defying reason, sees antisemitism in every call for Palestinian freedom. Columbia is proof of the failure of caving in; the administration has offered up a platter of repression for more than a year and is still slated to lose $400 million.
The best part is he is an adjudicated felon and was indicted in several other cases he ran the clock out on, and he saw a weaponization of government where there was none, yet these protesters have committed no crime and he wants them punished beyond what the law allows.
We are in the upsidedown.