Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands

Acquiescing to demands from the Trump administration to address alleged antisemitism on campus, Columbia University has agreed to overhaul disciplinary processes, ban masks at protests, add 36 officers with the authority to make arrests, and appoint a new senior vice provost to oversee programs focused on the Middle East, among other changes.

The decision, announced Friday afternoon, is the latest move in Columbia’s ongoing faceoff with the federal government over last year’s pro-Palestinian protests, which spawned the nationwide encampment movement. Columbia yielded despite concerns about the legality of the demands, as well as of an associated effort by the Trump administration to strip the university of $400 million in research funding.

Columbia announced additional efforts that the Trump administration didn’t request, including advancing Columbia’s Tel Aviv Center (though initial details are sparse) and creating a K-12 curriculum “focused on topics such as how to have difficult conversations, create classrooms that foster open inquiry, dialogue across difference and topics related to antisemitism.” That curriculum will be free for schools.

The full list of changes can be found here.

Interim President Katrina Armstrong announced the move in a statement titled “Sharing Progress on Our Priorities,” calling it “a privilege to share our progress and plans” after a difficult year of protests and scrutiny.

“At all times, we are guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make,” Armstrong wrote in the message posted Friday afternoon, which she signed as “Standing together for Columbia.”

Critics, however, have argued that yielding to the Trump administration undermines academic freedom and urged Columbia to fight the demands.

(This is a breaking news story and will be updated.)