Less convincing were commenters like historian Joan Scott, who said Trump’s actions were “unheard of” and “even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.” Coverage consistently ignored the fact that Columbia has been a poster child for decades-long assault by most all universities on academic freedom, as well as a serial violator of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires that public funds not be spent “in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.”
It would be nice if the NYCLU acknowledged that Columbia’s record is replete with moronic civil liberties offenses. It’s deplatformed with gusto, allowed or encouraged “heckler’s veto” shutdowns of events, and institutionalized compelled-speech “diversity statements” as part of its admissions process (including instructions on what to write, like “When did your privilege result in different treatment than others?”). It has the same problems with the use of race in admissions that Harvard tried to defend and lost at the Supreme Court, and its DEI programs still infect the curriculum with iron race doctrine. The School of Social Work to this day proudly waving the banner of the “PROP or “Power, Race, Oppression, and Privilege” framework,” which makes the department’s “guiding principle” the idea that “anti-Black racism and white supremacy are endemic in our systems and institutions.”
Speech codes are issued in a variety of forms. A Barnard circular even missed the irony of a George Carlin routine, announcing “the following words cannot appear on any posted information at Barnard: shit, piss, suck, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker and tits.” These practices and more led to Columbia in 2022 being named the worst campus in the country for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), getting the country’s sole “abysmal” rating. Ironically, Harvard would soon earn a worse review.
After October 7th, 2023, in a heated and difficult situation, the school made bad decisions. A lot of schools responded to this situation in ways less than ordeal (Cooper Union administrators won themselves a fat Title VI suit after a horrific “Jewish students locked in a library” ordeal), and Columbia seemed to admit to such issues in its early communications. Unfortunately, both parties want to blur lines: the Trump administration seems anxious to define some things that are clearly legal protests as antisemitism and/or discrimination, while schools like Columbia are content to acknowledge “legitimate concerns” without specifying where it crossed a line.
“Part of the problem is that it’s to everybody’s advantage, or they believe it’s to their advantage, to not be specific about problems they’re seeing, or to nix things that could actually be Title VI violations,” says FIRE attorney Robert Shipley.
The Trump administration would have been right to simply demand that Columbia cut the recent shit (and all the other shit). These things are usually resolved on the sly. As Shipley’s colleague Tyler Coward noted, “Historically no higher ed institution has ever lost all its federal funding, which is the consequence for violating Title VI.” But Trump is a different animal. He’s dragging these dramas in the open, making the Ivies dance for their federal crumbs in the most humiliating conceivable manner, like Joe Pesci shooting at the feet of Michael “No, I thought you said, ‘I’m alright Spider’” Imperioli in Goodfellas.
Read the whole thing.