The Assault on Columbia University

18 March 2025 | Columbia University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors

The Columbia chapter of the AAUP deplores the federal government’s ongoing and

unprecedented assault on Columbia University and, by extension, on all institutions of higher

learning in America. We call on our colleagues here and across the nation to join in a collective

and public effort to underscore the university’s contributions to sustaining democracy and

advancing knowledge, and to defend the principles upon which the nation’s distinguished

system of higher education has been built.

These principles include the right to pursue and substantiate credible knowledge without

political interference or intimidation; the respect for expertise in determining and debating truth

claims; and the commitment to shared governance in university decision-making on matters

such as curriculum, hiring, tenure, and discipline. We also champion the broader democratic

principle that students and faculty have the right to engage in political speech, including

nonviolent political protest, subject to consistent and transparent rules of conduct. The Trump

administration has trampled on these principles by aggressively demanding, in its March 13,

2025, letter, fundamental changes to Columbia’s long-established practices.

The letter is of dubious legality, but its demands are sweeping. They constitute unacceptable

overreach, attempting to dictate university policies and undermine the university’s procedures,

statutes, and guiding principles. The letter demands that student discipline be adjudicated solely

by the President of the university, rather than by the university Judicial Board, which is

appointed by the university Senate. It further demands that new rules governing student conduct

and discipline be instituted immediately, bypassing the deliberative processes for debating and

instituting such rules.

Columbia is enjoined to place an academic department into receivership, something that only

happens when internal department governance breaks down; asked to hastily adopt a mask

ban, and to swiftly adopt a definition of antisemitism congruent with the IHRA definition that

regards much criticism of the Israeli state as antisemitic, a definition whose own author decried

its use for disciplinary purposes as “an attack on academic freedom and free speech.”

The letter also demands that Columbia empower security forces to arrest and remove “agitators” – a term seeming to refer to anyone dissenting from the views of the current administration.

Finally, the letter demands that Columbia provide an immediate plan to restructure its

admissions processes in line with recent executive orders whose legality is not yet tested in

courts, presumably by abrogating long-standing commitments to inclusive admission practices.

This letter of demands requires a response by March 20, 2025, as a “precondition” to any

discussion regarding the extraordinary federal funding cuts of $400 million announced on March

7, 2025.

These funding cuts, primarily affecting areas of scientific and medical research, were made

without any due process substantiating violations of law; further cuts are threatened. The

government’s demands read like a ransom letter, dictating to the university what principles it

must sacrifice and what ideological positions it must adopt to restore research funding. The

stated justification for these draconian cuts is the university’s supposed refusal to address

antisemitism on campus. That claim is unsubstantiated and is belied by Columbia’s many

actions over the last year to accommodate its Jewish students, sometimes at the expense of the

grievances of other campus groups and their right to equal treatment.

These cuts arguably aim less to address antisemitism than to destroy the university as a center

of critical thought, professional expertise, democratic self-governance, and scientific inquiry.

Tellingly, the cuts also reflect this government’s larger project of funneling research funds to

private companies where profit, not the common good, determines research priorities. The cuts

threaten to severely damage Columbia’s research capacity in such fields as medicine, public

health, and climate science; they eradicate nearly all graduate student training funds in health

sciences; they also degrade the many life-saving community services provided in conjunction

with such research. These cuts are not only an existential threat to the research mission and

public service of American universities, they also reveal the cruelty of their promulgators.

Capitulating to those comfortable with enacting such cruelty should give us all pause.

We urge the Columbia administration in the strongest possible terms to reject these demands

and the premises on which they rest. We unequivocally affirm that any changes to the

university’s structures and processes are the Columbia community’s to make, according to our

principles. Compliance would make Columbia complicit in its own destruction, stripping shared

control of academic and student affairs from the faculty and administration, and replacing the

deliberative practices and structures of the university with peremptory fiats from outside the

institution. We see no evidence that compliance would assuage the hostility of the White House,

nor blunt ongoing and escalating attacks. Nothing less than the university’s capacity to anchor

democratic deliberation is at stake.

Concurrently with the above assaults on the university, Homeland Security and ICE agents have

arrived on and around the Columbia campus to identify and deport our students and recent

alumni. The widely publicized case involving Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s

School of International Affairs and a leader of the pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s

campus, is the most prominent of a growing number. Khalil, a green card holder, was arrested

without a judicial warrant from his Columbia housing and taken to a detention facility in

Louisiana. His green card was revoked even though no criminal charges have been lodged

against him. This is a blatant effort to stifle political speech and peaceful protest, and instill fear.

This multi-pronged assault on Columbia will serve as a model for attacks on other universities

across the nation.

At Columbia the immense stress of the past weeks has coincided with the conclusion of

disciplinary cases related to the encampments of last year and the student take-over of

Hamilton Hall. The University Judicial Board (UJB), which acts autonomously and handled these

cases, is an arm of our shared governance structures. We recognize the UJB as a crucial and

legitimate part of shared governance, and condemn politically motivated attempts to destroy

either it or the university Senate. The sole right to refine the working of either belongs to the

university community and not to an outside entity.

While we affirm the legitimacy of the UJB’s process, we are dismayed by the severity of the

punishments meted out to students found guilty of violating the university’s Rules of Conduct.

These penalties are virtually unprecedented in Columbia’s history. While details of these cases

are not made public, we know that they resulted in a number of student expulsions, two-year

suspensions, and the temporary revocation of several diplomas. We question the necessity of

such harsh acts, which sharpen internal divisions and pit faculty against students exactly when

unity is needed. This is the moment to remember that, in our best traditions, we educate

students rather than punish them. To be just, punishment must cleave to the principle of

proportionality and the greater good of the community.

At this fraught moment we must all stand together against the external assault on our institution.

In times of crisis and fear, it is tempting to turn inward, to blame our administrators for events

beyond their control, to blame our students for their outspoken protests, or to criticize

colleagues whose first thought is for the impacts on their own groups or careers. Our

administration has not been as strong, transparent, and bold as many of us have wished it to

be. Yet, even as we urge a stronger response from our administration and trustees, one that

rejects illegal and peremptory demands, we also urge the larger community to support the

administration’s actions when they constitute a principled defense of our university, its faculty,

staff, and students.

We also urge all of our colleagues to work in solidarity with representatives of our postdoctoral

researchers, students, and staff; to mobilize our professional organizations to speak out in

defense of the university; to lobby members of Congress and local officials to recognize and

work against the destruction of universities; and to march in the streets. We must be strategic,

but this is not a time to be silent.