Going After Campuses Is the Toolkit of Trump, Netanyahu, Modi. Columbia University Is Latest
Amitabh Dubey | 25 March 2025 | The Print
Academic freedom in the West has come a long way since astronomer Galileo was declared a heretic and imprisoned for challenging the Church’s view that the universe revolves around the Earth. Or has it? Columbia University caving to pressure from the Trump administration makes you wonder.
Faced with the threat of losing $400 million in federal funds, Columbia agreed to more coercive campus policing, added anti-Zionism to its definition of anti-Semitism, and stripped faculty control over the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department. This is a dramatic development for the US; Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock described it as “jaw-dropping” and “a historic and astonishing event,” given the history of US universities since at least 1915…