Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Mar. 25, 2025
“If chants for violence against African Americans or Hispanics were routinely voiced—or takeovers of school buildings on behalf of the efforts of hate groups or terrorists targeting those groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis—had taken place, everyone knows what would have followed.”
Progressive academics have been among the loudest voices calling for a new “resistance” to the second administration of President Donald Trump. But their angry rhetoric and vows to fight what they consider to be a threat to everything they hold dear was shown to be little more than hot air. The first time a leading bastion of the left like Columbia University was faced with a choice between fighting and surrendering to Trump, it folded like a cheap suit.
The issue was Columbia’s toleration and even encouragement of antisemitism. The Ivy League school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side had become one of the most prominent and outrageous examples of the surge of Jew-hatred that has swept across the country and the globe since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led Palestinian assault on Israel.
The administration in Washington demanded that the university make some drastic changes in its admissions and disciplinary policies, as well as to place one of its most problematic departments—the one devoted to Middle Eastern studies—under “academic receivership” for at least five years. And it made it clear that if Columbia didn’t comply, it would lose every cent of the $1.2 billion that it receives from the federal government every year.
A mere eight days after the administration issued its ultimatum, Columbia waved the white flag and acceded to every one of Trump’s demands. ….SOURCE