Posted on 03/20/2025 12:10:41 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
A demand for the university’s administration to place the Middle Eastern studies department under receivership could signal a broader crackdown across the United States.
It was an obscure, 44-word demand toward the end of the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Columbia University this month ordering a dramatic overhaul of admissions and disciplinary rules. But it could prove to have consequences for colleges and universities nationwide.
With $400 million in canceled government grants and contracts on the line, federal officials ordered Columbia’s administration to place the university’s Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership for at least five years.
Typically, a receivership is handled internally. University administrators can take the rare step of imposing the measure when a department descends into chaos. It is viewed as a last-resort solution to extended periods of internal strife and dysfunction.
This time is different. The call for a receivership is coming from outside the university — and directly from the White House. And it arrives at a moment when dozens of other colleges and universities are facing federal inquiries and fear a fate similar to Columbia’s.
“It is one small department in one university,” said Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the Middle Eastern studies department at Columbia. “But it will reverberate across the entire country.”
The interdisciplinary program at the center of the government’s demand — the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department — has been in a pitched battle for decades over its scholarship and employment of faculty members who describe themselves as anti-Zionist.
Several historians and veteran professors said that the move by the federal government to intervene in an academic department at a private university would be unparalleled in the modern history...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sounds very scholarly.
If they want to be a private university they have to turn down that sweet, sweet federal money.
The administration probably has intel that the Middle Eastern studies department is funded by hostile forces.
Just a guess.
Exactly—academic freedom is not free.
They need to pay their own freight.
LOL !
NYT turned off the comments on this one.
I suspect they are not funded by OUR country.
There is nothing ‘higher’ about the education provided by these institutions.
There is nothing ‘higher’ about the education provided by these institutions.
The Ivy League schools (among others) are service academies for ruling class international terrorism.
Confiscate their endowments (maybe spend them of education) and send the trustees to prison.
Aren’t they also subject to taxes then?
It’s no longer education; it’s indoctrination.
It’s simple. You’re not truly private if you’re feeding at the federal trough. Trump could not do this with for example Hillsdale College. Not that he would ever need
to.
not only does that terrorist-promoting “department” need to be shut the F down, but so does the COlumbia administration that created, permitted, funded, defended, and enabled it
what a morally bankrupt school!!!!!!
yuck!
“..the move by the federal government to intervene in an academic department at a private university...”
$400 million/yr makes it not so private.
About half of Columbia students are foreign.
Hey New Slimes ... why should taxpayers be on the hook for financially supporting universities that are sitting on billion dollar bank accounts?
With Columbia such a leading University, this means that the American government and the American people are being blind-sided as to the facts and policy options related to the Middle East. Further this blind-siding is being done by Muslim imperialists of a racist stripe.
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