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    ‘Impossible to rebuild’: NIH scientists say Trump cuts will imperil life-saving research

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    Last week, the office of management and budget (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all outside funding for National Institutes of Health research this fiscal year, but reversed course later that day, leaving the scientific community in a state of whiplash. A senior official at the NIH who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was just the latest in a “multi-prong” approach by the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research.In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to significantly cut cancer research spending as well. Since January, the administration has been cancelling NIH grants, in some cases targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention.“It’s really, really bad at NIH right now,” said the official, who added that researchers working outside the NIH have been unaware of the severity of the situation until recently, even though they have also faced funding upheaval since the winter.“The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, substantially intervening inside NIH to bring it under political control,” the official said. “That’s what we saw this week with the OMB freeze on funding.”“I think the core of it is that they want to destroy universities, or at least turn them into rightwing ideological factories,” the official said, since the majority of the NIH’s grants are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions.In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech entitled The Universities Are the Enemy. The official said they were alarmed at how little universities are fighting back – many have settled with the administration, which has “gotten Columbia to completely knuckle under. One of America’s most significant universities and a place that is a worldwide magnet for talents. Same thing at Penn. Now they’re going after UCLA.”Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have also stayed on the sidelines, refusing to sufficiently resist Trump, the official said.If the administration does manage to freeze NIH funding, it will push to rescind the funds permanently using a rescission motion, the official said. This type of motion only requires a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, instead of the supermajority necessary to beat a filibuster. Republicans would have enough votes to “ram through these motions to effectively cut the budget without Democrats in Congress weighing in. It’s an ongoing disaster.”Researchers at the many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are starting to feel the gravity of the situation, said the official. Carole LaBonne, a biologist at Northwestern, said “university labs are hanging by a thread”, explaining that even though the OMB reversed its decision to freeze outside NIH funding, “the baseline reality is not much better”.Other recent changes at the NIH include allocating research grants all at once rather than over multiple years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions in cancer research funding also mean that only 4% of relevant grant applications will move forward. “This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating,” LaBonne said.The extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research is also negatively affecting scientists’ mental health. “I do not know any faculty who are not incredibly stressed right now, wondering how long they will be able to keep their labs going and if/when they will have to let laboratory staff go,” LaBonne said. “It also very hard to motivate oneself to write grants, a painstaking and time-intensive processes, when there is a 96% chance it will not be funded.”Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona, said: “The chaos at NIH is definitely freaking [faculty and students] out and wasting huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We were emailing about the latest pause, only to find it unpaused hours later.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe senior NIH official found last week’s events unsurprising, they said: “They’re throwing everything at the wall to stop NIH from spending. What struck me was that many of my colleagues at universities were like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re stopping grants.’ And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I hadn’t seen before, whereas a lot of us at NIH thought, ‘Oh, they just did another thing.’”Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. “Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We’re on the path to breaking them.”LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. “My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,” she said.Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, grassroots organizations and individual scientists, including those within the NIH, are finding ways to resist.The senior NIH official said they were most hopeful about grassroots organizers who are resisting the Trump administration openly, rather than relying on older strategies such as litigation and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote science communication, is encouraging scientists to get the word out about the importance of federal funding to their home towns.The Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 NIH staff, directly accused NIH director Jay Bhattacharya of “a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.” More

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      I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

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      Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

      Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More

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      Columbia announces deal to pay Trump administration more than $220m

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      Columbia University announced a much-anticipated deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220m, an agreement meant to bring a resolution to the threat of massive funding cuts to the school, but certain to rankle critics given the extraordinary concessions made by the Ivy League university.Under the agreement, the school will pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government, the university said. It will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” acting university president Claire Shipman said.The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Gaza war that began in October 2023.Columbia first agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.Wednesday’s agreement codifies those reforms, Shipman said.On Tuesday, the university announced that it had disciplined more than 70 students for participating in a May protest against the war in Gaza.The deal is the first between a university and a presidential administration that has described higher education institutions as “the enemy” and launched an unprecedented campaign to reshape them. The government has withheld billions in grants and contracts from schools in an effort to force university administrators to abide by a sweeping list of demands.The news comes the same week that Harvard University appeared in federal court to argue that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn in funding over what it described as similar, politically motivated attempts to reshape higher education.Harvard is the first – and so far only – university to sue.In April, the administration also threatened to freeze $510m in grants to Brown University, citing similar motives, and has raised the prospect of cutting funding to Cornell, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.In exchange for Columbia’s concessions, the White House will reinstate $400m in federal funding it had stripped from the university earlier this year over allegations that it allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.Researchers estimate that Columbia was likely facing another $1.2bn in frozen funding from the National Institutes of Health. After the Trump administration cut the original $400m from the top research university, the lead funder of scientific research also terminated or froze unspent dollars previously awarded to Columbia.In a June statement to alumni, Shipman said the university was in “danger of reaching a tipping point in terms of preserving our research excellence and the work we do for humanity”.While the Trump administration is likely to hail the agreement as a victory in its battle against universities, the deal fell short of some of the most restrictive measures the administration had sought, like a legally binding consent decree and an overhaul of Columbia’s governance structure.Earlier this month, the university announced a host of new measures to further combat antisemitism on campus, including the adoption of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition and additional antisemitism training. The measures add to several similar ones introduced as the university has come under mounting criticism over the last two years by students, alumni and lawmakers who accused it of failing to stop pro-Palestinian protests on campus that they deemed antisemitic.The deal, which settles a bevy of open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides and who will report to the government on its progress every six months. More

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      Columbia adopts controversial definition of antisemitism amid federal grants freeze

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      Columbia University has agreed to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism as it pursues an agreement with the Trump aimed at restoring $400m in federal government grants frozen over its alleged failure to protect Jewish students.In a letter to students and staff, the university’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said it would incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism into its anti-discrimination policies as part of a broad overhaul.It is the latest in a string of concessions Columbia has made following criticisms – mainly from pro-Israel groups and Republican members of Congress – that university authorities had tolerated the expression of antisemitic attitudes in pro-Palestinian campus protests following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2023.“Columbia is committed to taking all possible steps to combat antisemitism and the University remains dedicated to ensuring that complaints of discrimination and harassment of all types, including complaints based on Jewish and Israeli identity, are treated in the same manner,” wrote Shipman.“Formally adding the consideration of the IHRA definition into our existing anti-discrimination policies strengthens our approach to combating antisemitism.”The definition, which describes antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”, has been adopted by the US state department and several European government and EU groups.However, critics have say it is designed to shield Israel by punishing legitimate criticism of the country. They also complain that it conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism.Among the examples of criticisms accompanying the definition are “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”, “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nations” and “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel … than to the interests of their own nations”.Donald Trump gave the IHRA definition a significant boost during his presidency by issuing an executive order in 2018 requiring all federal government agencies to take account of it when handling civil rights complaints.In adopting it now, Columbia is following Harvard, which agreed to embrace the definition last January as part of a court settlement reached with Jewish students, who had accused the university of failing to protect them under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or ethnic origin in programs or institutions receiving federal funding.While Harvard remains in dispute with the White House after refusing to bow to its demands in return for the unfreezing of federal funding, Columbia has been accused of surrendering vital academic freedoms in an initial agreement with the administration reached last March that will see it reform its protest and security policies, while restricting the autonomy of its Middle Eastern studies department.Shipman has insisted that the university is “following the law” and denied that it is guilty of “capitulation”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionColumbia’s previous president, Minouche Shafik, resigned last August following sustained criticism, including in Congress, over her failure to end months of campus protests, despite calling in New York police to dismantle an encampment.In her letter, Shipman said last March’s agreement was “only a starting point for change”.“The fact that we’ve faced pressure from the government does not make the problems on our campuses any less real; a significant part of our community has been deeply affected in negative ways,” she wrote. “Committing to reform on our own is a more powerful path. It will better enable us to recognize our shortcomings and create lasting change.”However, the New York Times recently reported that the university was nearing an agreement to pay Jewish complainants more than $200m in compensation for civil rights violations that would be part of the deal to have its funding restored.The deal is likely to require further reforms in return for restored funding but stops short of requiring a judge-approved consent decree, which had been in an initial draft and would have given the Trump administration significant control over the university. More

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      Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application

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      Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York City, was born in Uganda. He doesn’t consider himself Black but said the application didn’t allow for the complexity of his background.As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal.But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.The application allowed students to provide “more specific information where relevant,” and Mr. Mamdani said that he wrote in, “Ugandan.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Parents Who Helped Shape Zohran Mamdani’s Politics

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      Zohran Mamdani’s parents, a filmmaker and a professor, gave him the foundation for his run for mayor of New York. But their own political views may open him up to attacks.When Zohran K. Mamdani took a commanding lead in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City on Tuesday, his parents were just as surprised as the party’s establishment. Both are accustomed to the spotlight — his mother as an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and his father as a Columbia University professor. Neither expected to be this close to the halls of power.Mr. Mamdani, 33, has credited his parents with providing him a “privileged upbringing” that included constant discussion of politics and global affairs. But at a moment of intense political fights over conflict in the Middle East, his parents’ critical views of Israel and his father’s academic work on settler colonialism and human rights could make them a target of attacks from the right.The concept of settler colonialism has become especially fraught during the war in Gaza, as some supporters of Palestinians have applied the term to Israel, which some critics say is unfair.“We hadn’t bargained for being parents of a prospective mayor,” Mahmood Mamdani, 79, the candidate’s father and a renowned professor of international affairs and anthropology, said in the couple’s Manhattan apartment the morning after the primary.Mira Nair, 67, Mr. Mamdani’s mother, directed “Salaam Bombay!,” “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding,” among other films. Over the past year, in between filmmaking, she has canvassed for her son and cooked biryani and chicken for him and his campaign staffers. Both parents emphasized that their son, a democratic socialist who could become the city’s first Muslim mayor, has not turned to them for political advice. But they may now find themselves drawn into the campaign nonetheless.Zohran Mamdani with Ms. Nair at his primary night celebration. Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had been leading in the polls, conceded the race as Mr. Mamdani stretched his lead in returns on Tuesday night.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Heat Wave Hits New York Earlier Than Usual for a Second Year in a Row

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      Climate change is increasingly making weather extremes more common.Scorching, record-breaking temperatures on Tuesday kept many people indoors throughout the metropolitan region, strained the electrical grid and stoked concerns among those who are the most vulnerable to the heat, including older New Yorkers and the very young.It was 99 degrees in Central Park this afternoon, the hottest June 24 temperature since records started there in 1869. Kennedy Airport recorded the hottest June day since the site was built in 1948, at 102 degrees.It is the second year in a row that a heat wave has hit the New York City region earlier than usual, as global warming is projected to worsen heat waves and make them more frequent, climate experts say.“Our warming climate underlies everything,” said David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist and a geography professor at Rutgers University. “It’s not about the highest temperature; it’s about how long it stays hot and the area of coverage of that heat. It’s 100 up in New England today and down here as well.”Of the 69 weather stations in New Jersey, Mr. Robinson said, over 30 hit 100 degrees. He added that the 10 hottest summers on record for the state had all occurred since 2005.As climate change wreaks havoc with the traditional calendar, the familiar rhythms of the seasons have begun to shift. New York City pools, for example, are not scheduled to open for the summer until Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mahmoud Khalil Returns to New York After Months in Detention

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      The Trump administration remains committed to deporting Mr. Khalil, a Columbia graduate and leading figure in the pro-Palestinian protest movement.Mahmoud Khalil walked through a nondescript door into a Newark airport lobby on Saturday, his wife to his left, a congresswoman to his right and a stroller in front of him. His fist was raised and he could not stop smiling.Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, had spent more than three months detained by the Trump administration, which said he had enabled the spread of antisemitism and had sought to deport him.But his lawyers had denied the accusations of antisemitism and had protested his detention as unconstitutional retaliation for free speech. On Friday, a judge ordered him released on bail.After spending the evening driving from Jena, La., to a Houston airport, Mr. Khalil returned to the East Coast, his plane landing shortly before 1 p.m. on Saturday at Newark Liberty International Airport. He was expected to head to his home in New York City.When Mr. Khalil emerged at the Newark airport with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, he was quickly surrounded by roughly 50 supporters, reporters, lawyers and relatives.Mr. Khalil briefly addressed the crowd, saying he would immediately resume his outspoken work on behalf of Palestinian rights, speech he said that should be celebrated rather than punished. Asked about a message for the Trump administration, he said “just the fact that I am here sends a message.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump administration notches first big win in assault on higher education

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      The Trump administration scored its most significant legal victory in its sweeping effort to reshape American higher education when a federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by faculty groups over the government’s cuts to Columbia University’s federal funding.The lawsuit concerned the Trump administration’s cuts to $400m worth of federal funding to Columbia on the grounds it tolerated antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Columbia largely accepted the government’s terms for restoring funding – in an agreement widely panned as a capitulation of its own academic freedom – several days before the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sued the Trump administration over the cuts.The judge in the case, Mary Kay Vyskocil of the southern district of New York, ruled that the faculty unions had no “standing” to bring the suit and had not clearly indicated how the administration had broken the law.“It is not the role of a district court judge to direct the policies of the Executive Branch first and ask questions later,” the judge, a Trump appointee, wrote in her 30-page ruling. “Plaintiffs have not established their standing to litigate this case, let alone any violation of any law.” She seemed to accept the government’s prerogative to withhold funding and its argument that Columbia had enabled antisemitism to fester on campus. She also noted that Columbia had remained “conspicuously absent” from the case.The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment. That funding has not yet been restored though the education secretary Linda McMahon recently said that Columbia had “made great progress” and that the administration was considering a consent decree with the university.The administration has also cut billions in funding to several other universities, warning dozens more that it is investigating them over alleged antisemitism on campuses. So far, Harvard, which has lost more than $3bn in federal funding, is the only university to sue the administration in two separate lawsuits, one over funding cuts and another against the administration’s ban on Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. On Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts extended a temporary block on the administration’s order concerning Harvard’s foreign students.The AAUP has filed three other lawsuits against the Trump administration – over its ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the attempted deportation of pro-Palestinian students and funding cuts at Harvard. The group has vowed to fight on.“This is a disappointing ruling, but by no means the end of the fight,” Todd Wolfson, the AAUP president said. “The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia University are part of an authoritarian agenda that extends far beyond Columbia. Ultimately, lifesaving research, basic civil liberties and higher education in communities across the country are all on the line. Faculty, students, and the American public will not stand for it. We will continue to fight back.”Protect Democracy, the group representing the AAUP and AFT said they would appeal Monday’s ruling and vowed to “continue to fight to stop the administration from using public funding as a cudgel to consolidate power over higher education”, they wrote in a statement.“This is a deeply problematic decision that ignores what this is all about – a government attempt to punish a university over student protests that galvanized a national movement in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” said Radhika Sainath, senior managing attorney at Palestine Legal, a group advocating for pro-Palestinian voices on US campuses which had filed a brief in support of the AAUP’s lawsuit.“The court uncritically takes the government’s line for granted, that speech activity critical of Israel is inherently anti-Jewish – though Jewish students and professors make up a large percentage of those speaking up for Palestinian human rights.” More