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      US immigration officials detain doctoral student at University of Alabama

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      US immigration authorities have detained a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, campus officials confirmed on Wednesday.A spokesperson for the state’s flagship university said in a brief statement that a student was arrested “off campus” by federal immigration officials, but declined to comment further, citing privacy laws.The US government’s justification for detaining the student was not immediately clear, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not respond to a request for comment late on Wednesday.News of the arrest comes amid reports of the Trump administration increasingly targeting college students for arrest and deportation across the country, including people in the US on visas and permanent residents with green cards, raising alarms on campuses and in surrounding communities.The Crimson White, a student newspaper at the University of Alabama, reported on the arrest, saying the targeted student was detained at their home early on Tuesday morning. The individual is Iranian and was in the US on a student visa and studying mechanical engineering, the newspaper said. The university’s College Democrats group said in a statement that Trump and Ice “have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community”.It was not immediately clear on Wednesday evening if the arrested student had a lawyer.Alex House, a university spokesperson, said its international student and scholar services center was available to assist students with concerns: “International students studying at the university are valued members of the campus community.”But House’s statement added that the university “has and will continue to follow all immigration laws and cooperate with federal authorities”.The Alabama arrest was confirmed the same day news broke that Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University in Boston, was detained by federal immigration agents and taken to an Ice detention center in Louisiana. Her arrest appeared to be part of the US government’s crackdown on students with ties to pro-Palestinian activism on campus last year.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Ozturk was in the US on a visa and accused her of supporting Hamas, but did not provide evidence to support its claims. Media reports noted that Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish citizen, had in March 2024 co-written an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper, alongside three other authors, supporting calls for the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOzturk’s arrest has sparked widespread outrage as video circulated showing masked officers, in plainclothes, approaching her on the street and taking her into custody. A 32-year-old software engineer whose surveillance camera recorded the arrest told the Associated Press it “looked like a kidnapping”.The Massachusetts director of Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim civil rights group, said in a statement: “We unequivocally condemn the abduction of a young Muslim hijab-wearing scholar by masked federal agents in broad daylight. This alarming act of repression is a direct assault on free speech and academic freedom.”Ozturk’s lawyer told the New York Times she was heading out to break her Ramadan fast with friends when she was detained near her apartment.Tufts’s president said the university “had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event”. The university was told the student’s visa was “terminated”, the president added.Ice records suggested Ozturk was taken to Louisiana despite a judge ordering DHS to give advanced notice if officials sought to transfer her out of state.DHS has also faced scrutiny over its efforts to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate, who is a green card holder. A US judge in Manhattan on Wednesday blocked immigration officials from detaining Yunseo Chung, a Columbia undergraduate, who is also a permanent resident facing threats of deportation for involvement in Gaza solidarity protests.Maya Yang contributed reporting More

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      Columbia protester suit raises questions about free speech rights: ‘Immigration enforcement as a bludgeon’

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      In a matter of days, Yunseo Chung was sent into hiding.On 5 March, Chung – a 21-year-old student at Columbia University – attended a sit-in to protest the expulsion of several students involved in pro-Palestinian activism at the famed New York university. Four days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents showed up at her parents’ home.When they couldn’t find her there, Ice sought help from federal prosecutors and searched her dormitory – using a warrant that cited a criminal law against “harboring noncitizens”. They revoked her green card and accused her of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests.On Monday, Chung sued Donald Trump and other high-ranking administrations to stop their targeting of her and other students. And on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport Chung, saying “nothing in the record” indicated that Chung posed a danger to the community.“After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” she shared in a statement to the Guardian after the ruling.Her location remains undisclosed, and Chung herself has remained shielded – for her own protection – from the public. But she has nonetheless made a powerful statement, by raising a simple question: if the administration can arbitrarily and unilaterally threaten immigrants over political views they disagree with, if it can disregard the free speech rights of lawful permanent residents – what limits, if any, remain on its power?“Officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung’s speech,” her lawyers write in the suit.Unlike some of the other students the administration has targeted for pro-Palestinian activism, including recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who led protests on campus, and Cornell PhD student Momodou Taal, who delivered speeches at his university’s pro-Palestinian encampment, Chung’s involvement in the movement was low-profile. She didn’t play an organizing or leading role in any of the protest efforts; she didn’t speak to the media about her activism.“She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns,” her lawyers write.Chung moved to the US from South Korea when she was seven, and has lived in the country ever since. She was a valedictorian in high school; at Columbia, she had contributed to a literary magazine and an undergraduate law journal. She has maintained a 3.99 GPA and interned with a number of legal non-profits including the Innocence Project.Last spring, Chung was one of hundreds of students and other activists who set up the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the university campus, and hundreds of others visited the space to attend speeches, community events and protests. As the university began meting out disciplinary actions against protesters, hundreds of students and faculty also joined in a walkout in solidarity with student activists, demanding amnesty to student protesters.View image in fullscreenIn May last year, Chung and other students faced disciplinary proceedings for posting flyers on school campus – but the university ultimately found that Chung had not violated policies, according to the lawsuit.After that, Chung continued her studies, and it wasn’t until earlier this month that she came onto immigration officials’ radar.Earlier this year, Barnard College, a sister school to Columbia, announced the expulsions of several protesters – amid a renewed, nationwide crackdown on student protesters that came following pressures from the Trump administration to tamp down pro-Palestinian activism on campus.Chung attended a sit-in demonstration calling on Barnard to reverse the expulsions. Chung became trapped between a crowd of students and New York police department officers investigating a bomb threat, according to the suit. She, and others, were charged by the NYPD for “obstruction of governmental administration”.Days later, immigration officials obtained a warrant to track down and arrest Chung. In a statement on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security characterized the sit-in she attended as a “pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College”.In a press conference after a hearing on Chung’s case Tuesday, Ramzi Kassem, one of her lawyers, said that Chung “remained a resident of the Southern District of New York” and had been “keeping up with her coursework” even amid Ice’s efforts to track her down and arrest her.In a lawsuit filed Monday, Chung’s lawyers wrote that the prospect of arrest and detention has “chilled her speech” – and note that the administration’s pursuit of non-citizen students had overall dampened free expression.“Ms. Chung is now concerned about speaking up about the ongoing ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza as well as what is happening on her own campus: the targeting of her fellow students,” the suit alleges.Scores of other students could also be silenced with similar threats, the suit argues. Faculty at Columbia and universities across the US have reported that international students and green card holders have been worried about attending classes, and are reconsidering plans to visit family, study abroad or travel for research.The administration has also placed immense pressure on universities to cooperate with its crackdown on protesters. Last week, the university agreed to overhaul its protest policies and hire an internal security force of 36 “special officers” who will be empowered to remove people from campus after the administration revoked $400m in funding for the university, which many faculty have taken as a dangerous capitulation that will endanger academic freedom.And the threat of deportation against her is a powerful one, the suit continues. If she is sent to South Korea, she would be arriving in a country she hardly knows – separated from her parents and community, and a sister who is about the start college as well.“Yunseo no longer has to fear that Ice will spirit her away to a distant prison simply because she spoke up for Palestinian human rights,” said Kassem in a statement to the Guardian. “The court’s temporary restraining order is both sensible and fair, to preserve the status quo as we litigate the serious constitutional issues at stake not just for Yunseo, but for our society as a whole.” More

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      USC enacts hiring freeze and makes cuts over Trump threats to funding

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      The University of Southern California announced an immediate hiring freeze for all staff positions, “with very few critical exceptions” in a letter to faculty and staff on Tuesday.The letter, from USC’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, said the hiring freeze was one of nine steps to cut the school’s operating budget amid deep uncertainty about federal funding – given sweeping cuts to scientific research, the reorganization of student loans, and an education department investigation accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish students during protests over Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.“Like other major research institutions, USC relies on significant amounts of federal funding to carry out our mission,” the university administrators wrote. “In fiscal year 2024, for example, we received approximately $1.35 billion in federal funding, including roughly $650 million in student financial aid and $569 million for federally funded research. The health system also receives Medicare, Medicaid, and Medi-Cal payments – a significant portion of its revenues – and the futures of those funds are similarly uncertain.”The other measures include: permanent budget reductions for administrative units and schools, a review of procurement contracts, a review of capital projects “to determine which may be deferred or paused”, a curtailment of faculty hiring, new restriction on discretionary spending and expenses for travel and conferences, an effort to streamline operations, a halt on merit-based pay increases, and an end to extended winter recess introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.Two weeks ago, USC was one of 60 schools notified by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights of “potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus”.The newly announced budget cuts follow a university statement in November of last year that informed staff that “rising costs require … budgetary adjustments”. In 2024, that statement said: “USC’s audited financial statement shows a deficit of $158 million.”“Over the past six years, our deficit has ranged from $586 million during legal cost repayments and COVID, to a modest positive level of $36 million in 2023,” USC administrators wrote in November.“Similar deficits are being reported at many peer institutions due to rising costs that outpace revenues across all of higher education,” they added. More

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      We call on Columbia to stand up to authoritarianism | Open letter

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      To the Columbia University administration,As journalists who were trained by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and who are steeped in America’s long traditions of free speech and academic freedom, we write to you to express our horror at the events of the past week.The Trump administration has sent immigration enforcers into university-owned student housing and university public spaces at Columbia, has arrested and sought to deport Mahmoud Khalil – not for having committed any documented crimes, but for the thoughts that he has expressed; and has forced another student, Ranjani Srivasan, to flee to Canada after her visa was revoked, also apparently for thought crimes.It has sought to financially cripple the university by withholding $400m in federal funds. And it has demanded the university shut down or restructure departments it deems to be politically problematic, and that it alter its criteria for who to admit to incoming student cohorts.We come from diverse political backgrounds and worldviews; some of us were deeply alienated by last year’s campus protests around the war in Gaza, others of us were sympathetic to the students. Regardless of our political views, however, we firmly believe that the federal government should have no role in policing Columbia’s academic structures, in shaping course requirements and personnel choices made by the university, in dictating admissions strategies, and in terrorizing students for expressing political views that the first amendment clearly protects.Yet, astoundingly, all of these changes are now being accepted by Columbia University in the vain hope of deterring a predatory government from cutting off federal funds and decimating the university’s science research facilities. The university higher-ups have sold out students and faculty alike in their efforts to access federal dollars.We recognize that the fault here lies primarily with the Trump administration, which is stampeding away from democratic norms and, by the day, reinventing the US as an autocracy in the image of Orbán’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. We recognize, too, that universities such as Columbia are caught between a rock and hard place, damned if they cooperate with the Maga agenda and damned if they don’t.In such a dismal situation, courageously standing up for moral principles and academic codes would have been the honorable – and ultimately more effective – path to take. As Churchill famously said after England and France’s capitulation to Nazi demands at the Munich conference in which Czechoslovakia was dismembered: “You had a choice between dishonor and war; you chose dishonor and you shall have war.”Trump’s administration preys on weakness, and it is employing an extraordinarily effective divide and conquer strategy. We are seeing this in its assault on individual law firms, such as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which this week cried uncle and arranged a meeting with Trump, in which it agreed to do $40m of pro bono work for clients and issues of his choice in exchange for not having their security clearances revoked.That will, of course, only empower Trump and the justice department to ask more of the capitulating attorneys and also to go after additional law firms, seeking the same result – indeed, on Friday night, Trump released a memo directing the Department of Justice to do just that. We are seeing it with major media outlets – take, for example, ABC’s extraordinary decision to donate millions of dollars to the Trump presidential library to make an inconvenient Trump lawsuit disappear; or CBS’s decision to give the Trump team access to the transcripts of its pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Again, that will only empower Trump to demand further concessions from those companies in how they report on his Administration as well as to seek to kneecap the independence of other media outlets.And, of course, we are seeing it in the escalating war against academia. Columbia’s capitulation won’t end the nightmare that American research universities are facing, rather it will make it worse. For if an institution of the stature, and with the vast endowment resources, of an Ivy League school such as Columbia can be publicly humiliated and made to grovel for Federal crumbs, then every other academic institution in the country is rendered weaker and more open to political attack.Given this reality, we urge Columbia’s administrators to rethink their strategy in dealing with Trump’s authoritarian administration. We urge university administrators around the country to respond collectively rather than allowing themselves to be picked off one by one. And we urge Columbia alumni, of all political persuasions, to join with us in recognizing the enormous stakes in play here, and in demanding that this wonderful academic institution stand up for the values and the beliefs that have held steady since its founding more than 270 years ago. We urge alumni to call their political representatives to protest the assault on academic freedom, to contact Columbia University’s leadership to express their displeasure, and, if necessary, to withhold their donations to Columbia until such time as the university stiffens its spine in its dealings with the Trump administration.This is, we believe, one of the greatest crises facing academia in US history, and also one of the greatest assaults on free speech. How universities such as Columbia respond will determine whether universities remain independent or whether, ultimately, they end up simply serving as extensions of an increasingly authoritarian state.Sasha Abramsky
      Jason Ziedenberg
      Marissa Ventura
      Marion Davis
      Martha Irvine
      Anna Allen
      Gil Griffin
      Megan Williams
      Tony Fong, Science editor
      Victoria Pesce Elliott
      Holly Bass
      Stuart Davis
      Chuck Tanowitz
      Jennifer Cohen Oko
      Carolyn Juris
      Victoria Colliver
      John Nichols
      Chris Lombardi
      Alice Sparberg Alexiou
      Elizabeth Kadetsky
      Dina Hampton
      Aaron Naparstek
      Kevin Heldman
      Jerome Weeks
      Betsy Rosen
      Lizzy Stark
      Jay Ross
      Professor Sam Freedman
      Timothy Cahill More

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      European universities offer ‘scientific asylum’ to US researchers fleeing Trump’s cuts

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      Laced with terms such as “censorship” and “political interference”, the Belgium-based jobs advert was far from typical. The promise of academic freedom, however, hinted at who it was aimed at: researchers in the US looking to flee the funding freezes, cuts and ideological impositions ushered in by Donald Trump’s administration.“We see it as our duty to come to the aid of our American colleagues,” said Jan Danckaert, the rector of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in explaining why his university – founded in 1834 to safeguard academia from the interference of church or state – had decided to open 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a particular focus on Americans.“American universities and their researchers are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference,” Danckaert said in a statement. “They’re seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.”The university is among a handful of institutions across Europe that have begun actively recruiting US researchers, offering themselves as a haven for those keen to escape the Trump administration’s crackdown on research and academia.Since Trump took power in late January, researchers in the US have faced a multipronged attack. Efforts to slash government spending have left thousands of employees bracing for layoffs, including at institutions such as Nasa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency. The government’s targeting of “wokeism” has meanwhile sought to root out funding for research deemed to involve diversity, certain kinds of vaccines and any mention of the climate crisis.In France, the director of the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris, Yasmine Belkaid, said it was already working to recruit people from across the Atlantic for work in fields such as infectious diseases or the origins of disease.View image in fullscreen“I receive daily requests from people who want to return: French, European or even Americans who no longer feel able to do their research or are afraid to do it freely,” Belkaid told the French newspaper La Tribune. “You might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity, all the same.”The sentiment was echoed by France’s minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, in a recent letter that called on research institutions to send in proposals on how best to attract talent from the US. “Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the US,” he said. “Naturally, we wish to welcome a certain number of them.”On Thursday, the Netherlands said it was aiming to swiftly launch a fund to attract researchers to the country.While the fund would be open to people of all nationalities, the country’s education minister, Eppo Bruins, hinted at the tensions that have gripped US academia in announcing the plans.“There is currently a great global demand for international top scientific talent. At the same time, the geopolitical climate is changing, which is increasing the international mobility of scientists,” Bruins said in a letter to parliament.“Several European countries are responding to this with efforts to attract international talent,” he added. “I want the Netherlands to remain at the vanguard of these efforts.”The Dutch effort comes after France’s Aix-Marseille University said it had set up a programme – titled Safe Place for Science – that would put aside funding for more than two dozen researchers from the US for three years.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We wish we didn’t have to do this,” said Éric Berton, the university’s president. “We’re not looking to attract researchers. But we were quite indignant about what was happening and we felt that our colleagues in the US were going through a catastrophe … we wanted to offer some sort of scientific asylum to those whose research is being hindered.”Two weeks after the programme was launched there have been about 100 applications, with researchers from Yale, Nasa and Stanford among those who have expressed interest. The university continues to receive about 10 applications a day, said Berton, many of them from researchers involved in studying climate, health or social sciences.Berton said he hoped universities across Europe would join his in providing a safe space for researchers. “I think that we need to realise the historic moment we’re living through and the serious, long-term consequences this could have,” he said. “Europe must rise to the occasion.”At VUB, the opening of the 12 postdoctoral positions was also aimed at acknowledging the global impact of Trump’s crackdown. Two research projects in which the university was involved – one delving into youth and disinformation and another investigating the transatlantic dialogue between the US and Europe – had been cancelled due to “changed policy priorities”, it said.For the university in Brussels, the openings were also a vindication of sorts. In a 2016 interview with Fox News, Trump had sought to characterise life in Brussels as akin to “living in a hellhole”, falsely accusing migrants in the city of failing to assimilate.“At the time, the statement elicited many emotional reactions in Europe,” the university said. “This gives additional symbolic meaning to the VUB initiative.” More

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      Why are other universities silent in condemning Trump’s attacks on Columbia? | Zephyr Teachout

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      University presidents need to be working together to speak up against Donald Trump. Across the country, higher education is facing a crisis that threatens the entire vision of independence: a direct federal government effort to destroy academic freedom by controlling ideas and acceptable areas of inquiry. University leaders should be standing in solidarity with those who have been attacked to defend academic freedom and free speech. So far, all but five have been silent.The US president has made no secret of his intent to control what is studied, thought and debated. His administration sent a letter to Columbia University demanding sweeping changes, including placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department under “academic receivership” for five years, abolishing the university judicial board, and centralizing all disciplinary processes under the office of the president. Such unprecedented intervention is blatantly illegal and a wholesale attack on academic freedom and free speech. On Friday, Columbia capitulated.It is an embarrassment to Columbia, of course, but the embarrassment is not Columbia’s alone. The use of federal funding threats to control universities should be a five-alarm fire for the thousands of other universities, and yet the response from the majority of academic leadership has been silence.By my count, five university presidents have publicly condemned Trump. The president of Wesleyan, Michael Roth, has been the first and loudest, clearly expressing the unacceptable nature of Trump’s attack. The presidents of Mount Holyoke, Delta College in Michigan, Trinity Community College in Washington DC, and Princeton have also made clear that what Trump is doing is unacceptable.The thousands of others who are keeping totally quiet know what is happening, and how serious it is; in a recent survey, 94% said Trump directly threatened academic freedom.The silence from university presidents is particularly jarring when compared with the swift and seemingly coordinated statements universities have issued on dozens of other issues – from US supreme court decisions to international conflicts to campus protests. Now that it comes to defending their core institutional values against a direct authoritarian attack, their collective voice is crickets.The reasons are understandable. If any one university speaks out, they are scared Trump would pull funding. The president of that university will have to see the place they love and the people they are responsible for gutted by a $50 or $100 or $400 million cut, either to federal grants or scholarships. What if speaking out will change nothing? Why risk the all-critical research of their science faculty, important scholarships for their students, for a statement that might lead to naught?This is the grotesque genius of his attack on Columbia, which operated like putting a dead body on a car for all to see – so long as each university president sees their job in isolation, and their possible defiance in isolation, all arrows point towards silence. He wins without even having to fight.But what if he did have to fight? It is not at all clear that Trump will pull funding. He hasn’t attacked Wesleyan, Princeton, Delta, Liberty. This isn’t an oversight: he wants the ground of the debate to be at Columbia, to be conflated with Gaza-Israel, to be complicated by questions about protests and student discipline and the nature of Ivy League education.If he takes on the Big 10 schools, or a small liberal arts community college, or a Catholic university like the one at which I teach, or any school where there is no pre-existing major conflict, he will be more cleanly revealed as an anti-speech bully. The university presidents can have litigation counsel at the ready to file for a temporary restraining order if Trump pulls funding because of disliked speech, and they will win these lawsuits. Constitutional law is on the side of protecting academic freedom and political speech.I don’t want to sugarcoat it: Trump could cause real chaos, significantly hurt programs while the legal fight is going on, and scare off other alumni donors to a school – who are themselves scared. If they spoke up alone, it’s possible it wouldn’t matter. I understand why university presidents are so trepidatious – he could truly wreck havoc on the people that they have pledged to care for.But it is precisely because of this dilemma that each leader is morally required to speak up – and to be prioritizing identifying others who will speak up as well over all else. It is an existential moment: standing by in silence as other universities get humiliated leads to all being humiliated.While it is far from assured that a single voice will lead to others, courage is courageous, and not only because of its natural infectiousness. The more universities speak up, the more obvious it will become that Trump cannot take on all of them, the weaker he will be, the more he will be revealed as an anti-dissent authoritarian. Trump does care how popular he is, and it matters for his leverage in Congress, too. He ran in part on freeing speech; the more it is clear he is imprisoning it, the worse he’ll do.This red scare will not end with an appeal to decency that is seen around the country on national television. Trump is worse than McCarthy; he is more powerful, more vengeful, and more determined to destroy institutions and bend them into subservience. But it can end with collective bravery. If they can find a way to share methodology for financial aid, they can find a way to share a rebuke to Trump.To be sure, the reputational power of universities is low, and university presidents have little faith that they have any meaningful political power. Their weak reputations came about in part because of illiberalism in the last 10 years, brought on in part by a rhetoric of student safety trumping free discourse, and in part because of the ungodly cost of tuition. The recent price-fixing lawsuits haven’t helped.That leads me to wonder whether there might be other reasons university presidents are so quiet; more mundane, human, contextual ones. They tend to be trained in thinking strategically when virtue ethics is what is called for; game theory has a way of demanding data points that no one has. Or perhaps, after making too many statements on too many topics in the 2018-2022 period, presidents may be exhausted and annoyed when they are told that speaking out is a moral imperative. They have been turning towards institutional neutrality in most policy issues, tired of being told that every crisis demands a university president voice – one last call demanding courage can feel like overload, overwrought and irrelevant.The reason this is different is because the government is attacking free speech and free inquiry itself. The current collective cowardice is self-defeating. Their refusal to stand together now only makes them more vulnerable in the future, and less credible when they say they are privately resisting. How can we trust they aren’t complying in advance, reshaping their curriculum and research dollars to avoid retribution? We can’t.If university leaders, some of the most privileged people in our society, allow themselves to be bullied and blackmailed, and refuse to coordinate with each other on courage, how do we expect any other institutions – law firms, non-profits, businesses – to stand up?

      Zephyr Teachout is an American attorney, author, political candidate, and professor of law specializing in democracy and antitrust at Fordham University More

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      Columbia should have said, ‘see you in court,’ not ‘yes, Mr President.’ | Margaret Sullivan

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      Since early 2024, I’ve been running a journalism ethics center at Columbia University.So perhaps it’s no surprise that I see the university’s capitulation to Trump both in terms of journalism and ethics.I’ve never run a university, but I have run a newsroom. For 13 years (until I moved to New York City in 2012 to be the New York Times public editor), I was the chief editor of the Buffalo News, the regional newspaper in my home town. I had started there as a summer intern. As editor, I made a lot of decisions; the buck stopped at my desk.It’s not a perfect analogy to Columbia’s situation, but I’ve been thinking about what my options might have been if the paper’s biggest and most powerful advertiser – one important to our financial wellbeing – had gotten wind of an investigation they didn’t like the sounds of. Something that would reveal something negative about their business, let’s say.Suppose that advertiser had threatened to withdraw all their advertising unless we dropped the story. In fact, suppose they wanted promises of positive coverage – perhaps a fawning profile of their CEO, and a series about the good things the company was doing in the community.Let’s complicate it more. Let’s say that my boss, the paper’s owner, was on the advertiser’s side, or at least inclined to see their point of view.What would my options be as editor?There really would be only one: to hold fast. To make the case to the owner that if we were a legitimate newspaper, we would have to be brave and not allow ourselves to be bullied. And to refuse to pull the story. Make sure it’s bulletproof – every fact nailed down – and proceed with plans to publish it.What would happen?That’s hard to say. Maybe the advertiser would blink. Maybe the owner would fire me. Maybe I’d feel I had to resign.The point of this imperfect analogy is simply that allowing oneself – or one’s institution – to be bullied or threatened into compliance is never the right answer.And it’s especially important for strong institutions to stand up, to set an example and to insulate those who have fewer resources or are more vulnerable.Columbia has a huge – nearly $15bn – endowment. It could have withstood the withdrawal of federal funds.Columbia’s leadership could have chosen to say “see you in court” rather than “yes, sir”.Some principles are so central to an institution’s purpose that to betray them should be unthinkable. You don’t kill a valid story under pressure. Because journalism, however flawed, is about finding and telling the truth.And a university – which stands for academic freedom, for freedom of thought, speech and expression, including the right to peacefully protest – cannot buckle to demands to undermine those principles.Sadly, that’s what Columbia did, even going so far as to put an entire academic department under highly unusual supervision, and to empower beefed-up campus police to detain, remove or arrest students for various supposed offenses.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis action stains a great university, which could have recovered from a financial threat but may not recover from this capitulation.Of course, Columbia needs to work against antisemitism and against all forms of hatred and discrimination. But that’s not really – or certainly not fully – what’s at the heart of Trump’s move.“It’s all about intimidation,” as my Guardian colleague Robert Reich, a former labor secretary, wrote this weekend, “not only at Columbia but at every other university in America.”Columbia’s capitulation mirrors that of many institutions in recent weeks. A major law firm (Paul, Weiss), under pressure, struck a deal with the White House to donate $40m in legal work to enable Trump’s causes. ABC News settled a defamation suit it probably could have won. And newspaper owners, including Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, have been cozying up to Trump in many ways that harm credibility and mission.Yet some organizations have decided not to cave, but to be true to their stated and long-held principles.The Associated Press is suing, after the Trump administration severely limited its journalists’ access, punishing them for an editorial decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” on first reference in their stories, not “Gulf of America”. Another large law firm, Perkins Coie, is fighting in court after Trump’s executive order stripped their lawyers of their security clearances and denyed them access to government buildings.Take this to the bank: there is no satisfying the Trumpian demands. The goalposts will always be moved and then moved again.With its huge endowment and sea of rich alumni – some of whom, surely, would be in sympathy – Columbia had other choices. Smaller universities may not.Institutions with resources must resist thuggish bullying, not just for their own sakes, but to protect others who will find it much harder. And for another reason: at an extremely dangerous time in the US and in the world, it’s the right thing to do.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Columbia University caves to demands to restore $400m from Trump administration

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      Columbia University has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.The university released a memo outlining its agreement with Donald Trump’s administration hours before an extended deadline set by the government was to expire.Columbia acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has sanctioned as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.The administration has warned at least 60 other universities of possible action over alleged failure to comply with federal civil rights laws related to antisemitism. It has also targeted at least three law firms that the president says helped his political opponents or helped prosecute him unfairly.Among the most contentious of the nine demands, Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty.The university will appoint a new senior administrator to review curriculum and faculty to make sure they are balanced, and provide fresh leadership at the department, which offers courses on Middle Eastern politics and related subjects.The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent.Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in the department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.The school has also hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said.Face masks to conceal identities are no longer allowed, and any protesters must now identify themselves when asked, the memo said.The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to “ensure intellectual diversity”. Columbia plans to fill joint positions in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the international affairs school in an effort to ensure “excellence and fairness in Middle East studies”, the memo said. The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia University this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said. More