Analysis from the Knight First Amendment Institute:
“After months of negotiation, Columbia University announced on July 23 that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resolve investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws. The settlement provides that Columbia will pay fines of $221m over three years, and that in consideration for these payments and other concessions—including concessions made by Columbia as a precondition to the negotiations 1. After it canceled $400m in grants to Columbia in March, the Trump administration demanded that Columbia take a number of steps as a “precondition” to further negotiations. The commitments Columbia made in response, on March 21, are referenced in the July 23 settlement and incorporated into it. Columbia made additional commitments on July 15 without expressly linking them to the Trump administration’s demands. Columbia’s press release announcing the settlement describes the July 23 settlement as “building on” the July 15 commitments.—the Trump administration will reinstate the “vast majority” of the federal grants the government paused or canceled in March. In announcing the settlement, Columbia stated that the settlement’s terms are “carefully crafted to protect the values that define us.” In Columbia’s telling, the settlement “preserves Columbia’s autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making.”
We see this differently. As an initial matter, we fear that the Trump administration will view the settlement as validating its most outlandish claims about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs, student protests relating to Gaza, and Columbia’s response to allegations of antisemitism. To be sure, Columbia has not admitted wrongdoing—it “denies liability” in the settlement’s first paragraph. But Columbia’s acquiescence to the agreement is nonetheless likely to provide cover for the Trump administration’s ongoing, lawless assault on higher education.
We also have serious concerns about many of the settlement’s terms, as we discuss below. The settlement narrows Columbia’s autonomy with respect to admissions, the hiring and promotion of faculty, and curriculum—all aspects of what the Supreme Court has called the “essential freedoms” of the university. It imposes new rules relating to protest on campus and student discipline that should be entirely the province of the university to decide. It also supplies the Trump administration with ongoing leverage by requiring the university to satisfy nebulous contractual terms and burdensome reporting requirements under the threat of litigation if its compliance is deemed to be less than satisfactory. In addition, the settlement creates a monitoring and surveillance regime that is certain to chill the exercise of freedoms that are central to the university’s mission.
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But all of us should be clear-eyed about the settlement’s costs. The settlement is an astonishing transfer of autonomy and authority to the government—and not just to the government, but to an administration whose disdain for the values of the academy is demonstrated anew every day. It will have far-reaching implications for free speech and academic freedom at Columbia—even if we assume that the provisions that are susceptible to more than one interpretation will be construed narrowly, as the settlement itself says they should be (¶ 5). We also doubt that the Trump administration will be satisfied with the territory it has won. The settlement does not foreclose the Trump administration from demanding more from Columbia on the basis of the university’s real or imagined failure to comply with the settlement’s terms, or on the basis of purported transgressions that are new or newly discovered. Indeed, the settlement itself gives the administration an array of new tools to use in the service of its coercive campaign.
Those of us at Columbia should understand how our university is being transformed, and those at other universities contemplating similar settlements should understand how much is at stake. We are sympathetic to Columbia’s leaders, who are operating under extraordinary pressure, but we cannot agree that the settlement “protect[s] the values that define us.” “
More at the link.
Cornell Chapter of the AAUP 