Columbia University agrees to Trump administration demands in bid to restore funding

University in New York appoints vice provost to Palestinian studies and other Middle East programmes

A pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University on April 28, 2024. AFP

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

Columbia University in New York has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a precondition for restoring $400 million in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated anti-Semitism on campus.

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 people, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.

The university released the memo outlining its agreement with President Donald Trump's administration hours before an extended deadline set by the government was to expire.

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 people's participation in 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 anti-Semitism. 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 criticised 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 organisations, 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.