Columbia University and its sister school Barnard College did an exceedingly poor job handling nasty anti-Israel campus protests, which too often bled into even nastier antisemitism, but the federal government, restricted by the First Amendment, cannot use its tremendous powers and unlimited resources to crack down on institutions and people based on solely on speech.
Friday, the U.S. Department of Education, with former World Wrestling Entertainment boss Linda McMahon as secretary, along with the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. General Services Administration, canceled about $400 million in federal grants and contracts for Columbia, for, in their view, failing to protect Jews on campus from discrimination and harassment.
Columbia doesn’t have an explicit antisemitic policy, or at least since not the anti-Jewish admission quotas were dropped decades ago, but there are many Jews (students, faculty and staff) who have been negatively impacted by the anti-Israel protests that sprang up after the Hamas Oct. 7 attack and the school’s feeble response to the explosion of hatred aimed at Israel and Jews.
Still, cancelling a government research grant because of speech is something that the government cannot do. If there is unlawful discrimination against Jews, a protected religious group, there may be grounds for federal action to rescind contracts and grants, however, it would have to follow certain procedures, not a Truth Social posting from President Trump.
Yesterday, McMahon sent letters to 60 colleges (including Columbia) “warning them 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.” Jews, like everyone else, must be protected, but the feds must follow the law and the rules.
The same goes for the arrest of Columbia anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who was a grad student. In a Keystone Kops moment on Saturday, four Department of Homeland Security undercover agents raided his university-owned apartment where he lives with his 8-month pregnant U.S.-citizen wife, saying that the State Department had revoked his student visa.
But Khalil doesn’t have a student visa. He has a green card, so they said that was being revoked as they hauled him away, even though the State Department only issues visas, not green cards.
We are pretty sure that a permanent resident status can’t be canceled like that, but Khalil was still bundled onto a plane to Louisiana.
Again, Trump celebrated on his Truth Social, but Khalil has rights and he has lawyers and his vocal advocacy against Israel (which we strongly oppose) is speech and speech is protected. Maybe the feds will try to show that Khalil was providing material support to an illegal foreign terror group, Hamas, but there has to be proof and posts from the president don’t count.
The inept response to the protests and the harassment of Jews from the former president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, cost her her job after barely a year in office. Still, Columbia’s decisions on campus speech and behavior (which they badly botched) were theirs to make as a private institution. The federal government’s authority on what it can and can’t do, including even the president, regarding speech is limited by the Constitution.
