“Love. Cherish. Defend it,” reads the inscription at the base of a flagpole at Columbia University. The school’s sweeping agreement with the federal government last week makes many university affiliates wonder: What’s left to defend?
Before the deal was signed and announced, a series of actions from Columbia primed school community members to expect major policy and program changes. On July 15, Acting President Claire Shipman announced that the Upper Manhattan university is adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that conflates criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. Columbia also announced its partnering with several pro-Israel organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to run trainings and programming on antisemitism. On July 22, the conservative publication The New York Post broke the news that the university would suspend—and in some cases, expel—over 70 students who allegedly participated in a May 7 protest at Butler Library, which they dubbed the “Basel al-Araj Popular University,” for violating conduct rules.
Then came a July 23 agreement between Columbia and the Trump administration that fundamentally reshapes the institution, mandating everything from ideological tests in admissions policies to “all-female” housing and locker room options, likely intended to restrict spaces previously accessible to trans women. These changes will be monitored by a paid team reporting to a mutually agreed “Resolution Monitor.” The university also agreed to pay out $200 million to the federal government and create a $21 million fund to pay out protected-class employees who are alleging the university discriminated against them.
After nearly two years of media and political frenzy regarding purported widespread antisemitism on campus—the subject of federal investigations the deal with the government now brings to an end—the word “antisemitism” appears only once in the agreement.
But Columbia isn’t done cracking down on its dissidents. The university’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) is now pursuing another investigation into the same library protest for alleged “discriminatory harassment,” Prism has confirmed.
Columbia isn’t done cracking down on its dissidents.
A notice sent by OIE to numerous students alleged to have participated, and obtained by Prism, includes among its allegations the use of phrases such as “Free Palestine” and “Land Back Now” during the protest, alleging the “totality of circumstances” may have prevented students from accessing education on the basis of their actual or perceived membership in a protected class. OIE sanctions could include suspensions and expulsions, according to the school’s anti-discrimination and discriminatory harassment policy.
Simultaneously, one of the two main pro-Palestine and anti-genocide groups on campus filed a lawsuit on July 21 alleging that the OIE violated its own disciplinary policies and the law. The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) alleges OIE found them responsible for discriminatory harassment in early June, without the office actually having the jurisdiction to make such a determination. The group also alleges that the OIE “unlawfully denied” their effort to file an appeal. In making its determination, OIE pointed to an op-ed in the campus newspaper and Instagram posts by CPSC, which include the group’s list of demands that the university sever financial and educational program ties with Israel and “stop the School of General Studies’ pipeline of Israeli soldiers who are complicit in war crimes against the Palestinian people and neighboring sovereign countries since October 2023.”
Two Palestinian students were previously investigated for the posts and op-ed, but were “cleared,” according to a CPSC email included in the suit. The OIE finding against CPSC, however, indicates Columbia’s willingness to label the movement’s very demands—expressed anonymously in public forums like the campus newspaper and social media—as discriminatory, before making a deal with the Trump administration. That deal, tweeted signatory and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, is “a roadmap for elite universities.”
Across the globe in Gaza, Israel bombs and starves Palestinians, with American weapons and financing. Student protesters at Columbia stress connections—ideological, financial, and even personal—between those committing the genocide and those disciplining their opposition to it. According to the students who have become Columbia’s targets, the federal government and Columbia’s trustees “give each other cover to try to crush opposition to genocide without taking responsibility for authoritarian actions widely understood as the new McCarthyism,” they wrote in response to the university’s agreement with the federal government.
State actors
Columbia has taken an aggressive approach in its pursuit of disciplinary investigations related to reported discrimination. For example, the OIE notices to students referenced a wide range of chants used at the library protest, along with stickers and documents that included statements such as “Gaza Rises” and “Palestine Will Be Free.” The notice also referenced inverted red triangles and the phrase, “There Is Only One State, Palestine ’48.” OIE’s allegations, reviewed by Prism, do not describe what about these phrases and symbols is discriminatory. While some of the statements included in OIE’s allegations endorse armed resistance, slurs were not mentioned, and Jewish people are not referred to as a category.
Shortly after the Trump administration first demanded that Columbia adopt an antisemitism definition in March, OIE updated its policy to include the university Task Force on Antisemitism’s definition—one which the task force previously urged the university only to use “in training and education, not for discipline or as a means for limiting free speech or academic freedom.”
Similar to Columbia’s newly adopted IHRA definition, the task force’s definition included “certain double standards applied to Israel.” It also includes “exclusion” based on “real or perceived ties to Israel” and the targeting of Israelis for violence. The task force definition also had appended examples, such as calling for divestment from Israel, the use of Hamas slogans or symbology, and the exclusion of Zionists who are Jewish or Israeli, among others.
Columbia has taken an aggressive approach in its pursuit of disciplinary investigations related to reported discrimination.
It is unclear which definition of antisemitism is being used as part of the OIE’s investigation into the library protest, which began after the task force definition was adopted and prior to the IHRA definition announcement. Whether Columbia’s use of either definition constitutes a violation of students’ rights is being argued in court.
As part of a federal lawsuit aimed at preventing Columbia from sharing student records with the government, attorneys for students and previously detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil called Columbia’s disciplinary adoption of the task force definition a “speech code.” They compared it to the IHRA definition, which a federal court in Texas previously found likely to constitute viewpoint discrimination when applied to public university policy.
In response, Columbia’s lawyers said the university was not a state actor and that the school had not adopted the IHRA definition, so the Texas ruling did not apply to Columbia. The university’s attorneys also pointed to portions of OIE policy requiring an assessment of the “totality of circumstances” in discrimination determinations.
Shortly after Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, announced the IHRA definition this month, Marshall Miller, an attorney for Columbia, said its adoption of the new definition “impacts” some of the university’s prior defenses. Notably, the IHRA definition provides examples of antisemitism, such as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Both the federal suit against Columbia and documents in the CPSC case allege that Columbia has entwined itself with government actors in response to protests, thereby gaining extra obligations to protect constitutional rights. With the recent agreement the university entered into with the federal government, these arguments from student protesters are likely to grow more common and forceful.
“Historical principles”
Students, especially those without American citizenship, face tremendous pressure when accused of discrimination. The OIE investigative and disciplinary process requires students to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to participate fully, and the university targets a wide variety of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide speech, even before the federal government made its demands, as reported by Drop Site News.
Veronica Salama, a staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, has worked with a committee of law students coordinating legal support for students in disciplinary processes. “In many ways,” she told Prism, “it appears that what is at issue here is the anti-Israel commentary and sentiments by the students.”
CPSC made a similar argument in a June 3 appeal letter challenging the OIE’s discrimination finding against them. The OIE’s allegations and determination “occur not in a vacuum but within the context a troubling pattern of Columbia targeting Palestinian students and their allies for their political speech advocating for the end of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,” CPSC wrote. Their appeal argued that the OIE process failed to properly notify CPSC, had procedural irregularities, included conflicts of interest, violated students’ rights under university policy and state and federal law, and that these actions are related to federal government and pro-Israel political pressure on Columbia.
Columbia has not yet filed a response to the suit, and the university did not respond to Prism’s requests for comment regarding CPSC’s allegations about the school’s investigative and disciplinary process.
Despite declining the campus newspaper’s request for an interview when she became acting president, Shipman, a former TV journalist herself, has, for the first time as president, agreed to media interviews. In a recent interview with CNN, Shipman framed the agreement with the Trump administration as a painful but necessary choice in order to address allegations of antisemitism and so the federal government would return a significant portion of Columbia’s funding. “This resolution is really going to allow us to turn a page on a period of deep instability,” she said.
Students, especially those without American citizenship, face tremendous pressure when accused of discrimination.
The agreement locks in a number of the university’s prior commitments to scrutinize its Middle East academic programs, while also making the university’s disciplinary policies and enforcement more strict. Among many other provisions, Columbia is now obligated to report arrests of student visa holders to the federal government, likely triggering students’ deportations.
“It’s a fiction to believe that this will be the end of the hammering down by the Trump administration,” Salama said of the agreement. “I—we—wish that Columbia University had stood on its historical principles.”
Of the agreement’s 22 pages, about nine are dedicated to compliance, monitoring, and disputes. A mutually agreed monitor, Bart M. Schwartz of the compliance and monitoring company Guidepost Solutions, will collect information to assess the university’s compliance with the agreement. The agreement also permits any Columbia community member to report alleged noncompliance to the monitor and Columbia’s agreement administrator.
“Processes will be established to provide that all students are committed to the longstanding traditions of American universities, including civil discourse, free inquiry, open debate, and the fundamental values of equality and respect,” the agreement states, as part of the university and the Trump administration’s larger efforts to root out pro-Palestine speech. Columbia also agreed to prohibit protests “in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of University activities,” without clarifying what “places” are unnecessary.
Marianne Hirsch, a professor emerita of English and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, told Prism that she is opposed to Columbia’s “capitulation” to the government. She said that the examples in the IHRA definition, the ADL training, and the zero tolerance policy with ongoing monitoring has created ambiguity and fear at the university, making it difficult to teach subjects such as genocide.
“There are many things I feel like one couldn’t openly discuss,” said Hirsch, referencing the writings of German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was critical of Israel’s founding and commented on Israel’s problematic invocations of the Holocaust during the trial of one of its organizers, Nazi Party official Adolf Eichmann.
Hirsch said that among Columbia professors, a question has emerged: “Should we ask for a list of what we’re allowed to teach and what we aren’t?”
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