Editors at National Review Online ponder Columbia University’s fate.
The Trump administration’s task force to combat antisemitism pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University this month in response to the school’s appalling mismanagement of the abuse of Jewish students by anti-Israel activists. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stated that Columbia abandoned its legal obligation to protect Jewish students, who have faced “relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment” on campus. The administration presented a list of demands for the university to follow as a condition for restored funding, and the school has since agreed to them. Defenders of academic freedom — some of them sincere — have howled that the university is bending the knee to Donald Trump.
Columbia deserves every bit of what it is now facing at Trump’s indelicate hands. While we enjoy witnessing the comeuppance of institutions rotted by left-wing zealotry and hoisted on the petard of their own intolerance as much as the next fellow, the administration needs to proceed with more care in the future. Otherwise, it risks setting precedents that conservatives will live to regret.
We do not wish to sound like a broken record on the importance of rules, precedents, and a rigorous process in this area. But they do matter, because free speech and the independence of institutions from government dictates are crucially important. We can best fortify their protection by drawing clear and principled distinctions not only when defending political speech we find appalling but also when explaining what falls outside of that line, and why. …
… It allowed disruptive protesters (some of them not even its students) to prevent Jewish students from fully participating in a Columbia education. It vigorously policed speech that was unfashionable on the left, yet applied a completely different standard to lawless acts that terrorized students — punishing “microaggression” while tolerating actual aggression. And it took billions of dollars in public money while acting as if it had no responsibility to the public.
