War of faculty at Columbia University: The Electric Institution on Trump’s intention

The second confrontation takes place behind the scenes: a real civil war in the academic roster, where doctors and engineers struggle with political science lecturers and scholars of the humanities, the question of how to deal with pro-Palestinian demonstrations that disturbed the routine of life on campus.

● Trump against the “global intifada”: stops funds for universities
● The Trump administration threatens university budgets. Thus Columbia responded

In February, long before Trump made Colombia in the case of the main test as part of his efforts to change elitist colleges, seven Jewish staff from engineering, medicine and business, along with senior dicks and representative of Jewish alumni, met with the president of Columbia, Katrina Armstrong. They asked her to precede Trump’s steps by implementing a series of restrictions on protesters, including a ban on wearing masks on campus, according to people who attended the meeting.

Flag officials who attended the meeting said Armstrong’s response was to sweep the problem under the carpet.

The University spokesman said that since taking office in August, Armstrong and its leadership team “the decisive steps have taken to fight anti -Semitism, to strengthen Columbia’s academic mission and to maintain community security.”

Last week, the Trump administration announced that he would cancel $ 400 million in federal contracts and grants to Colombia. On Monday, posts were sent to the faculty on the frozen funds.

“People are very angry, people cry. They are so frustrated,” said Barenet Stockwell, chairman of the biology sciences.

The spicy friction

Columbia is among the magnifying glass institutions on the part of the Trump administration for a seemingly failure to protect Jewish students during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that flooded the campuses across the state last year because of the war in Gaza. Columbia, which was the focus of demonstrations, was particularly fierce criticism from some of its adults for what they had perceived as a restful response from the university.

Since taking office, Trump has taken a number of initiatives to remove academic institutions from diversity, equality and bride (DEI), support for transgender and anti-Semitism, and threatens to rule out federal funding from institutions they will not obey. His Justice Department established a task force to “uproot anti -Semitic harassment in schools and colleges.” On Monday, the Department of Education sent warning letters to 60 universities in an investigation for anti-Semitism.

In Colombia, the protests led the institution to transfer lessons to last April last April, while most of the campus warned Jewish students not to return to campus after a Passover holiday because fearing the atmosphere was unsafe. Colombia canceled its main graduation ceremony, and in August Minus Minus that Pickle resigned, 13 months into its tenure.

Over the weekend, Mahmoud Khalil, a Colombia student, was the first to be arrested by the Homeland Security Department agents for his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.

The friction between Columbia and the White House is spicy on Tuesday. The White House spokeswoman Caroline Levit said the homeland security office found other students on campus that they consider anti-American, anti-Semitic and Hamas supporters.

“The University of Columbia has received the names of other individuals involved in Pro-Hamas activities, and they refuse to help the homeland security office in identifying those individuals on campus,” Levit said. Trump “does not intend to suffer this and we expect all colleges and universities in America to obey government policy.”

Protesters claim that they are against war, not anti -Semitic, and several supporters of the first amendment to the constitution express concern about Khalil’s arrest.

There are often gaps between university study, but the rifts are particularly deep in Colombia due to the high number of Jewish faculty members who support Israel and the faculty people who believe that Israel is murdering a murder against the Palestinians.

A decision point

Half a century ago, Prof. Edward Said of Columbia University was among the founders of postcolonism studies, which placed the intellectual basis for the current protest movement against Israel. A nucleus of his followers remained in Colombia and operated on campus.

The same faculty who are more sympathetic to Palestinians control key committees in the faculty Senate and strive to limit both punishment against protesters and the restrictions on demonstrations. This explains why Colombia did not restrict a campus students’ riot similarly to other institutions, according to interviews with faculty.

Throughout the campus, scientists and engineers were less involved in demonstrations, among other things, how many of them said, because they were too concentrated in their work too much to participate. Now that these researchers are disproportionate when canceled grants and contracts, she told Rissa Gasin, a professor at the Colombia School of Medicine and cancer.

“We’re actually pretty busy. We just do our job,” Gasin said. Scientific doctors and researchers “try to save lives. We don’t have the time to reflect on all this.”

But when Trump won a second term, these faculty members began to fear. They believed he could punish Colombia severely, given his warnings against anti -Semitism on campus.

Science faculty people are unhappy that Trump attracted the financing, but some graduates said they were happy that the situation finally reached a decisive point. They hope Trump’s moves will strengthen the determination within the loyal member and the president’s office.

“Due to the failure of the university leadership, which did not notice a lot of warnings, Trump had no choice,” said Ari Shraga, one of the founders of the Columbia Jewish alumni.