“This is just the beginning,” from today's Wall Street Journal

from "Universities Sprint From ‘We Will Not Cower’ to Appeasing Trump"

By Maggie Severns

Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2025

University leaders, pinned between liberal faculty and the Trump administration, are quietly trying to make friends in Washington amid widespread concerns about research budgets, student aid and the White House’s quest to push academia to the right.

During his election campaign, President Trump vowed “to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left,” and he has moved quickly to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs, alleged antisemitism and anything perceived as “woke.” He has threatened to pull funding from universities that don’t comply. 

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On campus, many faculty and staff still embrace the things Trump is trying to change. Many higher-education institutions still have senior-level officials focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. One lobbyist recalled a video call with university clients who listed their pronouns under their names, a practice many who work with the federal government quickly abandoned after Trump’s November victory.

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Columbia University, which came under scrutiny for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests last year, gave in on Friday to a far-reaching list of Trump’s demands after he revoked $400 million in federal funding. Other schools closely watched the days of tense negotiations. Behind the scenes, Columbia officials have had a presence in D.C. in recent weeks, too, often asking lawmakers how to restore confidence in the university, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Critics say universities had this crackdown coming after failing to hold up their end of a longtime social contract. Faculty enjoy billions of dollars in government funding, tenure protections and academic autonomy, and detractors accuse them of indoctrinating young people with left-wing ideology rather than creating productive, patriotic citizens.

Lawmakers are expected to announce multiple hearings in the coming weeks on antisemitism. The move alarms universities still haunted by the combative 2023 hearing on the same subject, when the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dodged lawmaker questions and struggled to defend their institutions’ approach to campus protests following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Two of the three resigned within weeks.

Proposed tax and loan changes—such as raising and expanding a tax on college and university endowments that currently applies to only the wealthiest institutions—could also upend schools’ financial model. Yale Law School alumnus JD Vance has proposed increasing the tax on endowment income from its current 1.4% to 35%, and expanding the universities affected to include Columbia.

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Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis—which is known to have a friendly relationship with Missouri Republican Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee—is sponsoring ads in Politico newsletters linking to a joint statement that pledges to avoid “political ideology” or “a particular vision of social change.” 

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/universities-trump-lobbyists-funding-washington-a2e5c77a

painting upper left by Albert York ("Woman and Skeleton," 1967)

Comments

[Tim Robinet]

Columbia University, home of Hamas Studies, was fined $400 million in government contracts because, “Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses."

[Jill Newnham]

from The Free Press, Maya Sulkin, March 25, 2025: << [Columbia's Interim President] Armstrong promised that there would be “no change to masking,” and “no change to our admissions procedures,” both of which the [Trump] administration has demanded. What’s more, she said the school would not put its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) department under “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years—another Trump demand. She also told faculty members that “discipline remains independent” and “has not been moved to my office,” as the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force had insisted. This is in direct contradiction to Columbia’s public promises to the White House.>>