On July 22, Columbia University suspended, expelled, and/or revoked the degrees of more than 70 students. Their “crime”? Taking part in righteous protest in May against U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. Most received two-year suspensions. 

On July 23, the university announced a “settlement” with the Trump administration. It will pay out $200 million and adopt admissions and hiring policies, and provide the government with information on international students, that satisfy the fascist dictates of the Trump regime. In exchange, the Trump administration will restore $400 million in research funds to Columbia which the regime canceled in March in a gross—and unfortunately successful—attempt at blackmail. 

This “act of surrender”—harshly punishing protesting students and caving in to Trump's demands—is outrageous, unacceptable, and unconscionable. Columbia used to be known as the “activist Ivy” and employed professors who went against some key orthodoxies of this system—including those who exposed the colonialist and imperialist underpinnings of the very conception of the Zionist state of Israel. Now, as an institution, Columbia will most assuredly stand for something else: for belly-crawling, for censorship, for punishing and outlawing critical thought, and for COLLABORATION with fascists and genociders. And it will set a negative “standard” and precedent for every other school that these MAGA-Nazis bring into their sights.

This act by Columbia must be roundly denounced.

Background: Courage and Repression

On May 7, some 100 Columbia students occupied the Butler Library on campus. Columbia has been at the epicenter of nationwide protest since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023. Across the country, protesting students and faculty have condemned Israeli war crimes—underwritten and backed by U.S. imperialism. They have demanded that universities “divest” from (end investment holdings with) companies linked to the Israeli military or having financial ties with Israel. And many expressed solidarity with Palestinians.

These protests have been incredibly courageous: building takeovers, encampments, walkouts at graduations, and more. They have been met with repression, often violent, and threats—from campus security, local police, Zionist vigilantes and potential future employers. And, critically, these protests have opened up much needed debate about the apartheid nature of Israel, the historical uprooting of the Palestinian people from their homeland, and the role that Israel plays in the U.S. empire. The level of questioning has been nothing short of existential among Jews, among students, and among writers and artists.

The Biden-Harris and Trump administrations have both acted to crush this protest. But the Trump fascists have gone to a whole new level of control and repression. 

Settling to Appease Fascism and Remake the University

Columbia's suspension and expulsion of nearly 80 students served a two-fold purpose: to punish protest and intimidate students from engaging in future protest, as part of the enforcement of new controls on speech and dissent; and to send a message to the Trump administration that Columbia was ready to sacrifice principle.

Some of the key provisions of the “deal” include: 

• payment of $200 million to the federal government to resolve bogus claims of discrimination against Jewish students and faculty (more below);
• institutionalizing a ban on masks (which students have worn to protect against being targeted by campus and government authority and police, as well as Zionist thugs);
• setting up new and harsher procedures to discipline protesting students;
• so-called “curriculum reforms” and “faculty hiring reviews” in Middle East-associated fields—the purpose of which is to strip these departments of authority and independence that allows for the truthful study and teaching of the real history of oppression and resistance in the Middle East;
• reducing Columbia's international student enrollment (which makes up 40 percent of Columbia's enrollment).

Ominously, this “settlement” requires that the university provide the Department of Homeland Security with new data related to international student activity. Remember, this is the same university where ICE agents kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and prominent voice of the Palestine solidarity movement on campus—holding him in detention for months, while the university made no formal protest of this outrage.

Refuting the Big Lies

Big Lie #1: The fascist Trump regime has used the charge of anti-Semitism to justify and crush dissent and academic freedom—alleging that Jewish students are being harassed and made to feel uncomfortable—and Columbia has bowed down to and thus lent legitimacy to this bullshit.

Just a few days ahead of reaching this “settlement” with Trump, Columbia officially adopted a definition of anti-Semitism being pushed by the Trump fascists. This new definition includes as examples of “anti-Semitic conduct” comparing Israel's policies to Nazism, or describing Israel's existence as “a racist endeavor.” This new definition is now incorporated into the disciplinary process. 

To begin with, the accusation of anti-Semitism is utter hypocrisy coming from a regime and movement packed with people who give Nazi salutes and seriously hate Jews. And it’s not just a few underlings. Go back to August 2017, and it was Trump himself who declared that there were many “fine people” among those rabid racists and anti-Semites who converged on Charlottesville, Virginia to chant “Jews will not replace us.”

In the real world, the pro-Palestine protests and encampments calling out the genocide in Gaza have been welcoming of Jewish students, with many Jewish youth and teachers participating. Have pro-Israel students been made to feel “uncomfortable”? Well, it’s often the case that when your core beliefs are challenged, you feel uncomfortable. These are big questions, intense debates that shake people to their deepest assumptions, and, yes, protests that disrupt “normal” academic life. But while we are supposed to sympathize with those who feel uncomfortable, Israel—with full U.S. backing—has destroyed every university in Gaza, killed hundreds of academics, and incinerated books and archives.

Further, protesters have overwhelmingly made the distinction between denouncing Israel as a violent, apartheid-based state—dispossessing Palestinians of their land and rights, and subjecting them to unspeakably cruel occupation and control—and hating on Jewish people. 

As Bob Avakian (BA) hammers home in the accompanying messages that we are reposting this week which go more deeply into this whole question, anti-Zionism (opposition to the ideology and practice of a Jewish-supremacist state) is NOT the same as anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews). As BA says,

Overwhelmingly, with regard to those protesting against the genocide being perpetrated by Israel, this is based on the actions of Israel, not on hatred for Jews. And it is entirely possible, and definitely right, to oppose the state of Israel overall—based not on hatred for Jews, but on the actual Zionist/Jewish Supremacist nature of Israel and how this has involved a whole history of atrocities against the Palestinian people. In fact, Zionism and the Zionist state of Israel represent terrible perversions of the best traditions of Jewish people, including the orientation that “Never Again!” (the cry of Jewish people in response to the genocidal massacre of Jews by Hitlerite Nazi Germany during World War 2) means never again must this happen to any people.

And in these circumstances, it is worth reprinting and popularizing that last sentence:

In fact, Zionism and the Zionist state of Israel represent terrible perversions of the best traditions of Jewish people, including the orientation that “Never Again!” (the cry of Jewish people in response to the genocidal massacre of Jews by Hitlerite Nazi Germany during World War 2) means never again must this happen to any people.

And this point from Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia and daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is also extremely relevant: “A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry.” 

Big Lie # 2: The university administration is saying that this settlement involves no compromise of basic principle.

Columbia University president Claire Shipman has said that “the settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us.” Yes, the same “values” of Paramount-CBS in caving in to Trump and firing Stephen Colbert. Yes, the same “values” of the prestigious Paul Weiss law firm to give up “DEI” policies and do free legal work for the Trump regime--in order to stay on its good side. These are the “values” of craven collaboration when courage and principle could not be more urgently needed.

The essence of the matter—and why Trump hails the settlement—is that the Columbia University administration has willingly agreed to imposing a “new normal.” It is a “new normal” in which universities are no longer to be spaces where critical thinking and new ideas—including “inconvenient truths” about America's history and role in the world—can incubate and spread... and where dissent has some initiative. 

A “new normal” in which: a) protest is drastically limited and criminalized; b) there is sweeping “thought control” over faculty and curriculum; and c) the campus is semi-militarized, with agents of repression, like ICE, infiltrated on to campus with license to surveil, intimidate, arrest, and deport. 

The Trump regime is promoting the Columbia “settlement” as a model for reaching agreements with other universities, especially the influential Ivy League universities. Again, the war on campus protest and academic freedom is a major front of the fascist program of rapidly cementing its rule and locking down society. 

The Challenge Before Us All

The suspensions and expulsions of Columbia students, and the settlement reached between Columbia and the Trump regime, took place as the genocide in Gaza reached new levels of horror. People dropping in the streets from hunger, dying of starvation deliberately engineered by Israel (with active U.S. backing). The analogy between Nazi and Zionist crimes against humanity rings truer and more urgent than ever. Yet that is now forbidden (punishable) speech and protest at Columbia! Perhaps a permissible poster at Columbia would be one that said “The Horror in Gaza Is Akin to That Done by the Regime-That-Must-Not-Be-Named!” Or would that, too, violate academic freedom in the new order?!?

The attacks on academic freedom and pro-Palestine protest cannot be allowed to go down. They must be fought and opposed every step of the way. And this fight must and can contribute to quickly building a level of resistance to and non-compliance with the Trump regime that can lead to a massive political crisis—making it impossible for Trump to carry out his cruel agenda, and even hold on to rule.

As a recent article on revcom pointed out:

With fascism rapidly accelerating, the attack on academic freedom AND the attack on the anti-genocide, pro-Palestine movement are closely intertwined. The protests of the past nearly two years are exactly the kind of thing the Trump regime wants to stamp out, as part of their overall assault. All this must be fought—and must involve people coming together from different perspectives and viewpoints behind the unifying demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go—NOW!

Stop the U.S./Israeli Genocidal Slaughter of the Palestinian People!

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!