Columbia University has agreed to implement Trump administration directives after they risked losing all federal funding for initially refusing to implement the policy changes.
According to the Associated Press, the university will be reviewing its rules around campus protests and will be conducting a review of its Middle Eastern studies department.
In a letter by Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong, it states the university would be immediately appointing a senior vice provost to conduct a review of its regional studies programs, “starting immediately with the Middle East.”
Protests inside academic building will also be banned, and students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” However, the university will allow masks if the individual is wearing it for health purposes.
The university’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department will also have new faculty members appointed to expand “intellectual diversity” on campus and will further adopts a new definition of antisemitism, while expanding its Israel-based research hub, the Tel Aviv Center.
The Trump administration recently pulled $400 million in research grants and other federal funding over Columbia’s handling of student protestors siding with Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which the administration called antisemitic.
Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department has been placed under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”
The AP further reported that historians are calling the order an “unprecedented intrusion on university rights” which is an “extension of the First Amendment.”
However, the protests on Columbia’s campus often turned violent. ICE agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who faces deportation for his role in protests on Columbia’s campus.
