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President Trump has always been a strong supporter of the First Amendment, which protects every American’s right to speak freely. Yet, with his ongoing feud with Columbia University, he has shown that his declaration was mere hypocrisy or only applied to speech he liked.
Columbia University became a focal point of the Israel-Gaza war in 2024 as student protests escalated. As days passed, the blame game grew uglier. Every side — Pro-Palestine protesters, Pro-Israel protesters, law enforcement, and the university — claimed the other party was solely at fault. The protests captured national attention. Whether you debate the methods or the rhetoric, gaining national attention has always been every protest’s primary goal.
Most sensible people support a ceasefire in that war. Even President Trump eventually actively pushed for one. Yet, he did not seem to appreciate how Columbia University students advocated for it. He began punishing the institution by pulling $400 million in funding for alleged anti-Semitism. But Trump, not exactly known for minimalism, decided he could escalate things even further than they had ever been taken before.
For one, these protests were not uncommon, nor was it the first time Columbia had seen such activism. The university famously held heated protests against segregation and the Vietnam War in 1968. Yet, Trump treated this particular protest as something outside the norm. He immediately called for the ousting of the leadership of the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies departments.
AP reports that the Trump administration also included in its letter a series of unprecedented demands. These included Columbia banning masks on campus, adopting a new definition of anti-Semitism, implementing new disciplinary methods, and overhauling its admission practices. A lot is at stake for Columbia if it does not comply. In addition to the $400 million already cut, another $5 billion in grants remains under review. If frozen, it could further harm the institution, with Columbia’s medical center already reeling from the disruption of grants it has long relied on.
“We expect your immediate compliance with these critical next steps,” officials from the Department of Education declared in finality.
As the Trump administration publicly pushes to dismantle the education department, educators nationwide remain on high alert. Columbia professor Jeff Howley bluntly stated, “If the federal government can show up and demand that a university department shut down or restructure, then we don’t have universities in this country.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression condemned the Trump administration’s move as a turbocharged gateway to censorship. The group’s lead counsel for government affairs, Tyler Coward, warned, “Our colleges need to protect free expression and comply with anti-discrimination laws, but ad hoc government directives cannot resolve important civil rights investigations.”
Nobody wants anti-Semitism or any form of discrimination to take root in society. But blaming it on African studies departments and mask policies seems like a stretch. For Trump, this appears to be his latest attempt to drastically strip rights from people he does not like — for whatever reason. However, it remains suspicious that he takes such a hardline stance on anti-Semitism while never addressing Elon Musk’s increasing Nazi rhetoric.