Columbia University’s surrender to the Trump Administration’s initial demands was unsurprising; its enthusiasm in raising the White flag was. Columbia’s administration announced a raft of new policies on free speech, student discipline, admissions, and academic administration, all in hopes of recovering some of the $400 million the Trump administration holds hostage. The concessions are unlikely to work for Columbia, although they’re sure to encourage the Trump Administration to broaden its own attack.
Columbia’s concession was always the most likely response. Faculty, students, and funders split on many of the immediate issues, as well as an appropriate response to being bullied, and $400 million–the initial cut–is a lot of money. (Apparently, the exact sum represented the amount Trump believed the university had cost him in a failed real estate deal.) Resisting would have been divisive, expensive, and time-consuming; depending on judicial vindication and remedy takes a long time and is never a sure bet. It would have required a commitment to principle and tolerance for confrontation that would get in the way of advancement in any career in academic administration.
Of course, there’s been plenty of blowback from other academics–although not, as yet, many university presidents. Some prospective students and professors blessed with choices will announce their personal rejection of Columbia, while the Trump administration, observing a conspicuous flinch across the bargaining table, will up its demands. Indeed, The New York Times quotes a Department of Justice lawyer involved with the case that the university will have to clean up its act in order to get funding again, noting “They’re not even close, not even close to having those funds unfrozen.”
On the other hand, the Trump Administration, buoyed by the humiliation of one Ivy League University, has extended its battle down the Northeast corridor to take on another, announcing a pause in a somewhat more modest $175 million in funds due the University of Pennsylvania. (Apparently, Trump wasn’t trying to sell real estate in Philadelphia.)
The Trump Administration’s ask of Penn isn’t quite so clear. Trump has, however, announced that he’s still angry Penn fielded a transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, on its women’s team. The controversy about Thomas’s participation made a big splash at the NCAA championship meet in 2022, when she won the 500 yard freestyle, exposing a previously undiscovered audience for women’s swimming.
For what it’s worth, Thomas was in compliance with NCAA rules at the time; so was Penn. Since then, Thomas has graduated and the NCAA has revised its rules. As far as I know, Penn isn’t fielding transgender women in any NCAA sport. What’s being punished now? Still, the legacy of the conflict has its own ongoing impact. Riley Gaines, an accomplished swimmer beaten by Thomas in a big race, was particularly visible in calling Penn and the NCAA out, and translated her efforts into a paid position as a conservative Christian provocateur. She’s nurturing her own political future. (By the way, there were even more accomplished women swimmers who supported Thomas.)
History remains a burden. Without a time machine, Penn can’t comply with Trump’s concerns. Of course, I appreciate the urge to rectify institutional sins of the past. I note that some universities, including Brown and Georgetown, have undertaken reparations efforts for their profits from slavery. Both of those programs look very much like effective DEI efforts that the Trump administration wants to end. What makes the 2022 500 Freestyle championship different?
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As I said on FB, kind of confusing ending. Madeleine Pape is a UW Madison sociology PhD and Olympic swimmer who researched the transwoman issue and changed her mind from opposition to support for transwomen being accepted in women’s swimming. Not sure that is relevant to your musings. Re reparations vs. one swimmer in 2022, there does seem to be a substantial difference in scale, as the institutions that owned enslaved people or had business relations that benefitted from slavery still have the money and the people they harmed are still disadvantaged. The potential victims in the 2022 case are a finite number of individuals, the level of benefit to the institution much smaller, and the individual people potentially harmed experienced the harm of not winning a race. But probably working through those differences is what you realized would be a different post.
I’m interested in Madeleine Pape’s take as an elite runner steeped in Sociology. I’m ready to believe that super-achieving athletes know things I don’t about competition. I (unsystematically) tracked the debate about transgender women competing in swimming in 2022, paying particular attention to swim sites. There were extremely accomplished swimmers on both sides of the issue. I was particularly interested in the take from Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic medalist who became a lawyer focused on Title IX. https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/nancy-hogshead-makar-explains-problems-with-lia-thomas-situation/
Whatever damage Lia Thomas and Penn did or didn’t commit, isn’t on the same planet as the harms committed by segregated institutions of higher learning. A few Penn swimmers have filed suit against their alma mater, arguing that Thomas’s participation hurt them and the sport.
My gripe was that the Trump administration was taking hostages to force Penn to suffer for something that happened years ago that is no longer happening. It’s just punishment and terror. I think this got lost in the digression about reparations.
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Columbia is finished and should be merged with Cornell, so the libraies
would not be offsite to make room for more grant grubbers. LBO their debt (Tickers: COLUNIV, CNDAX). If the professors
had corporate grants they would be better able to find their students real jobs instead of lobbying for more grants.
The foreign students dominate not only because they pay full cash tuition, it is because (Surely Joking Feynman) foreign students expect LESS of their professors and are willing to do immoral things on behalf of their grants. SO the professors go out of their way to say foreign students are better. But Columbia pulls in students from some of the best high schools in America. Students from Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and elite suburban and private schools often graduate while still teens (and have done so for a century), which is why they needed to put returning military draftees to a separate “adult” college.
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