$400M in grants and contracts cancelled by Government w/ Columbia U.

More savings to come from other schools.

 

This response certainly seems proportional to the offense of allowing free speech on a college campus. If students do something illegal, arrest them. Cancelling grants and contracts is just Trump being the insecure bastard that he is.

 

Columbia's maximalist response to protests and spinelessness in front of congress got them exactly 0 credit from these fascists, people should learn a lesson here, but they wont.

 

Rick, since this is legally dubious, this is going to result in lawsuits and legal fees we are all going to pay for. Ultimately it will probably cost more since Columbia should win on the merits.

 

Not according to Alan Dershowitz... he was just on Newsmax speaking to that very law that these protestors are violating. It's not a first Amendment Rights issue according to an EXISTING Law that he helped pass (REVISED) 6 years ago...also said that these schools have no rights to that or any federal money in that case.

He said (paraphrasing) that these schools have no legal avenue to claw-back any of that federal money.

 

Go look at what Columbia allowed. It went miles beyond free speech. I’m not a huge fan of who is finally holding them accountable or how, but they brought this on themselves, their own report admits as much (see below).
in some cases Jewish students had to move off campus to feel safe. Columbia’s response, instead of aggressively going after the offenders, was to give them remote learning.

https://www.columbia.edu/content/report-2-task-force-antisemitism

 

Columbia can afford lawyers, they absolutely have a legal avenue, and the merits will have nothing to do with what Columbia did or didnt do, just whether the president can just decide to remove funding already appropriated.

 

Dude, they called the swat team on protestors lol, and are we really basing free speech off of "feelings" now? So soft.

 

We shall see... Maybe opening up their books on their $5 billion in foreign donations will come to light. Qatari/foreign money donations need to be fully investigated... Do you think Columbia wants to open up that can of worms?

 

Yes, we will see ... at our expense. Those legal fees arent going to be cheap.

 

Read the report, it went well beyond feee speech, many of the reports came well before those protests even started, there was already a culture there. And they didn’t call in the police until weeks of issues, people occupying buildings, not letting Jewish students even pass through certain parts of campus etc. it took national outrage and major donors pulling funding before they acted.

 

And by the way, there was a smaller number of Muslim students with similar complaints. Those are just as reprehensible.

 

Sorry but there was no one in any real danger there, until the cops were called. People need to grow up and stop thinking a Palestinian flag or hearing "Zionism" in a negative light is going to kill them, especially when you can go on any social media and see much, much worse things. There is no safer place for Jews than the USA, not even Israel!

 

Then arrest them, or expel them. Don't cancel billions of dollars that support many worthwhile endeavors. This has nothing to do with moral outrage, and everything to do with Trump's love of wielding power, particularly of the purse.

 

I'd say it also has a lot to do with our relationship to Israel, as what else would merit such a response? Are they going to slash grants to schools that dont protect women from rape enough? Next time a fraternity has a racist theme party? Get real. We are pulling money because a private institution isnt deferential enough to a foreign power.

 

Is everything going to be at Trump’s whim

 

Stop generalizing, moving the goal posts or minimizing their experiences into what you need them to be and read the report. Columbia even admits they failed them to the point of threatening their federal funding. They were spit on, banned from certain parts of campus, their doors graffiti’d, coordinated efforts made to bang on their doors all night to drive them out, kicked out of student orgs, called murderers by their own professors, even threatened with death in some cases, and the admin did nothing, again by their own admission. Exactly none of that falls under free speech or just learning to accept that people disagree with your POV. The university failed them, period, and had it been any other group it wouldn’t even be a debate.

 

That’s the whole point, Columbia chose not to. And again, I am not defending who or what finally came down on them, but in the report I provided, Columbia admitted their own actions risked federal funding. They shouldn’t be shocked that someone said “yeah, we agree”.

 

I mean we will probably agree that Columbia failed their students, but for entirely different reasons. But lets not pretend this act is about accountability or anything other than our pro-Israeli bias. The more we align with Israel and its far-right government, especially with guys like Trump making the calls, the more acceptable anti-Semitism will become to people who it was unthinkable to not long ago. Which will of course be used as pretext to quash more dissent, wherever it appears.