TL;DR
- Shipman’s statement is a welcome shift from silence, but most of its commitments are symbolic, low-cost, and fall short of real structural reform.
- The move to “incorporate” the IHRA definition appears largely redundant, with unclear implications for how it will meaningfully alter enforcement or outcomes.
- Promising annual reports on Title VI and VII complaints is a modest step, but it sidesteps broader transparency on major conduct violations and disciplinary processes.
- Columbia’s pledge not to engage with CUAD is expected after recent events, but its language suggests a more expansive scope that encompasses the 100+ groups affiliated with the coalition. Time will tell if there is follow-through on this commitment.
- Though not part of the statement, the Trustees released another statement a few days later confirming that the University Senate no longer has decision rights with respect to discipline—a welcome move that is meaningful, structural, and real.
- Though framed as business-as-usual, the statement may represent an incremental step in a quiet negotiation strategy aimed at restoring federal funding.
The Stand Columbia Society generally analyzes facts, not rumors. In the past few weeks, many media outlets have commented on a “deal” between Columbia and the Trump administration, but the fact remains that no deal has been announced.
However, last week’s statement by Acting President Claire Shipman is something real. But like with many carefully orchestrated diplomatic dances carried out in public, no one outside the room actually knows what’s going on. As with many complex institutions, Columbia’s inner workings can be opaque, sometimes requiring close reading, if not a hobby in Kremlinology, to interpret the signals embedded in its public statements.
Acting President Shipman deserves credit for breaking the silence with a public statement that acknowledges Columbia’s need for reform. While we disagree on how far this statement goes, we recognize the value of her stepping forward.
Our overall take is that the statement commits to a great deal of “stuff” that comes at effectively no cost (and not all of which was even asked for), but did not commit to much of the hard work for reform. Here is a breakdown.
“Incorporation” of the IHRA definition
This seems to be a symbolic gesture, for which the actual impact is not clear.
To review: The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism is the most widely adopted global framework, embraced by dozens of countries and multiple U.S. federal agencies. Rival definitions, such as the Jerusalem Declaration, have been criticized for narrowing antisemitism down to only its most overt expressions.
In fact, in March Columbia committed to “incorporating” the Task Force on Antisemitism’s own definition of antisemitism, which already reflected IHRA principles. Now, the University says it is also “incorporating” (note carefully it does not say “adopting”) the IHRA definition into the Office of Institutional Equity’s enforcement work. But how this actually changes anything is unclear.
OIE has already been expected to operate in compliance with Department of Education Office of Civil Rights guidance, which has endorsed IHRA since 2019 (Trump Executive Order 13899), which was never revoked and in fact reaffirmed by Biden in 2023. We don’t understand what it means to “incorporate” IHRA into existing Title VI work in a way that changes decisions. Will OIE now say, “Well, we would have made X decision, but now we will make Y decision because IHRA is ‘incorporated’ into our work”?
Perhaps the thinking is that given the amount of overt, heavily documented antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, the symbolic gesture is itself meant to be meaningful. Time will tell.
Appointing Title VI and Title VII coordinators
This is a meaningful, but incomplete move.
Columbia has been bound by Title VI (discrimination in federally funded programs) and Title VII (employment discrimination) for over half a century. It is difficult to imagine Columbia did not already have designated officials responsible for this work. So what does this actually mean?
The likeliest outcome is that Columbia is creating (or retitling) a titled position for duties that were already performed by someone without that title. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Institutionalizing responsibility can improve accountability.
The promise of a publicly available annual report covering Title VI and VII complaints and outcomes is welcome, but is inadequate. For one thing, this is nothing new, as Columbia already publishes Title IX reports publicly. Moreover, this commitment only covers Titles VI, VII, and IX. The Rules Administrator is not required to publish a report on aggregate outcomes of violations of the Rules of University Conduct, nor is CSSI required to publish a report on aggregate outcomes of Dean’s Discipline. In this world, neither the Hamilton takeover nor the Butler invasion would have been included in this report.
Both the Task Force on Antisemitism and the Stand Columbia Society have repeatedly recommended comprehensive aggregate transparency of this kind. As Justice Hewart put it, “justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”
Additional antisemitism training
This is a positive step, as it addresses some of the key recommendations of the Task Force on Antisemitism. But, as with adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, it’s not clear what it’s meant to do.
The announcement name-checks several serious Jewish organizations (ADL, Yad Vashem, Project Shema, Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, Kalaniyot) as well as interfaith dialogue groups. Kalaniyot is especially worth investing in as a faculty-led platform for intellectual pluralism as it sponsors a diverse cohort of postdoctoral fellows and visiting faculty from Israeli academic institutions to Columbia. That’s a decent lineup. The framing emphasizes education rather than indoctrination, which is good. But what exactly will the “training” cover? “Don’t be antisemitic”?
There are broader initiatives. The Constructive Dialogue Institute (mentioned in the letter) has already been piloted at Harvard for a year. Embedding it into Columbia’s new student orientation programs might have a modest, lasting effect, if it is done right.
If done well, this could work. If done poorly, it could come dangerously close to replicating the structure (and sometimes eye-rolling reception) of the “oppressor and oppressed” workshops of the last decade. For example, will it be an online training that you can fast-forward? Will it be a group session where you can zone out?
The proof will be in the pudding and the community should withhold judgment until the specific implementation of the training becomes clear.
Zero tolerance and not engaging with CUAD
Good. But also… obvious.
Did anyone really think that, after the events of Spring 2024, Columbia would turn around and negotiate with CUAD?
This is like saying, after breaking up with someone, “I will not be going on a date with that person.”
It could also be easily circumvented by negotiating with particular individuals, not “CUAD the entity” (which—again—is anonymous so the University could negotiate with CUAD members and then plausibly deny any knowledge that it was negotiating with CUAD.)
CUAD has publicly stated they are “seek[ing] instruction” from and in coordination with foreign terrorist organizations, and that “violence is the only path forward.” They held a Zoom teach-in with a terrorist. They also glorify other mass murderers like Mao Zedong and held a memorial service to the terrorist Yahya Sinwar. The question is not whether Columbia should “engage” with them. The question is whether Columbia has, at minimum, quietly referred them to the appropriate law enforcement authorities, namely the FBI Counterterrorism Division (for promoting terrorism), the DOJ National Security Division’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit (for seeking instruction from foreign principals), and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (for producing and distributing material—which costs money—from the “Hamas Media Office”).
If it hasn’t, we hope those agencies are already investigating whether the threshold for “material support” has been breached. A refusal to negotiate with CUAD is not leadership. It’s obvious.
The statement also says that “Columbia has not, and will not, recognize or meet with [CUAD], its representatives, or any of its affiliated organizations.”
Last we checked, CUAD is a “coalition” of over 100 affiliated organizations, including a mariachi band, a gardening club, several dance clubs, and a poetry club. Taken literally, this means that Columbia should withdraw recognition (and funding) until they have publicly disavowed their status of an affiliated organization of CUAD. As an example, Columbia Raas, a South Asian dance troupe, is the 10th highest funded undergraduate student organization and a member of CUAD. Curiously, one of the CUAD’s affiliated organizations is Student Workers of Columbia, the local graduate student union. Again, taken literally, this means Columbia has committed that it “will not recognize” the union until it disavows its affiliation with CUAD.
One way to resolve this is to give these organizations a deadline, say September 1, 2025 to publicly disavow any affiliation with CUAD or have their funding removed. If the clubs don’t want to do that, then the University could wait until, say, May 2027 (when the last of the members who agreed to affiliate with CUAD in 2023 would cycle out) to restore recognition. Another, gentler way, is negative consent: the University could send club and union leaders emails that say “we are assuming you are no longer affiliated with CUAD as affiliation means derecognition and loss of funding; if you remain affiliated, please advise by September 1.” It would be very interesting to see if this actually happens (we suspect not)—but again, all we are doing here is taking this statement literally at its word.
Finally, one should also note that University Statute § 385 states “the name of the University may not be used by any student or any group or organization of which a student is a member, without the approval of the Trustees or that of the President acting by authority of the Trustees.” If the President has not given CUAD the approval to use the name “Columbia University” (which this statement on non-recognition suggests she has not), the University has clear grounds to take legal action to compel them to stop.
At a minimum, the administration should use litigation tools like discovery to unmask CUAD’s anonymous principals, which would allow Columbia to know if it was “negotiating” with them.
(And before you ask, the Stand Columbia Society is not using Columbia University’s name. It is using the name of the song “Stand Columbia”, which has long been out of copyright.)
The analysis above is intentionally provocative, even “pokey”. To be clear, we applaud the move, which suggests the administration is listening, both to the Task Force on Antisemitism and to the many voices calling for greater accountability and meaningful reform. But the University’s enforcement posture (does it follow through on its stated commitment to derecognize over 100 CUAD affiliates including a mariachi band, a dance club, and the union?) should be clarified. We hope it reflects the beginning of a deeper institutional shift.
Addendum: the University Senate no longer has decision rights over promulgating and enforcing rules
Though not part of the Shipman announcement, the Trustees released a rather extraordinary statement around the same time, which you can find here. It says two new things.
First, the March 21 letter suggested that Rules “enforcement” was moved out of the University Senate. The Trustee resolution stated that Rules “process” was moved out as well. Finally, the statement confirms that Rules “process” includes “interpretation” and “modification.” This means that the University Senate has no further decision rights with respect to the Rules of University Conduct (enforcement rights via appointment power of the Rules Clerk and to the University Judicial Board has been removed from the Executive Committee, and formation rights have been removed from the Rules Committee), and is now advisory only.
Second, the Trustees specifically corrected Senate-originated misinformation: “a recent report issued by the Senate Rules Committee does not reflect the actions described above, and therefore clarification of these points for the community is essential.”
These moves are welcome, long-overdue, and well-deserved due to the University Senate leadership’s role at putting our beloved institution at risk by attempting to slow-walk, obstruct, and dilute discipline for setting up encampments and taking over buildings. Perhaps one day, a reformed Senate can return to its role of offering a constructive and productive channel for shared governance, as Mike Sovern envisioned and as it did in the past. We look forward to that day. But for now, this is meaningful, structural, and real change. Well done to all.
So is this part of the deal?
On its surface, this announcement reads as a restatement of positions already taken, or obvious steps long overdue. It is not what reform-minded faculty, students, or alumni have asked for.
But viewed charitably, it may be part of a broader process. Most people think of a “deal” as a final, signed agreement. History teaches that in politically sensitive areas, a “deal” is a process, a sequence of actions that demonstrate commitment to follow-through.
In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pioneered “shuttle” diplomacy as he “shuttled” between Aswan, Jerusalem, and Damascus. As the late U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk (a former visiting professor at Columbia’s Middle East Institute) has chronicled, Kissinger would haggle over minutiae such as whether Assad would withdraw two tanks by 100 meters in exchange for Golda Meir moving back one tank and an artillery battery by 50 meters. The details were never written into the final cease fire agreement, but they directly made it possible.
Similarly, to end the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. agreed to quietly and “voluntarily” remove obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey as a stabilizing gesture. The deal was sealed with conditions: six months’ delay, no publicity, and no explicit linkage to the Soviet withdrawal from Cuba. These kinds of pre-agreed but unpublished measures are known in diplomacy as confidence-building measures: concrete steps taken to calm a volatile situation, establish credibility, and make agreement possible.
The same logic may apply here. Like Kissinger’s incremental diplomacy, in a best-case scenario, this announcement may contain “unrelated” gestures that—with some nudging—come together to form a negotiated path toward institutional peace.
Talk is cheap, but action accumulates. Deal or no deal, Columbia Renewed will not happen until further reforms—which Acting President Shipman, to her credit, has acknowledged Columbia “will likely require”—are enacted and sustained.
We recognize that structural reform within a complex entity, especially one navigating federal scrutiny, internal divisions, and leadership transition, is not achieved overnight. So cautious, piecemeal rollouts are to be expected. One would expect that funding should be restored on a reciprocal basis, i.e. step-by-step as Columbia makes concrete, measurable, externally observable, and irreversible progress on its commitments.
But as of now, there is no deal, only conflicting reports on the current potentially impending deal, and conflicting interpretations of what the finish line looks like. We will continue to evaluate actions, not announcements. But we welcome any steps, however modest, that move Columbia toward the kind of transparency, accountability, and reform its community—and America—deserves. Stay tuned.
News Roundup
– July 18, 2025. Science Blog reports that Columbia University engineers have developed “metabolic robots” that can grow, self-repair, and improve by absorbing parts from their surroundings—or even other robots. Built from modular magnetic units called Truss Links, these bots can self-assemble into complex structures, repair after damage, and shed or replace malfunctioning parts. Inspired by biological systems, the robots evolve new capabilities as they transform, mirroring development from single cells to full organisms. We are getting close to grey goo!
– July 18, 2025. The Spectator published an open letter to Shipman, the board of trustees, and Dean Josef Sorett from 68 members of the Columbia College class of 1964. These alumni are “disturbed” that Columbia has not better resisted the Trump administration’s “unprecedented attacks…on the foundations…of a democratic civil society.” The letter highlights that they are the children of parents who “knew fascism firsthand” and whose parents “died to liberate the world from fascism.” They call on the school to be a “thought leader” through actions that stand against the federal government’s “authoritarianism” and call out Columbia’s quickness to appease Trump’s first set of “lawless demands,” which they say “exploit antisemitism as a pretext for federal interventions and controls.”
– July 17, 2025. Bloomberg reports a federal judge has temporarily halted the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student and Palestinian-born Syrian national, who was detained for over 100 days amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus protests. Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled that the immigration court acted unlawfully in attempting to deport Khalil while a prior court order blocking removal was still in effect. The judge also criticized the court’s reliance on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s foreign policy claims without fairly considering Khalil’s U.S. citizen wife and child. While the deportation order has been vacated, the case now returns to immigration court under new instructions.
– July 17, 2025. In The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch critiques Columbia University’s newly announced reforms to combat anti-Semitism, arguing they mirror the bureaucracy-heavy DEI strategies of recent years—approaches that may be ineffective or even counterproductive. Acting President Claire Shipman’s measures, including new Title VI coordinators and the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, come amid mounting federal pressure and the threat of lost research funding.
– July 17, 2025. The Free Beacon reported in an exclusive that Columbia University is poised to finalize a settlement with the Trump administration that would restore most of the $400 million in federal funding cut earlier this year. The draft deal includes a $200 million fine and commitments to release admissions and hiring data, but omits earlier White House demands for structural reforms—such as changes to university governance and protest policies. The move has sparked backlash from conservative allies who say the penalties are too soft.
– July 17, 2025. The NYT published a piece about Columbia entering the “final stages” of negotiations to end its standoff with the federal government, which had accused the school of “failing to protect” Jewish students from discrimination and harassment, for a fine of almost $200 million. Columbia administrators and leaders met with Trump officials for around an hour in DC on Thursday. The major tenets of the deal were hammered out but not all of the specifics. It is expected that Columbia will pay the roughly $200 million in fines, after which the government would release the over $400 million in research funding it had paused.
– July 16, 2025. The Gothamist reports that Columbia has decided to “adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism” from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance , or IHRA. The definition has been highlighted for concern by Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Amnesty International and other groups for labeling any critique of Israel as antisemitism. Claire Shipman wrote of the adoption of the definition, “The University remains dedicated to ensuring that complaints of discrimination and harassment of all types, including complaints based on Jewish and Israeli identity, are treated in the same manner. Formally adding the consideration of the IHRA definition into our existing antidiscrimination policies strengthens our approach to combating antisemitism.” Columbia classics professor Joseph Howley has “grave” misgivings about the definition’s use by Columbia “at the behest of Donald Trump and [White House adviser] Stephen Miller.” Shipman addressed this concern, saying, “The fact that we’ve faced pressure from the government does not make the problems on our campus any less real; a significant part of our community has been deeply affected in negative ways. In my view, any government agreement we reach is only a starting point for change.”
– July 15, 2025. The Spectator reconstructs the fraught and ultimately failed negotiations between Columbia administrators and pro-Palestinian student protesters who launched last spring’s encampment. Drawing on interviews, subpoenaed communications, and 23 years of ACSRI records, the article reveals how opaque decision-making, reports of surveillance, and a lack of engagement eroded trust and ended a potential deal. The impasse appeared unbridgeable as the protestors wanted what the administration could not grant. Meanwhile, protesters, administrators, and faculty remain divided over whether last spring offered a real missed opportunity—or just another dead-end in a decades-long campaign.
– July 15, 2025. Tablet published an article from Shai Davidai announcing his departure from Columbia this week. He reports that he is leaving his “dream job” but feels he has been left with no choice. He cites the texts published by the House Education and Workforce Committee where acting President Claire Shipman comments on certain Jewish trustees, which he interprets as antisemitic. He also accuses her of “downplay[ing] the pro-Hamas movement on campus, belittl[ling] Jewish students’ concerns as irrational, and mock[ing] a congressional probe on the issue as “Capitol Hill nonsense.”” He says he cannot “in good conscience” follow her. He plans to embark upon a speaking, podcasting, and book career from now on.
– July 14, 2025. In a NYT op-ed, economists David Autor and Gordon Hanson—whose pioneering research exposed the devastating impact of the first “China Shock” on American manufacturing—warn that a second, more perilous wave is underway. This time, China is targeting high-tech sectors like AI, biotech, and quantum computing, where the U.S. has long held an edge. Their message is clear: tariffs and nostalgia won’t save us. Instead, the U.S. must invest in cutting-edge research, strategic innovation, and workforce resilience. This is why we champion federally funded research at our leading universities to conduct this critical work.
– July 11, 2025. The WSJ reported that within the talks to pay the nearly $200 million fine as part of the deal with the federal government, only part of the money would allegedly be paid to the government, with other portions being paid directly to specific students or teachers whose “rights allegedly have been violated.” Besides antisemitism, the deal “addresses [Trump] administration concerns” about campus racial preferences. The administration’s alleged goal is to shift the campus culture for years to come.