TL;DR
- The Stand Columbia Society is pleased to present a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation with Dean Emeritus Robert E. Pollack, CC ’61.
- As the last Dean elected by the Columbia College faculty, he urges restoring faculty oversight over undergraduate curriculum, dismantling silos, and bringing great teachers from across the university into the Core Curriculum.
- In a post-DEI world, he advocates recruiting top students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, credits this with the 1980s’ diverse, high-achieving classes, and warns against both inherited-category thinking and AI’s threat to academic integrity.
- He praises Claire Shipman’s leadership in the current crisis and urges future leaders to “show up” and balance Columbia’s research and teaching missions without losing its community ethos.
- Rich anecdotes span coeducation, securing $7 million for four-year housing via John Jay Dining Hall chess club diplomacy, granting Isaac Asimov an honorary degree after a ceremonial swim test, and—of course—the aftermath of the 1988 football streak-breaking win.
This week, the Stand Columbia Society is honored to share a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation with our dear friend Dean Emeritus Robert E. Pollack, CC ‘61, longtime professor of biology, and one of Columbia’s most quietly formative moral voices of the last half-century.
In this interview, Pollack reflects on what it meant to be the first Jewish dean of Columbia College, the last dean elected by its faculty, and a scientist who never stopped believing in the primacy of teaching. From the postwar classrooms of Coney Island to the quiet negotiations that gave rise to coeducation, the Kraft Center, and the Core as we know it, Pollack offers a generous and unsentimental view of leadership grounded in presence, memory, and service.
His stories—ranging from Isaac Asimov’s impromptu swim test to taking a major donor to John Day Dining Hall—carry enduring lessons about humility, courage, and the messy, essential work of helping “other people’s kids” become whole adults. As Columbia enters a period of profound institutional transition, Pollack’s voice is a reminder of what leadership can sound like when it listens, acts, and most importantly, remains present.
Pollack continues to teach, write, and speak as an active member of the community. He welcomes correspondence from readers (especially his former students) at pollack@columbia.edu.
1. You are many firsts. You were the first Dean in a long time who was a Columbia College alum, the first Dean who is a scientist, and the first Dean who is Jewish. How did you bring these to into your Deanship?
“I didn’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Ah, I’m Jewish, I’m a scientist, I’m an alum.” I just woke up as me.”
You know, I never thought of myself in those terms when I became dean, or frankly, before or after. I didn’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Ah, I’m Jewish, I’m a scientist, I’m an alum.” I just woke up as me.
I was a kid from Coney Island. When I came for my admissions interview, it took me two and a half hours by bus to get to Columbia. My parents were the first in our family to be born in America. My grandparents came over from Eastern Europe and didn’t speak English for many years afterward. I remember thinking during my interview, “What am I doing here?” It was almost unfathomable that there could be a place for someone like me.
But I had an English teacher in high school (public school, of course) who noticed I liked science and books and was getting decent scores. He told my parents I should apply. That was it. That’s how I got here.
When I got here, I studied physics, and then went onto a PhD and a postdoc in biology. So yes, to be a Jewish scientist, a first-generation college student, and then dean of the College, was not without its irony. But I never approached it as a statement. I just lived it. I believed that the gifts of nature proclaim the equality of all humankind. And the gift of my religious tradition is simple: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
That’s how I approached the job. There was no magic moment that led to me becoming dean. Mike Sovern, the first Jewish president of Columbia, simply asked me to take it on. So I did. It felt like the right thing.
I never saw those aspects of my identity—Jewish, scientist, first-generation—as special. But I’ve since realized they placed me in a position of obligation to those who came before me, and to those still trying to find their way in. After I stepped down as dean, I was asked if I’d help support Jewish life on campus. That’s how the Kraft Center came to be. It took some delicate maneuvering: a Jewish center funded by Bob Kraft’s money, in the 1990s, was not a straightforward sell. But President George Rupp had the courage to say yes, and I’m very proud of that.
Almost forty years later, watching my former student Claire Shipman step up in this moment of crisis with the same quiet sense of responsibility is very satisfying. Because we don’t do it for glory or credit. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, and because someone needs to.
2. You are the last Dean of the Faculty of Columbia College—a body that was folded into the broader Faculty of Arts & Sciences in 1989. What was so special about that faculty, and what values or traditions did it bring to the College in your day?
“Columbia invented the Core Curriculum in the 1920s. It taught me how to listen, not just how to win arguments. It worked for me. It would work for everyone, if we let it.”
When I was dean, I was elected by the faculty of Columbia College and formally appointed by president Michael Sovern. I reported to them at monthly meetings, where the agenda was set by a faculty committee, not by me alone. I couldn’t walk in with an idea and expect it to pass. The faculty could argue, push back, and change my mind. There were no representatives from Low Library. No student life administrators. Just professors, many of them teaching each other’s kids.
That kind of structure built trust. It kept the focus on students. If Columbia is serious about the future of its undergraduate schools, it should give every undergraduate school a dean who reports to its own faculty. And those faculties shouldn’t be determined by departments or by which University School they are faculty. They should be made up of faculty who teach undergraduates, regardless of their departments, plain and simple.
These days, deans get reports about student life and conduct and programming, but not curriculum. That authority lives somewhere else. In recent years, I never saw a budget meeting where people who actually teach undergraduates got the final say. Every vote on the College came from a mixture of faculty who were, and who weren’t, in the College.
Columbia invented the Core Curriculum in the 1920s. It taught me how to listen, not just how to win arguments. It worked for me. It would work for everyone, if we let it. Teaching should be about helping students figure out what they think and how to say it. That is what the Core is for and that is what general education is for. The faculty of Columbia College were the guardians of that Core and of the entire general education program and saw the charge of teaching other people’s kids as a sacred responsibility.
That is the future I hope for. Stabilizing research, of course, but also stabilizing teaching. And by teaching I do not mean training graduate students. I mean the moment when a young person says, “I don’t know. I need help understanding this book.” That is where education begins. Columbia should lead in that.
3. In the past two years, we’ve seen seismic events of our own — first, the post-October 7 campus protests, and now the federal settlement. What do these moments mean for Columbia’s obligations to its undergraduates — and to the faculty who teach them?
“Nothing I saw in that settlement agreement troubled me. On the contrary, it gave us a second chance. But it is only part of what needs to be done. Getting back our research function is important. Getting back our teaching mission is essential.”
These are moments that should make us stop and ask what our priorities really are. When things break, you can either say, “I know what I’m doing, and I’m going to keep doing it,” or you can say, “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I need to talk to someone.” One of those responses leads to growth. The other leads to collapse.
Claire Shipman helped Columbia navigate that kind of step. She arranged a path forward that let us settle the government’s case, reopen the flow of grant funding, and reclaim our place as a university that supports world-class research. That matters because research is not just about ideas. It is about health, human survival, and the possibility of a better life.
What Claire Shipman has done is to make it possible for Columbia to continue recruiting, training, and supporting scientists. And nothing I saw in that settlement agreement troubled me. On the contrary, it gave us a second chance. But it is only part of what needs to be done. Getting back our research function is important. Getting back our teaching mission is essential.
The first purpose of Columbia is not research. The first purpose is to help other people’s children grow into thoughtful, capable adults who can listen to one another, understand what is being said, and when they disagree, choose not to fight.
That starts in the classroom. Anyone at Columbia who wants to teach undergraduates should be given the chance. That is the smartest decision we could make right now. If we want to show that we are serious about education, put great minds in the room with young people and let the learning happen.
I’d go further. If a law professor or a business professor or someone from climate or medicine wants to teach undergrads and help them grow, let them join the Columbia College faculty. Let them teach in the Core. If we did that, we’d raise the number of tenured and tenure-track professors in the classroom, and we’d improve the experience of students in ways that actually matter. And I don’t mean better in the US News ranking sense. Better in real life, like the students from the 1980s classes, who were the first students in a long time who were taken seriously by their faculty.
So forget the school and departmental silos. Let the people who actually love teaching teach, regardless of their formal affiliation. Let them shape the curriculum. Let them elect their dean. Don’t hand that off to an office across campus. You can belong to the Arts and Sciences faculty no matter what you do. But if you choose to teach Columbia College students, you should be part of the Columbia College faculty.
Nothing brings the faculty together like that. Not statements. Not press conferences. Not security fences. If we need to keep guards in front of Hamilton Hall so it won’t be disrupted, fine. But let it be because we are protecting speech, not suppressing it. We are not running a military operation. We are cultivating a space where freedom of thought leads to intellectual growth. Nothing is more important than that.
By the way, I hope your readers are aware of EPIC (Emeritus Professors in Columbia.) These are retired faculty who want to keep intellectually and spiritually engaged. If you’re looking at the Core Curriculum, I’ll bet you a fair number of them would jump to be in the classroom again teaching young people.
4. You led the College through major admissions shifts in the 1980s. Today, new federal guidelines on nondiscrimination are reshaping how we recruit and compose a class. What do you see as our greatest opportunities — and our biggest risks — in this new era?
“Better to say it clearly: we are looking for the smartest students from all economic backgrounds. Our job is to find the talent and open the door. The course of American history will shape the rest.”
We’ve canceled the DEI bureaucracy. Fine. I never liked it anyway. The real question is what comes next. How do we preserve access to opportunity without sorting people into boxes?
My answer is the same as it was when I was dean: focus on economic diversity. I told admissions to go out and find the top one-tenth of one percent of students from poor schools across the country—the best one in a thousand. No quotas. Just find brilliant kids from every background, and I’ll find the money to bring them here.
As a biologist, I can say this plainly: ancestry is not identity. We inherit traits, yes. But who we become depends on how we’re taught, challenged, and cared for. Columbia’s job is not to select people based on how they look from ten feet away. It’s to find intelligence wherever it lives.
That was the approach that led to coeducation in 1982. It was expensive. But it gave us the most intellectually and demographically diverse classes in Columbia’s history. The plain fact of the matter is that every time we try to finesse our way around inherited categories, we end up keeping them alive. Better to say it clearly: we are looking for the smartest students from all economic backgrounds. Our job is to find the talent and open the door. The course of American history will shape the rest.
That’s how I got in in 1957. If there had been a quota, I wouldn’t have made it. I know that for a fact.
That brings me to a story about the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov applied to Columbia College, but didn’t get in. Same ancestry as me. He was sent to Seth Low Junior College, which Columbia created in Brooklyn as a holding space for students who just happened to be mostly Italian, Catholic, or Eastern European Jewish kids. That way, the “Knickerbocker” core wouldn’t be disturbed.
In 1982, Asimov came to see me when I was dean. It was clear from our conversation that he damn well knew that his exclusion had nothing to do with merit. It had everything to do with appearance and background. I told him that I would do some investigating and asked him to make another appointment with me.
A few weeks later, he came back. I had my office bring in a bucket of water. I asked him to take off his shoe and sock and put his foot in. He looked puzzled but did it. I said, “By the power vested in me, you have passed the swim test. You are now a graduate of Columbia College.” He said, “Really?” He was deeply moved. I figured if I had any authority at all as dean, I had the authority to fix old mistakes. A few months later, Columbia granted him an honorary degree at our 1983 commencement.
But you asked about our biggest risk in this new era, and that converges with science fiction. The greatest threat I see to Columbia’s teaching mission is artificial intelligence. AI can generate readable essays in seconds, drawn from databases larger than any professor’s memory. But if you can’t trust that a student wrote their own paper, the whole educational contract breaks down.
I don’t know what Columbia is doing to address that. But if I were still teaching, I’d go back to oral exams. Sit down across from a student. Ask what they think. No typed documents. Just a conversation. It’s impossible to fake that. And in the end, it’s closer to what education is meant to be.
5. You became Dean during a pivotal time in Columbia’s history. In fact, the famous “Columbia Recovered” feature happened when you were Dean. What did “rebuilding” Columbia mean to you then? The legendary classes from the mid-to-late 1980s, from which we draw so many leaders, were your students. How did you do it? How did so many stars align at the right time?
“You have to be willing to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. You don’t want a university run by people who reward deference more than honesty.”
That’s the kind of question I don’t usually ask myself. Because what you’re really asking is, how does a low-probability event happen? And the answer is, it doesn’t happen on its own. You have to push it.
I’ve talked about my push for economic diversity. When I became dean, I insisted that Columbia College should admit the best and brightest kids regardless of their background, and aside from 50% women, there were to be no quotas or targets or thumbs-on-the-scale whatsoever.
I deeply believe this because it comes from our origins in New York City. King’s College was born from the most diverse city in the world. That legacy enriched Columbia. You don’t need a DEI policy to keep that going. What you need is a real commitment to find and teach the smartest kids, wherever they are.
When we went into schools that were 90 percent Black, we found brilliant students who had been completely overlooked. It wasn’t that they hadn’t existed before. It was that no one had gone looking. That takes time and hard work. But I found alumni who were willing to back me with fundraising, and eventually, we were able to prove this model worked.
Which brings me to how we were able to bring others along. You have to be willing to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. You don’t want a university run by people who reward deference more than honesty.
I had plenty of disagreements with Low Library, but I never felt I had to negotiate who I was. They were doing their job. I was doing mine. But we were both working for the greater good of Columbia University, and we respected that.
Our bet paid off. Those kids from the mid to late 1980s, they would have been overlooked everywhere else, and so they know what Columbia gave them. That’s why they’re the most generous alumni we’ve ever had. Because they had zero sense of entitlement and remember what it felt like to be seen and given a chance.
6. You were Dean at two seismic moments that redefined the Columbia College experience: the shift to co-education at Columbia College, and offering four-year on-campus housing. Can you tell us the stories of those transitions, and what tensions or opportunities did it create within the College community?
“He would say, “If you’re admitting women, does that mean you’re doubling enrollment? Because if you don’t, that makes it twice as hard for my son to get in.” And I would answer, “Well, I’m also making it infinitely easier for your daughter.” And that usually ended the conversation.”
From the very first year I was dean, I traveled around the country raising money for scholarships. This was more than any of my predecessors ever had. There was no real scholarship program in place when I started, so I raised funds to build one. And wherever I went, I talked about coeducation.
Without fail, whenever I brought up admitting women, I would get a question from an alumnus. He would say, “If you’re admitting women, does that mean you’re doubling enrollment? Because if you don’t, that makes it twice as hard for my son to get in.” And I would answer, “Well, I’m also making it infinitely easier for your daughter.” And that usually ended the conversation.
Coeducation and four-year housing were linked. We made a commitment not to increase the size of the College. That was the hardest part because it meant less revenue for the university. But it also meant preserving the small, intimate scale of Columbia College. That was the tradeoff. Some people pushed back, but we stood firm. Saying no is what allowed us to preserve what made Columbia College unique. And it’s what allowed us to introduce full housing.
So here’s the story of how we made housing possible. One day, the university sent me to meet Morris Schapiro (CC 1923). He was the wealthy investment banker brother of Meyer Schapiro (CC 1924), the legendary art historian. Columbia had never managed to raise money from him before, which is probably why they let me talk to him. I took a different approach. I had a dean’s budget and could have taken him to Terrace in the Sky [ed: a nice restaurant on 119th street that closed in 2011.] Instead, I brought him to brunch at John Jay Dining Hall.
People thought I was out of my mind. But I had arranged for him to meet the chess club, which he had been part of as a student. All these young kids, Eastern European, Asian, from all over, came up to him and talked about chess. They reminded him of himself. He had tears in his eyes. Just days later, he wrote a $7 million check, to build what is now Shapiro Hall. That gift made it possible for Columbia College, for the first time in its history, to offer four-year housing. And that, too, was worth it.
7. Columbia is going through comprehensive leadership transitions at the highest levels. What wisdom would you offer for our next set of leaders from your experience about how to rebuild and hold together a shared academic community after coming perilously close to institutional breakdown?
“Your job is to care about—even love—the full, strange, beautiful operation that is Columbia, with all of its culture, quirks, contradictions, and history. All of it, warts and all.”
What makes Columbia unique is that it carries two perpendicular responsibilities at once. One is research—creating new knowledge. The other is teaching—helping other people’s kids become thoughtful, capable adults. Both are vital to the country’s survival and prosperity. No school understands this balance better than Columbia.
Claire Shipman, right now, is honoring both of those missions. She is doing it in a time when the future of the country feels uncertain. Yes, China, Russia, and Europe have universities, but they are not like the American model. If we lose that model, we lose something that cannot be replaced.
I say with no small amount of pride that Claire is my former student. I’ve watched her lead with courage, humility, and presence. She didn’t govern from a distance. She showed up. She went to Butler Library during the violent takeover when others would have huddled behind closed doors and guards. That matters.
I don’t know who the next president will be. But I do know the model they should follow. It’s Claire, not the long line of presidents between her and Mike Sovern. Claire and Mike were both active in the decision-making process. They didn’t defer. They acted.
My advice to the next leader is simple. Show up. Be present. Your job in representing all of us is to tell us what you think versus “I have an expert on this topic who will get back to you.” Your job is to care about—even love—the full, strange, beautiful operation that is Columbia, with all of its culture, quirks, contradictions, and history. All of it, warts and all.
Take a recent example. Claire’s decision, along with the Trustees, to remove disciplinary powers from the University Senate was the right one. I myself served as a University Senator for many years and co-chaired the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom, and Tenure Committee (FAC). The Senate exists to give voice to the faculty, not to oversee the administration of discipline. Despite all the criticism, she kept her head. She didn’t react to noise. She kept doing what was right. That kind of steadiness brings stability. We owe her a great deal.
Mike Sovern and I were both Columbia College graduates who found our way back and stayed to serve the university for the rest of our lives. We are emotionally grounded here. Claire is cut from that same cloth. This isn’t just a job for us. It’s more like family. That difference shows.
The freshmen arriving this September will have a very different experience from those who arrived in the last three years. I hope they will see a campus without police cars, without TV cameras, and without locked gates. That’s the direction we should keep moving in.
8. Finally—and we’d be remiss not to ask—there’s these recurring rumors of you being spotted feeding beer to undergraduates out of keg late in the evening of October 8, 1988, the night we broke The Streak. Any comment? The people demand an answer.
“That game meant a lot more than just football. It meant hope, relief, and better days ahead.”
That was the first win in 44 games. I happened to be sitting in very good seats with my wife Amy, and when it became clear we were actually going to win, we swarmed the field with everyone else.
Being there that day was a gift. To see that team finally break through, as their dean, was something I’ll never forget. It was hard to be a dean to keep going to these games knowing you were going to lose, but it was even harder for those players. There were seniors on that team who had gone all four years without a win. That game meant a lot more than just football. It meant hope, relief, and better days ahead.
Now, as for the keg story—I keep on telling you I have no memory of that, so I can’t comment. But let’s just say, if it happened, I hope the beer was cold.
Columbiana Collection Update
Professor John Shekitka, CC ’07, MPhil ’17, PhD ’20 (and a former Robert McCaughey student) of Manhattanville College has generously contributed to our digital Columbiana Collection two extensive collections of photographs associated Columbia’s former Park Place and Madison Avenue campuses that he painstakingly assembled over several years. We found one photo particularly striking, a Trustee-commissioned gravestone of Charles Henry Wharton, which notes he was President for a few months in 1811.
If Dean Emeritus Pollack’s test for leadership at Columbia is “showing up”, then Wharton was the worst President in the history of Columbia University, as he (literally) never showed up. He accepted the job in May 1811, and then en route from Maryland to New York, was waylaid by a New Jersey church, which offered him its rectorship. He accepted that job instead, and then dithered for months before finally resigning in December 1811, having never shown up. The role then went to sitting Trustee Benjamin Moore, who reluctantly took on the job on top of his other duties as rector of Trinity Church and adjutant bishop of New York.
News Roundup
– August 8, 2025. Columbia’s Office of Public Affairs released a statement saying the University it has filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the Student Workers of Columbia-UAW, accusing the union of refusing to bargain in good faith over a successor contract. In both its public statement and the NLRB complaint, Columbia says SWC has conditioned negotiations on open Zoom access, insisted on the presence of the expelled union president (who occupied Hamilton), sought to bargain over non-employment matters like campus policing and sanctuary status, and staged disruptive protests, including the May 7 Butler Library occupation, in violation of the expired contract’s no-strike clause. The filing also cites an in-person bargaining session where over 100 union supporters allegedly chanted “shame” instead of negotiating, attempts to record and broadcast sessions without agreement, and grievances tied to student discipline rather than employment. Columbia frames these actions as evidence the union is prioritizing political demands over terms and conditions of employment, effectively ceasing to function as a labor organization under the Act, and asks the NLRB to compel good-faith bargaining.
– August 8, 2025. The Harvard Crimson reported that the Trump administration has moved to dismiss Harvard’s lawsuit challenging federal efforts to bar the university from hosting international students, arguing its earlier revocation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is now “moot” and that President Trump’s June 4 proclamation blocking foreign students is constitutional. Harvard maintains the actions were unlawful retaliation and violations of its First Amendment rights; a federal judge has twice granted preliminary injunctions against both measures, finding the proclamation lacked legitimate grounding.
– August 8, 2025. The WSJ reported that the Trump administration has demanded a record $1 billion settlement from UCLA, alleging the university tolerated antisemitism and used diversity practices opposed by the White House. The proposed deal, which far exceeds Columbia’s $200 million and Brown’s $50 million settlements, would require UCLA to eliminate identity-based preferences in hiring, admissions, and scholarships; tighten protest rules; and appoint a compliance officer reporting to a federal monitor. The news prompted UC System President James Milliken that such penalties would devastate the nation’s leading public university system and harm students, Californians, and vital research. The Justice Department is also investigating other UC campuses.
– August 8, 2025. The WSJ reported that in the latest escalation of its standoff with Harvard, the Trump administration has threatened to seize control of the university’s patents (valued in the hundreds of millions) if a federal review finds noncompliance with laws governing intellectual property from taxpayer-funded research. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s letter to Harvard President Alan Garber demands a full accounting of patents linked to federal grants by September 5, citing alleged breaches of the Bayh-Dole Act. Harvard, which holds more than 5,800 patents, called the move retaliatory and unprecedented, noting that its innovations save lives and fuel industries.
– August 8, 2025. The Spectator detailed accounts from 16 current and former “sympathetic” Columbia administrative staff who say they’ve faced a climate of fear, retaliation, and exclusion amid the university’s crackdown on protests. Several staff resigned or were fired in 2024 over protest involvement, including one administrative assistant who later won a $50,000 settlement after her union contested her dismissal. Interviewees describe being silenced, pressured to “stay neutral,” or asked to assist in actions against students, while lacking the protections faculty and students enjoy.
– August 8, 2025. Bloomberg reported that Columbia has disclosed that a May cyberattack compromised personal data for roughly 870,000 people, including students, applicants, and some health and insurance information. Letters to affected individuals, filed with state attorneys general in Maine and California, indicate the breach included contact details, demographics, academic history, financial aid records, and other sensitive data, with some financial and GPA information previously reported stolen. The attack, described by the university as the work of a politically motivated “hacktivist”, occurred weeks before a June IT outage that crippled campus systems. Columbia says it is still identifying all affected individuals and has implemented new safeguards, with further measures under review.
– August 8, 2025. Stat News shared that an executive order from Trump aims to bring more control of grantmaking under his political appointees, up to billions of dollars. Trump issued the order on Thursday, calling it “Improving Oversight Of Federal Grantmaking,” with the goal of overhauling the rules that have ruled grant decisions for decades. Moving forward, rather than “experts and career civil servants setting funding decisions and priorities,” authority is transferred to “presidential appointees who, in coordination with the White House, are directed to use their “independent judgment” and “advance the President’s policy priorities.”
– August 7, 2025. In a provocative op-ed in The Dispatch, Yale biomedical imaging professor Evan D. Morris argues that the hard sciences should “unyoke” from the humanities to protect research funding and avoid collateral damage from the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities. While recent settlements, such as Columbia’s, restored frozen federal science grants, Morris notes that delays have already cost jobs and halted promising projects, despite the administration’s primary ire being aimed at humanities departments over identity politics and Middle East studies. Because science and medicine bring in most federal dollars, Morris contends they have become the leverage point for political change, suffering for “the sins of others.” He calls for separate institutions for science, engineering, and medicine, with humanities instruction provided only as needed, allowing each discipline to defend its own value directly to the public. We have previously opposed such a move, arguing that comprehensive research universities are built on a platform of extensive cross-subsidies where the enterprise is greater than the sum of its parts and separating them would cause the arts, humanities, and social sciences to collapse.
– August 6, 2025. NY Magazine published an article wondering if “Harvard is about to make the same mistake as Columbia?” following Columbia’s notorious agreement to pay $200 million to the Trump administration for “antisemitism.” It remarks upon the $500 million deal that was “apparently close” before Brown agreed to pay $50 million spread out over ten years; Brown was able to secure from the government, in writing, that the federal government would never “dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.” The article highlighted the point that for Columbia, “few people on either end of the political spectrum take it seriously now.” While “MAGA acolytes” disapprove of the school for showing it could be easily manipulated, the more “progressive” people view any deal with Trump as an embarrassing betrayal. The article refers to the Columbia deal as the model to be “avoided at all costs.”
– August 6, 2025. The NY Times published an article this week explaining that part of the deals made by Columbia and Brown with the Trump administration is to share admissions and race data with the government. The administration will get access to the test scores and GPAs of every applicant to those schools as well as demographic data about their race. About this part of the deal coming into effect, Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said, “We have agreed to provide data to which the government is entitled, and is currently requesting from scores of institutions, including ours.”
– August 6, 2025. The Chronicle of Higher Education shares information on what Columbia’s $200 million settlement will actually be allocated within the federal government. The first installment, about $66 million, will be “deposited directly to the U.S. Treasury’s general account.” But following that deposit, “how the money will be used is anybody’s guess.”
– August 5, 2025. The Spectator reports that that as contract talks with the Student Workers of Columbia-UAW stall, the university is moving to replace graduate student Core Curriculum instructors with external hires, a move union supporters call “textbook union busting.” Normally, about 30 Columbia PhD students teach flagship Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization courses, positions that provide a year of funding, benefits, and, for international students, visa security. This year, despite applications being due nine months ago, no offers have gone to graduate students; instead, Columbia has advertised nationally for non-Columbia lecturers. The union argues the shift is aimed at undermining strike leverage ahead of the fall semester, after the previous contract expired June 30.
– August 5, 2025. Mondoweiss, a platform which published the infamous “eradication of Western civilization” manifesto which they’ve now deleted, published a piece about how “student activists are regrouping.” We are most struck by this: “Yasmine, an undergraduate who received a two-year suspension, said she felt that most faculty had abandoned disciplined students, despite many of them teaching the theories and frameworks that informed her activism. ‘It was the practical application of many of their lesson plans that led me to participate in the Basel al-Araj Popular University,’ said Yasmine (pseudonym), who requested anonymity.” This was the saddest passage of the whole piece as “Yasmine” suggests some faculty inspired (incited?) students to do self-destructive things with lifelong implications, but took no responsibility for the outcome.
– August 4, 2025. In this Democracy Now video, Rashid Khalidi describes his decision to stop teaching his course at Columbia because of Columbia’s new adoption of the IHRA antisemitism definition. He calls it “not just a capitulation to the Trump administration but an inside job…by the board of trustees” and a minority of faculty and some students. He also said that the university had taken on values that “are dear to people who want to protect Israel from criticism at all costs while it slaughters people by the hundreds daily” and that much teaching there is now “impossible.”
– August 4, 2025. Bloomberg reports that that elite universities are under mounting financial and political pressure to settle with the Trump administration, which has frozen or revoked hundreds of millions in federal research funding over alleged failures to curb antisemitism, opposition to diversity programs, and other disputes. Columbia and Brown have already struck deals, while Cornell, Northwestern, Duke, Harvard, and others face severe budget shortfalls, layoffs, and debt. The crackdown coincides with a new tax law raising endowment taxes on wealthy private schools, intensifying fiscal strain. Critics warn the campaign is weaponizing federal funds, forcing institutions into “untenable” choices between defending academic principles and sustaining research operations.