Columbia Planned Tighter Protest Rules Even Before Trump Demanded Them
The New York Times
Students sued to stop Columbia from giving their disciplinary records to the federal government, which has demanded that the university rein in demonstrations.
A lawyer for Columbia University said Tuesday that a demand from the Trump administration for dramatic changes in student discipline had merely sped up policies the university had already been planning to enforce.
In a March 13 letter, the Trump administration said the university had failed to stop “antisemitic violence and harassment,” adding that policy changes would have to be made before the government would discuss resuming $400 million in canceled grants and contracts. Last week, the school complied with most of the government’s requests, regulating masks on campus and empowering a team of security officers to make arrests.
The lawyer’s assertion that Columbia had been planning the changes all along came during a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan over a request by a group of anonymous Columbia and Barnard College students that a judge bar school officials from handing over confidential disciplinary records to a congressional committee that has asked for them.
Both Columbia and the committee have contended that the students have not shown a sufficient legal basis for such an order. The judge, Arun Subramanian, made no ruling Tuesday.
The arguments in court stemmed from a request by the House Committee on Education and Workforce for disciplinary records related to several incidents, including the occupation of a university hall last spring by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, a protest of a class taught by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and an art exhibition the committee said had “promoted terrorism.”
Seven anonymous students and Mahmoud Khalil, a former student and legal permanent resident who helped lead protests last year and whom the Trump administration is trying to deport, sued to keep the records private. The lawsuit said that to fully comply, Columbia would have to turn over private files of hundreds of students, faculty and staff members.
