How Columbia's Leadership Refashioned the University in Trump's Image

The Intercept

3 days ago

Shortly after Columbia University made broad concessions to the Trump administration, the school's acting president Claire Shipman struck a triumphant tone.
'Columbia retains control over its academic and operational decisions,' Shipman wrote in a July 24 email to the entire university community.
In an interview with the campus newspaper, she said the topic of disciplinary action had not even come up in negotiations with the Trump administration.
The claim struck critics of the university's recent actions as odd on its face. The school had agreed to pay a $200 million fine and make significant changes to its academic operations, disciplinary proceedings, and oversight — including giving the Trump administration access to vast swaths of previously private university documents and data.
Critics of the deal with the Trump administration also noted that Shipman's claim — that disciplinary action wasn't discussed — was far-fetched. The announcement of the deal came on the heels of the suspensions and expulsions of almost 80 students who had participated in a sit-in and protest in Butler Library on May 7 — in a newly formulated disciplinary process that hewed closely to government demands.
A review by The Intercept of correspondence between the Trump administration and Columbia, the conditions and clauses of their final agreement, dozens of university records, and details of disciplinary proceedings related to pro-Palestine protests point to a different story.
Not only did Columbia and the Trump administration have detailed exchanges about altering the university's disciplinary proceedings — especially in how they impacted protesters — but new rules regarding disciplinary procedures were also imposed on the university by its powerful board of trustees in a manner explicitly outlined by the Trump administration. (Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.)
Though Shipman said Columbia's academic independence was the school's 'north star' during the negotiations, the private research university has made several concessions on academic functioning in its agreement with the federal government. And Shipman said that Columbia retains control over its operational decisions, yet the deal with the Trump administration includes clauses such as one in which the university has agreed to 'examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.'
MORE CONDITIONS of Columbia's complete surrender to the Trump administration:
Targeted review of programs pertaining to the Middle East – As per the agreement, Columbia will undertake a 'thorough review' of practically everything related to Middle East studies at the university,… pic.twitter.com/vykm5F65HP
— Meghnad Bose (@MeghnadBose93) July 24, 2025
A key element of the agreement was the appointment of a third-party 'Resolution Monitor' to oversee compliance.
'We really preferred that it be an independent monitor as somebody we know and have vetted and who is nonpolitical, and so that we have a regular path to showing we're in compliance with the agreement,' Shipman told Columbia's campus newspaper.
The man selected for the role, Bart Schwartz, is the co-founder of Guidepost Solutions, which sponsored an event in June 2025 'helping Israel heal and rebuild.' He was selected in a joint decision by the university and government officials.
On top of it all, the school paid a massive $200 million fine — roughly half of the federal grants that had been frozen, which the university was seeking to recoup in the negotiations.
'It seems,' Joseph Slaughter, an English and comparative literature professor and the director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia, told The Intercept, 'they paid off an extortionist and they hope that the extortionists won't come back.'
As the protests and crackdown continued, changes in disciplinary procedures at the university came in lockstep with Trump administration demands. In some cases, they were done quietly in response to developments at the university.
As students swarmed a study room at Butler Library in May, the school's website listed one set of disciplinary procedures. The students that had charges leveled against them by the school understood they would face disciplinary hearings according to the available system. By the time their processes got rolling, however, the rules had changed.
In July, weeks after the disciplinary changes were brought, the university webpage listing the rules was quietly updated. The new webpage, however, did say the new policies had been ratified by Columbia's board of trustees on May 7 — the same day as the Butler Library protest. The revisions to the rules tracked almost exactly with what the Trump administration had demanded of the school.
The new disciplinary procedures were used to execute mass sanctions on nearly 80 pro-Palestine protesters. On July 21, the disciplined students were variously issued expulsions, one- to three-year suspensions, or degree revocations. The sanctions were delivered just two days before Columbia's agreement with the Trump administration was signed and announced.
'It's an unusual tactic in normal times to implement the terms of a settlement voluntarily before the full agreement is reached,' Katherine Franke, a retired professor at Columbia Law School, told The Intercept. 'But these are not normal times, and Columbia has shown itself more than willing to bend a knee to the Trump administration in the hopes that doing so will make things less bad.' Protesters put stickers on the doors of Butler Library at Columbia University on May 7, 2025 in New York City. Photo:When asked by the campus newspaper if the topic of disciplinary action ever came up in negotiations with the Trump administration, Shipman said simply: 'It did not.' She emphasized the independence of the University Judicial Board, or UJB, the body that adjudicates internal disciplinary matters. A review of the correspondence between the Trump administration and Columbia by The Intercept, as well as the details of their final agreement, reveal that this was far from the case.
In its demand letter to Columbia on March 13, the Trump administration expressed dissatisfaction with the UJB and called for it to be abolished. Instead, the government said, all disciplinary processes should be centralized under the office of the university president. Eight days later, Columbia announced that it was moving the functioning of the UJB entirely under 'the Office of the Provost, who reports to the President of Columbia.'
Now, students would no longer serve on the University Judicial Board.
It was a marked departure from the existing process. In the past, UJB members reflected the community makeup and were appointed by the University Senate, a democratically elected body comprising members of the faculty, students, and staff. Now, students would no longer serve on the UJB; the five-member disciplinary panels would be restricted to faculty and staff. Student organizers said that this move would disallow students to be adjudicated on by a panel that included their peers — 'a due process right parallel to a jury panel of one's peers.'
The school justified the changes as a way to bolster 'effectiveness and impartiality' of disciplinary proceedings, but no reasoning was provided as to why the existing process of appointing members through the senate had been deemed insufficient or in need of remedy, or why students would be excluded from adjudicating roles.
A Columbia website page says the ongoing process of updating the university's statutes to include the new policies is still 'underway' — raising questions for critics of the changes as to why the Butler protesters had been processed under the new rules.
'The UJB hearings as they were conducted for the Butler protests don't abide by the university statutes and that seems to create all sorts of legal liabilities,' said Slaughter, who is a member of the university's Rules of University Conduct Committee.
The rejiggering of disciplinary progresses gave the administration the ability to crack down on protesters in a way that met the Trump administration's demands, Victoria Frye, a professor at Columbia who was at the library during the Butler protest, told The Intercept.
'The UJB was restructured without Senate input,' she wrote in a statement, 'to remove student representatives and ensure that student punishment was meted out severely and swiftly in order to placate the federal administration.'
The penalties handed out to students were severe.
A month after the library protest, on June 9, as the disciplinary procedures got under way, protesters received an email from the university rules administrator listing recommended sanctions that ranged from suspensions to expulsion. Protesters had not yet had the chance to argue their cases before the judicial board, but it seemed their penalties had already been decided.
A second-year undergraduate student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the school, received a two-year recommended sanction.
'The idea of giving us recommended sanctions — it's really prejudicial,' said the student, who had no prior violations. 'Like, they've decided that this is what they want to give us, something that is completely not based on precedent, with a board that is changing, with a process that they're ignoring. It is ridiculous that they would ever expect that we would believe that this was fair.'
Slaughter, the Rules of University Conduct Committee member, said, 'Those notices of suggested punishments of two- and three-year suspensions sounded to me like Alice in Wonderland: the sentence first, verdict afterwards.'
On July 21, most students involved in the Butler protest received notice of their official sanctions. Almost 80 students were issued suspensions, expulsions, or degree revocations.
They weren't the only ones to get the results of their disciplinary proceedings. On the same day, students who had been involved in a late May 2024 Gaza solidarity encampment during the school's alumni weekend also received their decisions. Several students who were investigated for that encampment told The Intercept that they were found to not have violated any rules. A university announcement on the disciplinary outcomes of the two protests gave details of the outcomes in the Butler cases, but not the alumni weekend encampment.
'The entire process is just a charade to give the veneer of due process, but it's just whatever is politically expedient,' said one student investigated for his role in the encampment, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation from the school. The student, who was found to not have violated any rules, said it appeared the school had pursued harsher punishments in cases that garnered more media. The student said administrators had seemingly asked themselves, 'Who are we going to offer up as sacrificial lambs? What is going to be expedient for us?'
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Butler sanctions, meanwhile, were more severe. Grant Miner, the president of Columbia's student workers union, said that past disruptions to student activity had faced, in comparison, lesser consequences — and more rounds of warnings. There were warnings, for instance, given over a marching band tradition of playing in Butler Library. In the case of a 2016 sit-in at Low Library to demand the university's divestment from fossil fuels, participants were able to clear their charges by writing letters of apology to maintenance and administrative staff. Miner said the Butler Gaza protest was treated differently.
'This is completely not in keeping with past precedent, which is one of the core tenets of the disciplinary process — that they have to be in tune with past punishments, to prevent them from being arbitrary or draconian,' he said. Miner, a Jewish pro-Palestine protester, faced disciplinary action himself for participation in the occupation of Hamilton Hall in 2024; he was expelled by Columbia in March, on the same day that the Trump administration sent its letter of demands to the university.
To return to the university after their suspension terms are complete, students are required to comply with several conditions — including submitting a letter of 'reflection' and contrition.
'You're essentially making these people apologize for supporting Palestinians. '
Miner said, 'You're essentially making these people apologize for supporting Palestinians. Somebody protests for Palestine and your condition for letting them back on campus is that they disavow the very thing that they protested against.'
One graduate student who participated in the Butler Library protest and was suspended does not intend to write the apology letter.
'I don't regret what I did. I personally will not be apologizing for it,' they said. 'The campus politics and my own education and my own employment are not even remotely as important as a single life in Gaza that Israel is murdering right now.'
Both suspended students who spoke with The Intercept face additional disciplinary procedures under the university's Office of Institutional Equity, a separate department that pursues cases of alleged discrimination and harassment. The process has been used to accuse pro-Palestine demonstrators at Columbia of anti-Jewish bias.
The agreement puts Columbia in line with Trump administration demands that went well beyond campus fights over Israel's assault on Gaza.
In its agreement, Columbia promises to 'not provide benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics' — in line with Trump's campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The agreement continues, 'Columbia shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts.'
Echoing the Trump administration's anti-transgender policies, the agreement stipulates that Columbia will provide 'single-sex housing for women who request such housing and all-female sports, locker rooms, and showering facilities.'
The university's concessions, critics of the agreement said, started well before the agreement was announced — suggesting that the deal itself would only be the latest, not a final, step in the process.
'It would be a mistake to look at the document that was released and think this is the extent of the deal,' Joseph Howley, an associate professor of classics at Columbia, told The Intercept.
Howley pointed to the mass sanctions for the Butler protest, as well as an announcement by Columbia on July 15, one week before the deal with the Trump administration was signed, that the university was entering a training partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, a right-wing pro-Israel group that routinely conflates pro-Palestine activism with antisemitism.
'Columbia has been making concessions for weeks and months on things that we know the federal government was asking for, like seizing control of the UJB and adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism,' Howley said. 'The fact that we can see that they gave things up as preconditions to getting a deal in the first place tells us that the full extent of concessions and extractions is not articulated simply in the language of that document.'
Trump's campaign, critics of Columbia said, didn't begin with the Gaza war and won't end with Columbia.
'It is merely the start of the next phase of the administration's campaign to use Columbia as an example for other universities,' said Franke, the retired Columbia law professor. 'They won't let up, and the 'agreement' gives them all the power to keep weaponizing the specter of antisemitism to dismantle a world-class university.'