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Columbia University President Denies Deceiving Trump Administration Over Antisemitism Policies
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong on Tuesday strongly denied a Wall Street Journal report which said that she privately told faculty that school officials misled the Trump administration to believe that they had accepted its conditions for restoring $400 million in federal funding canceled by Education Secretary Linda McMahon earlier this month to punish the school’s alleged failure to quell “antisemitic violence and harassment” on its campus.
On Friday, the university issued a memo announcing that it acceded to key demands put forth by the Trump administration as a precondition for releasing the funds — including a review of undergraduate admissions practices that allegedly discriminate against qualified Jewish applicants, the enforcement of an “anti-mask” policy that protesters have violated to avoid being identified by law enforcement, and enhancements to the university’s security protocols that would facilitate the restoration of order when the campus is disturbed by unauthorized demonstrations.
The news prompted high praise from Trump administration officials, including McMahon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy. However, according to a report published by the Journal on Monday, Armstrong told faculty behind closed doors over the weekend that the memo was issued to buy the university time in which to explore other, potentially legal, options that could result in the school’s reclaiming the canceled grants.
During a mutinous meeting with angry faculty, Armstrong said, among other things, that the anti-mask ban — a policy that is widely supported by the Jewish community for achieving the same end as federal anti-Ku-Klux-Klan laws — will not be enacted, according to the Journal. In response, the paper added, some professors denounced what they perceive as a duplicitous public relations strategy in which Columbia makes commitments it does not intend to honor.
On Tuesday, Armstrong disputed the WSJ‘s account of her conversation with faculty, maintaining in a statement published on the university’s website that she will proceed with the policies enumerated in Friday’s memo.
“Implementation of these measures is fundamental to sustaining our academic mission without disruption and ensuring the safety of Columbia’s students and campuses. Let there be no confusion: I commit to seeing these changes implemented, with the full support of Columbia’s senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees,” Armstrong said. “We need to continue to restore the public’s faith of the fundamental value of higher education for the nation and the longstanding partnership between ground-breaking universities like Columbia and the federal government.”
She continued, “Any suggestion that these measures are illusory, or lack my personal support is unequivocally false. These changes are real, and they are right for Columbia.”
The statement came one day after anti-Israel students staged an unauthorized protest replete with keffiyehs, face masks, and demands that Columbia become a sanctuary campus for illegal immigrants. Demonstrators also hung a large “Free Palestine” sign from a building and reportedly chanted so loudly that they could be heard inside nearby buildings in which active classes were being held. Armstrong took no action against them.
The Trump administration has not yet commented on the Wall Street Journal‘s report or the latest unauthorized protest, which came after Columbia’s Hillel International chapter told The Algemeiner on Friday that Columbia’s agreement to combat antisemitism in higher education is “promising” and expressed hope that it “further moves us in the right direction.”
McMahon similarly praised the university.
“Columbia is demonstrating appropriate cooperation with the Trump administration’s requirements, and we look forward to a lasting resolution,” she said in a statement as part of a press release issued on Monday by an inter-agency task force on antisemitism. “I have been in communication with Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong over the last few weeks and appreciate her leadership and commitment to advance truly meaningful reforms on campus.”
Monday’s release also contained a statement by Kennedy, who said the institution is beginning to “restore itself as a garden of tolerance, reason, compassion, and respect.”
Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), an office which assists the federal government’s purchasing of goods and services, said, “Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign.” He added, however, that school officials in the Armstrong administration “must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end antisemitism.”
Columbia University has produced some of the most indelible examples of campus antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — among them a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. However, it is not the first Ivy League institution to allegedly pantomime a commitment to addressing antisemitism to repel public scrutiny and government action.
According to a May 2024 report by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard University allegedly conspired to achieve similar aims during a tumultuous 2023-2024 academic year which saw its students quote terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event and its professors share an antisemitic cartoon. The report claimed that Harvard formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show, refusing to consult it at key moments during an explosion of antisemitic incidents on campus. It also said that Harvard never took meaningful action to address antisemitic hatred and the flouting of school rules against harassment and discrimination, a policy failure that allegedly contributed to the eruption of a nearly three-week-long demonstration in which a group calling itself Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) commandeered Harvard Yard and refused to leave unless the administration agreed to divest from and boycott Israel
Writing to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky said that Columbia’s apparent playing both ends against the middle is a cause of eroding trust in the higher education system, which he says tramples on the true purpose of a liberal arts education in order to promote a far-left political agenda.
“There is a collapsing of public faith in the politics and costs of universities like Columbia, all necessitating immediate reform,” Romirowsky said. “Armstrong needs to understand that successfully rehabilitating its image requires a sincere, top-down driven approach that can serve as a model of reform for all university leaders. A conception of the liberal arts and sciences should be promoted in which the primary goal of learning is individual growth and exploration and the goal of research is the conservation and expansion of knowledge and thought.”
He continued, “Scholar-activism in the sense of politically aligned teaching and research or social justice in the sense of remaking society through undemocratic means cannot be goals, nor should they be publicly funded.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Colorado Attack Suspect Charged with Assault, Use of Explosives
FILE PHOTO: Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman poses for a jail booking photograph after his arrest in Boulder, Colorado, U.S. June 2, 2025. Photo: Boulder Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
A suspect in an attack on a pro-Israeli rally in Colorado that injured eight people was being held on Monday on an array of charges, including assault and the use of explosives, in lieu of a $10-million bail, according to Boulder County records.
The posted list of felony charges against suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, in the attack on Sunday also includes charges of murder in the first degree, although police in the city of Boulder have said on social media that no victims died in the attack. Authorities could not be reached immediately to clarify.
Witnesses reported the suspect used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd. He was heard to yell “Free Palestine” during the attack, according to the FBI, in what the agency called a “targeted terror attack.”
Four women and four men between 52 and 88 years of age were transported to hospitals after the attack, Boulder Police said.
The attack took place on the Pearl Street Mall, a popular pedestrian shopping district near the University of Colorado, during an event organized by Run for Their Lives, an organization devoted to drawing attention to the hostages seized in the aftermath of Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel.
Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm, the Chabad director at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told CBS Colorado that the 88-year-old victim was a Holocaust refugee who fled Europe.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Soliman had entered the country in August 2022 on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022. “The suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” the spokesperson said.
The FBI raided and searched Soliman’s home in El Paso County, Colorado, the agency said on social media. “As this is an ongoing investigation, no additional information is available at this time.”
The attack in Boulder was the latest act of violence aimed at Jewish Americans linked to outrage over Israel’s escalating military offensive in Gaza. It followed the fatal shooting of two Israel Embassy aides that took place outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum last month.
Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said after the shooting there was a question of how far security perimeters outside Jewish institutions should extend.
Boulder Police said they would hold a press conference later on Monday to discuss details of the Colorado attack.
The Denver office of the FBI, which is handling the case, did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls seeking clarification on the homicide charges or other details in the case.
Officials from the Boulder County Jail, Boulder Police and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to inquiries.
The post Colorado Attack Suspect Charged with Assault, Use of Explosives first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Poised to Dismiss US Nuclear Proposal, Iranian Diplomat Says
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iran is poised to reject a US proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests or soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment.
“Iran is drafting a negative response to the US proposal, which could be interpreted as a rejection of the US offer,” the senior diplomat, who is close to Iran’s negotiating team, told Reuters.
The US proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who was on a short visit to Tehran and has been mediating talks between Tehran and Washington.
After five rounds of discussions between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, several obstacles remain.
Among them are Iran’s rejection of a US demand that it commit to scrapping uranium enrichment and its refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium – possible raw material for nuclear bombs.
Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
“In this proposal, the US stance on enrichment on Iranian soil remains unchanged, and there is no clear explanation regarding the lifting of sanctions,” said the diplomat, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Araqchi said Tehran would formally respond to the proposal soon.
Tehran demands the immediate removal of all US-imposed curbs that impair its oil-based economy. But the US says nuclear-related sanctions should be removed in phases.
Dozens of institutions vital to Iran’s economy, including its central bank and national oil company, have been blacklisted since 2018 for, according to Washington, “supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation.”
Trump’s revival of “maximum pressure” against Tehran since his return to the White House in January has included tightening sanctions and threatening to bomb Iran if the negotiations yield no deal.
During his first term in 2018, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Iran responded by escalating enrichment far beyond the pact’s limits.
Under the deal, Iran had until 2018 curbed its sensitive nuclear work in return for relief from US, EU and U.N. economic sanctions.
The diplomat said the assessment of “Iran’s nuclear negotiations committee,” under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was that the US proposal was “completely one-sided” and could not serve Tehran’s interests.
Therefore, the diplomat said, Tehran considers this proposal a “non-starter” and believes it unilaterally attempts to impose a “bad deal” on Iran through excessive demands.
NUCLEAR STANDOFF RAISES MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS
The stakes are high for both sides. Trump wants to curtail Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race and perhaps threaten Israel. Iran’s clerical establishment, for its part, wants to be rid of the devastating sanctions.
Iran says it is ready to accept some limits on enrichment, but needs watertight guarantees that Washington would not renege on a future nuclear accord.
Two Iranian officials told Reuters last week that Iran could pause uranium enrichment if the US released frozen Iranian funds and recognized Tehran’s right to refine uranium for civilian use under a “political deal” that could lead to a broader nuclear accord.
Iran’s arch-foe Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat and says it would never allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Araqchi, in a joint news conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo, said: “I do not think Israel will commit such a mistake as to attack Iran.”
Tehran’s regional influence has meanwhile been diminished by military setbacks suffered by its forces and those of its allies in the Shi’ite-dominated “Axis of Resistance,” which include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iraqi militias.
In April, Saudi Arabia’s defence minister delivered a blunt message to Iranian officials to take Trump’s offer of a new deal seriously as a way to avoid the risk of war with Israel.
The post Iran Poised to Dismiss US Nuclear Proposal, Iranian Diplomat Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Islamist Crescent: A New Syrian Danger
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
The dramatic fall of the Assad regime in Syria has undeniably reshaped the Middle East, yet the emerging power dynamics, particularly the alignment between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, warrant profound scrutiny from those committed to American and Israeli security. While superficially presented as a united front against Iranian influence, this new Sunni axis carries a dangerous undercurrent of Islamism and regional ambition that could ultimately undermine, rather than serve, the long-term interests of Washington and Jerusalem.
For too long, Syria under Bashar al-Assad served as a critical conduit for Iran’s destabilizing agenda, facilitating arms transfers to Hezbollah and projecting Tehran’s power across the Levant. The removal of this linchpin is, on the surface, a strategic victory. However, the nature of the new Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa — a figure Israeli officials continue to view with deep suspicion due to his past as a former Al-Qaeda-linked commander — raises immediate red flags. This is not merely a change of guard; it is a shift that introduces a new set of complex challenges, particularly given Turkey’s historical support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization deemed a terror group by Saudi Arabia and many other regional states.
Israel’s strategic calculus in Syria has always been clear: to degrade Iran’s military presence, prevent Hezbollah from acquiring advanced weaponry, and maintain operational freedom in Syrian airspace. Crucially, Israel has historically thought it best to have a decentralized, weak, and fragmented Syria, with reports that it has actively worked against the resurgence of a robust central authority. This preference stems from a pragmatic understanding that a strong, unified Syria, especially one under the tutelage of an ambitious regional power like Turkey, could pose much more of a threat than the Assad regime ever did. Indeed, Israeli defense officials privately express concern at Turkey’s assertive moves, accusing Ankara of attempting to transform post-war Syria into a Turkish protectorate under Islamist tutelage. This concern is not unfounded; Turkey’s ambitious, arguably expansionist, objectives — and its perceived undue dominance in Arab lands — are viewed by Israel as warily as Iran’s previous influence.
The notion that an “Ottoman Crescent” is now replacing the “Shiite Crescent” should not be celebrated as a net positive. While it may diminish Iranian power, it introduces a new form of regional hegemony, one driven by an ideology that has historically been antithetical to Western values and stability. The European Union’s recent imposition of sanctions on Turkish-backed Syrian army commanders for human rights abuses, including arbitrary killings and torture, further underscores the problematic nature of some elements within this new Syrian landscape. The fact that al-Sharaa has allowed such individuals to operate with impunity and even promoted them to high-ranking positions should give Washington pause.
From an American perspective, while the Trump administration has pragmatically engaged with the new Syrian government, lifting sanctions and urging normalization with Israel, this engagement must be tempered with extreme caution. The core American interests in the Middle East — counterterrorism, containment of Iran, and regional stability — are not served by empowering Islamist-leaning factions or by enabling a regional power, like Turkey, whose actions have sometimes undermined the broader fight against ISIS. Washington must demand that Damascus demonstrate a genuine commitment to taking over the counter-ISIS mission and managing detention facilities, and unequivocally insist that Turkey cease actions that risk an ISIS resurgence.
The argument that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite their own complex internal dynamics, are simply pragmatic actors countering Iran overlooks the ideological underpinnings that concern many conservatives. Turkey’s ruling party, rooted in political Islam, and its historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, present a fundamental challenge to the vision of a stable, secular, and pro-Western Middle East. While Saudi Arabia has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, its alignment with Turkey in Syria, and its own internal human rights record, means that this “new front” is far from a clean solution.
The Saudi-Turkey alignment in Syria is a double-edged sword. While it may indeed serve to counter Iran’s immediate regional ambitions, it simultaneously risks empowering actors whose long-term objectives and ideological leanings are deeply problematic for American, Israeli, and Western interests. Washington and Jerusalem must approach this new dynamic with extreme vigilance, prioritizing the containment of all forms of radicalism — whether Shiite or Sunni — and ensuring that any strategic gains against Iran do not inadvertently pave the way for a new, equally dangerous, Islamist crescent to rise in the heart of the Levant.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
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