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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.
The post Columbia University President Denies Deceiving Trump Administration Over Antisemitism Policies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says
A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”
The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.
NO BREAD IN WEEKS
The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.
“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.
Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”
The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.
A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.
“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.
Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.
Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.
Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.
Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.
‘A MOCKERY’
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.
The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.