Connect with us

RSS

Trump Administration Slashes $400 Million in Funding for Columbia University

US President Donald Trump greets Republican lawmakers before addressing a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025. Photo: USA Today via Reuters Connect.

The Trump administration has canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia University as punishment for the school’s failing to address campus antisemitism, executing an ultimatum delivered by US Education Secretary Linda McMahon this week.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including 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.

“Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and antisemitic harassment on their campuses — only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,” McMahon said in an announcement issued by the members of the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism on Friday. “Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”

Leo Terrell, who leads the Department of Justice’s task force, added, “This is only the beginning. Canceling these taxpayer funds is our strongest signal yet that the federal government is not going to be party to an education institution like Columbia that does not protect Jewish students and staff.”

Meanwhile, Columbia University has said, “We are reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding. We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

US President Donald Trump has warned higher education institutions that failing to rein in anti-Zionist agitators could result in sustained injuries to their financial health.

As a candidate for president, he suggested taxing their lucrative endowment funds, some of which are valued at dollar amounts that equal or eclipse the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of dozens of small but prosperous countries across the world. For example, Harvard University — which recently settled a major antisemitism lawsuit it fought tooth and nail to discredit — is notably richer than the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the oil-rich nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to suspend federal funding to any educational institution that refuses to quell riotous demonstrations and discipline pro-Hamas agitators who foster anti-Jewish hatred.

“All federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests,” Trump said in a statement posted on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2022. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”

He added, “No masks!”

Other prestigious schools have been accused of refusing to protect the civil rights of Jewish students.

In a recent “Campus Report Card” issued by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), no Ivy League institution — save Dartmouth College, whose “B” grade led the pack — earned better than a “C,” a mark given to Brown University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University rated lowest, scoring “D” grades.

Harvard’s receiving a “C” comes amid a period described by observers as a low point in its history. The institution, America’s oldest and arguably most prestigious, recently settled a merged lawsuit in which two groups accused it of refusing to discipline an allegedly antisemitic professor and other perpetrators of anti-Jewish discrimination, hate speech, and harassment. For months, the university’s legal counsel strove to dismiss the complainant’s charges, arguing that they lacked legal standing. Meanwhile, its highly reputed Law School saw its student government issue a resolution which accused Israel of genocide; its students quoted terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event held in April; and dozens of its students and faculty participated in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment attended by members of a group that had shared an antisemitic cartoon.

Antisemitic outrages have continued into the 2024-2025 academic year. In November, Harvard’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life was criticized by rising Jewish civil rights activist Shabbos Kestenbaum for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement precipitated by antisemitic behavior. The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to be banned from campus.

Former Harvard University president Larry Summers said on Monday that the administration’s response to campus antisemitism remains unsatisfactory.

“Harvard continues its failure to effectively address antisemitism,” Summers posted on the X/Twitter social media platform. “Despite [current Harvard president Alan Garber’s] clear and strong personal moral commitment, he has lacked the will and/or leverage to effect the necessary large-scale change, and the Corporation has been ineffectual.”

The Harvard Corporation is the university’s highest governing body.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Trump Administration Slashes $400 Million in Funding for Columbia University first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.

They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.

Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.

State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.

Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.

Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.

Continue Reading

RSS

Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family

i24 NewsThe body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.

Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.

“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.

“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.

“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”

Continue Reading

RSS

Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24

i24 NewsThe stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.

Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.

The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.

“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”

“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”

Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.

After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News