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August 19, 2025
By Tal Fortgang ‘17
Columbia University’s recent settlement with the Trump administration represents a long-awaited watershed moment in the ongoing battle between the federal government and American universities. Its arrival is enormously symbolic within the ongoing saga and is a sign of things to come. How would the federal government treat free speech and academic freedom concerns? Was it looking to avoid going to court, or would it welcome the opportunity to litigate formally? And how much would each side be willing to compromise on its deeply entrenched positions?
A settlement – better described as a deal, not merely because dealmaking is the President’s preferred framework for governance but because the feds did not actually sue Columbia -- was always the most likely outcome of the showdown. It is not inherently inappropriate as a resolution to legitimate civil rights concerns, though the administration probably could have achieved its objectives more sustainably had it followed the procedure set out in civil rights law. Nevertheless, a deal has been struck, and assessing it is more complex than simply deeming it good or bad by virtue of its existing – though many certainly wish each side had simply declined to negotiate with the other.
Digging into the deal – and attending to its silences -- reveals a combination of promising reforms, distractions, and even some failures. Most critically, the agreement’s silence on admissions and hiring practices suggests that the underlying issues that precipitated this crisis will likely resurface, creating a cycle of federal intervention that will relegate this episode to a footnote.
Sena Chang
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Antisemitic graffiti of a gray swastika was found on the wall of a graduate student apartment building inside the Lakeside housing complex in mid-July. The graffiti was removed immediately following multiple reports, with the Department of Public Safety (DPS) opening an investigation into the incident and increasing foot patrols in the area in response, according to University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill.
Construction was underway inside Lakeside at the time of the incident, and the University has not yet determined whether the graffiti was the work of a student or contractor. No suspects have been named.
Isabel Vincent and Benjamin Weinthal
New York Post
Excerpt: A controversial Princeton professor with strong ties to the Iranian regime has quietly stepped down from the Ivy League school, following a campaign from dissidents to remove him.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist, retired from his position after 15 years as the head of the school’s Program on Science and Global Security on June 1, according to an announcement listing retiring employees on Princeton’s website. The professor is controversial for being heavily involved in Iran’s chemical and nuclear programs beginning in 2004, long before the country was known to have been building up its nuclear arsenal, according to German journalist Bruno Schirra.
Hugh E. Brennan
October 12, 2023
It is amusing how our best and brightest are willing to subvert the law in the interest of their ideology. I might say in service of their religion. Princeton undergraduate admissions are a limited and valuable commodity virtually guaranteeing entry to the elite of American society. The idea that immutable characteristics of race or ethnicity enter into the equation is subversive of republican citizenship. Justice Harlan’s courageous statement “our constitution is color-blind” in his famous Plessy v Ferguson dissent is, now in our increasingly diverse population, more important as the lodestar of our jurisprudence than ever. That American children of East and South Asian descent should be forced through an increasingly narrowed gate is as atrocious as when there were “too many” Jews. Somehow, a Korean grocer’s kid is tasked with making up for slavery and Jim Crow.
That the public has caught on to this vicious racial gerrymandering scheme is evident in the rapid increase in college applicants claiming indigenous or Hispanic identities. Should DNA tests be required along with essays?
Reflect that our great universities join the antebellum South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa in their obsession with race. Not very good company to keep.