By a Columbia University SWC-UAW member
As the Trump administration intensifies its assault on the Palestine solidarity movement and ‘diversity and equality’, Columbia University is once again first in the firing line. Last week, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of $400 million in federal funds from the University, citing ‘the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students’, despite successive crackdowns on campus activism. Just two days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) illegally detained Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent pro-Palestine campus activist and recent graduate, at his apartment in a Columbia University-owned building.
Plain-clothes agents, refusing to identify themselves or provide a warrant, handcuffed and removed Khalil to an unknown location – since revealed as a federal detention center in Louisiana – informing him that his visa had been revoked, despite the fact that he is a legal permanent resident. Just a day before his arrest, he had written to university officials requesting support and protection, after a targeted online campaign against him, including tweets by Columbia faculty member and Zionist agitator Shai Davidai (whose campus access was temporarily suspended last year, but who remains in post).
The Trump administration is pursuing an extreme escalation in a long-running public struggle between Columbia students, on the one hand, and faculty, administrators and federal officials, on the other, which began after a series of Palestine solidarity encampments on campus in spring 2024, culminating in NYPD’s violent dispersal of a student occupation and the resignation of Columbia University president Minouche Shafik. Disciplinary proceedings against students involved in the occupation and solidarity encampments have been ongoing since last spring, and fraught with instances of arbitrary and excessive administrative surveillance and investigation, alongside constantly changing disciplinary policies. On 14 March, four days after Khali’s arrest, Columbia announced a series of expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations for students involved in last year’s occupation.
Among those expelled is Grant Miner, president of SWC-UAW, the union representing student workers at Columbia University. The union was due to begin negotiations with the university over a new contract agreement just a day later, but two hours before the first negotiation meeting, union representatives were informed via a one-line email from administrators that the bargaining session was canceled. Several hundred union members and supporters rallied outside of the intended meeting room in protest, later joined by an independent demonstration of pro-Palestine activists in support of Mahmoud Khalil. While strike action remains a legally protected response as part of an ‘unfair labor practice’ claim, which may include ‘refusing to bargain in good faith’, such claims are mediated by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency whose members and legal counselors are appointed by the US President, hardly promising due process.
Columbia’s capitulation
The current university administration, led by interim president Katrina Armstrong, has so far toed a hand-wringing apologetic line while emphasizing its responsibility to comply with law enforcement, although it has reportedly refused to help agents identify Palestine activists. In 2017, in response to anti-migrant policies from the first Trump administration, Columbia proactively worked to establish itself as a ‘sanctuary campus’, meaning the university would protect immigrants from Federal agencies.
Yet last week, Columbia published a new protocol for ICE visits to campus, which initially said that “exigent circumstances may allow for access to University buildings or people without a warrant.” Wide outrage from student and faculty at this statement prompted an update stating that “exigent circumstances” may mean “for example, the risk of imminent harm to people or property”. Administrators have insisted this does not constitute a change in policy, yet refuse to make a positive statement of intent to protect international students. Instead, students receive daily emails from the president with pathetic statements such as: “I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents in two University residences tonight.”
Currently, only two gated entrances to Columbia campus remain open, with students and staff required to scan university IDs for entry, and regular police presence. While administrators have suggested that ICE agents would be asked for warrants at gates before being allowed to enter campus, campaigners have pointed out that so-called ‘public safety’ staff manning the gates are not legally trained and may not feel safe or empowered to challenge federal officials claiming a right to entry. In any case, ICE agents seem to be targeting students in their university-administered residences, with another student having a visa revoked after home visits and another arrested.
Despite many individual faculty members supporting decisive resistance and solidarity, emergency meetings between graduate students and faculty have revealed a diversity of views among faculty and a reluctance to act. Tenured and tenure-track (permanently employed) faculty at private universities in the US are denied the right to unionize, based on a 1980 Supreme Court ruling interpreting the National Labor Relations Act, which governs most labor law. While a further 2014 ruling has widened the scope for unionization among non-tenured faculty, and other New York universities have faculty unions for contingent staff, non-tenured faculty at Columbia are still campaigning for union recognition. Columbia faculty have no legally protected mechanisms for collective action, and conservatism, passivity or fear of reprisals dominate departmental culture.
Faculty members interested in taking action are organizing public statements and discussions about further action primarily through the Association of American University Professors (AAUP), a national professional association which has taken increasingly strong public stances in defense of academic freedom. On campus, students have called for faculty to cancel classes in protest, and there have been several lively demonstrations, both inside campus – including one organized by Jewish students – and outside campus with the support of external groups. A national day of action for democracy has been called for 17 April with AAUP endorsement.
Political witch-hunt
It is clear that no amount of persecution of student activists or compliance with federal investigations will satisfy the Trump administration, which is pursuing a blatantly McCarthyite political attack on the academy as part of its culture war against the left and the Palestine solidarity movement. Fifty other universities are under investigation, while a further letter sent to Columbia stipulates a series of extreme conditions for the return of federal funding, including empowering Columbia campus security to arrest and remove protesters, centralizing disciplinary procedures under the office of the President, and placing the Middle Eastern Studies Department into ‘receivership’. No self-respecting independent university can agree to such terms, which effectively constitute a direct federal takeover of university administration.
The arrests at Columbia are clearly the thin end of a wedge, designed to spread fear and silence dissent across the academy and beyond. Students, staff, and the local community should be fighting on every front – including public statements, direct action and strike action to push the university administration into a combative stance against Trump’s attacks. This could include legal challenges to Trump’s policies, declaration of a ‘sanctuary campus’ and active challenge to any immigration enforcement action on university property, and rejection of any additional federal funding attached to such unacceptable conditions. Comparable institutions like Yale have announced they will use local university funds to maintain continuity in research grants. Columbia University has an endowment of $14.8 billion, with $8 billion of this being unrestricted. It clearly has significant leeway to fill funding gaps in the medium term and should recognize the need to do so as part of a political struggle to protect academic freedom and independence.
More broadly, the restrictions on faculty unionization and increased corporatization of university administration reflect the severe weakness of the labor movement in the U.S. and the way that elite private universities function more like businesses than public institutions, highlighting the urgent need for a national struggle for democratization of education and against repressive anti-union laws.
