Lefties lie. 

That isn't an accusation. It is a statement of fact. A truth as solid as "gravity is a thing" and "men landed on the moon." It should be no more controversial to state this as a fact than the assertion that Joe Biden is a corrupt, kleptocratic moron or that communism is a failed economic and political system. 

Leftists deny those facts, liberals pretend not to believe them, but the truth is as obvious as the nose on your face. 

So imagine my shock and horror to discover that the President of Columbia University, AWFL Katrina Armstrong, held a Zoom meeting with her faculty to assure them that all the changes they promised they would make in a letter to President Trump were not going to happen. It was a ruse, a lie, a total falsehood, and that things would go on as before. 

What Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong Really Told Faculty Members About Changes the School Is Making @elianayjohnson @FreeBeacon https://t.co/JKFvToSjLA

— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) March 27, 2025

Quelle surprise! Who could have guessed that a fine, upstanding Ivy Leaguer would say whatever it took to keep the gravy train going? 

Nothing to see here.

That’s what Columbia University president Katrina Armstrong told approximately 75 faculty members who assembled on a Saturday morning Zoom call to hear from her about a letter sent by the school to the Trump administration on Friday outlining a series of steps Columbia says it is taking to address "legitimate concerns raised both from within and without our Columbia community, including by our regulators" about the eruption of anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.

Throughout the conversation, which lasted approximately 75 minutes and included Columbia provost Angela Olinto and general counsel Felice Rosan, Armstrong and Olinto downplayed or denied that change was underway, particularly when it came to meeting the Trump administration’s demand to put the school’s Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership.

"This is not a receivership," Olinto told the group. "The provost will not be writing or controlling anything. It's the faculty," she continued, adding, "Your department is totally independent."

The best interpretation of her 75-minute meeting with the faculty is that she lied to them, not to Trump. When choosing between two dangerous paths, she chose the one least likely to cost her money, the true metric by which any university president is measured. 

'I didn't lie to Trump! I lied to my faculty!' is a weak defense if she chose to take it. It is a modified Katherine Maher defense--yeah, I said that, but I didn't actually believe anything I said. 

Armstrong was very concerned that others might find out what she was telling the faculty, because another essential element of critical theory is saying different things to different people. Reality must be malleable--that is the critical part of critical theory. Obfuscation to ensure that maximum power is in the hands of the speaker is the whole point, and anything that looks like a contradiction is dangerous to the enterprise. 

Armstrong went on to say the school had made "no changes" to rules surrounding the sorts of masked protests that plagued the university last year, though Friday’s letter announced that masks are no longer allowed "for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of University policies or state, municipal, or federal laws."

The Washington Free Beacon obtained a transcript of the meeting, which seems to have been created because Columbia administrators were unable to disable the Zoom function that generates an audio transcript. The transcript itself captures administrators struggling to prevent the software from creating a transcript and then moving forward without success.

"I am unable to turn it off, for technical reasons, so we’re all just going to have to understand," an unnamed administrator said at the outset. "This meeting is being transcribed. If you are the requester of this, I would ask you to turn it off."

"Yeah, that seems to be the default. I keep telling my people to stop this thing," Olinto, the provost, responded.

The problem we face is much larger than the disgusting events we've seen on college campuses in the past few years. It is the essential corruption of our higher education system over the past few decades. Not only is it not dedicated to finding the truth; it exists to obscure it and replace reality with a fantasy world whose main function is to transfer power out of the hands of ordinary people and deposit into the hands of a transnational elite who believe they have the right and responsibility to fundamentally reshape society. 

The rot isn't just deep--it is complete. The institutions are no longer capable of being a vital and healthy part of our cultural and political enterprise because they exist to undermine its very foundation. 

The solution is not anti-intellectualism. We need the academy, and even an academic elite with the freedom to explore ideas and even to challenge the moral and ethical norms of our society. We need curious scientists, superb teachers of science, literature, and history. We need to be reminded that our assumptions are just assumptions and that the world is bigger, more complicated and more mysterious than we take for granted. 

When we look back at ancient Greece our first thought is of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and the great poets. Xenophon is still read today because the cultural legacy is what has endured, not the political battles between the major figures about whom we only know because great writers told their stories. 

Great art, architecture, scientific discoveries, and philosophy are our cultural heritage and what we admire most in our history. 

Unfortunately, the people whose reason for being is preserving and expanding upon those legacies are their greatest enemy now. Just as Marxism inspired the world architecture and art in human history, cultural Marxism has rotted out our most important institutions and are blight upon humanity. 

Our task is to destroy what is there and rebuild. Blow up the intellectual Cabrini Green and replace it with beauty and functionality. 

Editor's Note: With President Trump back in the White House, the radical left is in panic mode.

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