Can Columbia Be Redeemed?

The more carefully I consider the details of the Columbia-Trump settlement, the more staunchly I conclude that Columbia miraculously dodged a bullet in managing to score such a sweetheart deal, with a slap on the wrist of just $221 million in fines to be paid over three years and some indeterminate federal oversight. In my direct lived experience, to remain employable on campus circa the 2010s and early 2020s was to have to always keep one’s mouth shut navigating a minefield of fashionable bigotries, some loudly encouraged and others more tacitly endorsed, with the bulk of sanctioned prejudice aimed directly at human beings of more or less my demographic description.