Yesterday the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which is made up of four government agencies, announced that it was cutting $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University. The Task Force also warned this was just the beginning, i.e. there would be more cuts coming. 

Friday evening the interim president of Columbia, Katrina Armstrong, emailed the campus with a response saying that combatting antisemitism was the administration's "number on priority."

In her email, Armstrong affirmed the University’s commitment to working with the federal government to address their concerns on antisemitism.

“To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus,” Armstrong wrote. “This is our number one priority.”...

“There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care,” Armstrong wrote in her email.

Also Friday there was a University Senate plenary where President Armstrong made similar remarks before leaving for another meeting. After she spoke, a member of the student senate condemned the school for the handful of arrests which took place this week after a large group of students refused to clear the area near the Barnard library. 

Student senator Helen Han Wei Luo, a doctoral student in the philosophy department, also read a statement on behalf of the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers...

The statement began by laying out the duties of the University as protecting free speech, maintaining academic integrity, and being “a progressive and principled force in the world.”

“Instead of fulfilling these duties by fiercely defending free speech on campus and protecting our most vulnerable students and workers, Columbia has chosen deafening silence and repeated threats of unleashing NYPD on our students and workers,” Luo said, reading from the SWC-UAW statement. “By allowing the NYPD and potentially other law enforcement agencies such as ICE onto campus, the federal government has been allowed to enact bad-faith policies with little to no resistance from the Columbia administration.”...

The statement called on the senate to pass a resolution that would establish Columbia as a sanctuary campus, ensure Columbia will not allow NYPD to enter campus “under any circumstances,” and require the University to “delete any and all records” compiled on students and workers documenting their political activity, “including presence at protests that has not been subpoenaed.”

Luo then made her personal remarks, expressing her “personal disgust at our institution’s display of an absolutely disgraceful and pointless cruelty in the last week alone, which reveals of the administration a fundamental disinterest in being leaders of a university, the absolute idiocy of the decision-making in calling a fake bomb threat in the pretense of arresting peacefully demonstrating protesters, brutalizing them, has surpassed my wildest imagination.”...

“If $14 billion is not enough for our so-called leaders to buy a backbone, then I have no choice to conclude that these are people who never had an interest in acquiring a backbone,” Luo said. “Now they no longer pretend to be ashamed to arrest our students for no reason, to destroy our campus. They are not ashamed.”

Contrary to her claim, I think the leaders are about to finally show some backbone after months of tolerating disruptions, vandalism and harassment. The loss of $400 million has a great ability to concentrate the mind. 

At least some minds. Student senator Luo has complained before about having her remarks in defense of pro-Hamas students recorded at a previous meeting and posted online.

“Speaking about antisemitism as a PARTICULAR ail on campus is not the right approach.”

Today in her official capacity as a @Columbia Senator, grad student Helen Han Wei Luo (@OceaniaLuo) argued against even discussing antisemitism on campus!

This is so unbelievably offensive. pic.twitter.com/4mNsi8SqBx

— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) November 22, 2024

The ignorance on display is stunning especially given that this particular student senator is in a Ph.D. program studying "ethics and etiquette." What system of ethics celebrates the rape, kidnapping and murder of civilians including women and young children? I must have missed that one.

Whatever it is, that seems to be the one many Columbia students have adopted. This week the pro-Hamas students were posting stickers glorifying Yahya Sinwar and the al-Aqsa flood.

Sinwar is now being glorified by the @BarnardCollege protesters too. They are all in on terrorism. https://t.co/OFEi5qE4O3 pic.twitter.com/yVUzBVf3bM

— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) March 5, 2025

BREAKING: the same @BarnardCollege protesters are handing out photos of Hezbollah arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah.

Get terror support off campus NOW! https://t.co/xmXRHEYbkn pic.twitter.com/JSZVYXmISf

— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) March 5, 2025

The university should stop tolerating those who vandalize and disrupt the campus and who attempt to terrorize their fellow Jewish students. Columbia has already said it knows who most of these students are. If they want to be certain, Columbia could put an end to masks on campus and suspend students who repeatedly break campus rules intended to apply to everyone. Columbia has 400 million reasons to finally take off the kid gloves and show some backbone when dealing with these adult, pro-terrorism students.