Post #22
Whose Agenda Reshaped Columbia?
By The Specter Editorial Staff
As Columbia begins a new presidency, the political landscape surrounding the university looks very different from the one in which the federal demands were issued in March 2025. Public opinion about Israel and Gaza has shifted, progressive candidates have won major elections across New York City, and many assumptions that seemed politically untouchable in early 2025 are now being openly debated. That changing landscape makes this an appropriate moment to revisit the documentary record behind Columbia's transformation—and to ask whether the decisions made during that extraordinary period deserve renewed public scrutiny and accountability.
For many at Columbia, the story begins on Friday, March 7, 2025, when Interim President Katrina Armstrong sent an email titled "Responding to Federal Action," announcing that the federal government was cancelling $400 million in research funding. She reported that the federal agencies cite “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” See full email here.
The next day, March 8, 2025Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia, was abducted from his apartment by ICE agents from Department of Homeland Security and ICE. On March 9, another Columbia student Yunseo Chung sought a court order barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining her for her protest activity. On March 11, Ranjani Srinivasan left the US upon the belief that Columbia was ready to hand her over to ICE. Many members of the Columbia community were struck by the absence of any meaningful public effort by university leadership to defend these students.
Then, on March 13, 2025, a letter was released from the federal government laying out nine preconditions Columbia would have to satisfy before negotiations over restoring federal funding could begin. The letter was extraordinary. Rather than addressing research compliance or financial oversight, it prescribed changes to university governance, student discipline, faculty oversight, admissions, and academic departments. It became headline news across the country and world.
Immediately, many Columbia faculty and staff began organizing resistance, planning speak-outs and calling for meetings with leadership. On March 18 the Columbia Chapter of the AAUP issued Assault on Columbia, condemning the unprecedented actions of the federal government, and also denouncing the ICE arrests of student protestors as “a blatant effort to stifle political speech and peaceful protest, and instill fear.”
What is less widely known is that many of the demands included in the federal government’s March 13 letter had already appeared weeks earlier in a February 2025 petition signed by approximately 200 Columbia affiliates. Addressed to Interim President Katrina Armstrong, the petition urged harsher measures against “antisemitism and anti-Western indoctrination” at Columbia, adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, stronger punishment of student protesters, increased hiring of pro-Israel faculty, and other institutional changes. One striking aspect of the petition is that more than half of its signatories were affiliated with Columbia's medical campus, even though the protests and encampments that prompted the petition occurred primarily on the Morningside campus. The petition was publicly reported by the Columbia Daily Spectator on February 12–13, 2025.
Whether federal officials became aware of that petition through its publication, received it directly from its authors, or independently arrived at similar conclusions cannot be determined from the public record. What can be established is that the overlap between the two documents is extensive.
What the comparison shows:
12 distinct policy demands across both documents
7 of the 12 appear in both documents in substantially similar form
3 appear only in the February petition signed by Columbia affiliates
2 appear only in the March 13 federal letter
The table below allows readers to compare the two documents directly.
| Topic | Feb 2025 petition signed by Columbia affiliates | Federal government letter (Mar 13, 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Mask ban | Enforce a mask ban on campus (except for medical use) | Ban masks that are intended to conceal identity or intimidate others, with exceptions for religious and health reasons. Any masked individual must wear their Columbia ID on the outside of their clothing. |
| IHRA definition of antisemitism | Adopt the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism. | Formalize, adopt, and promulgate a definition of antisemitism. President Trump’s Executive Order 13899 uses the IHRA definition. Anti-“Zionist” discrimination against Jews in areas unrelated to Israel or Middle East must be addressed. |
| Time, place & manner rules | Reinstate and enforce former time-place-manner rules. Columbia’s central administration should be responsible for implementation and enforcement by disciplinary action rather than the University Senate or University Judicial Board. | Implement permanent, comprehensive time, place, and manner rules to prevent disruption of teaching, research, and campus life. |
| Expel encampment participants | Columbia University students who break into buildings or disrupt teaching should be expelled from the university; students from affiliate institutions who are convicted of the same should be banned from our campus. | The University must complete disciplinary proceedings for Hamilton Hall and encampments. Meaningful discipline means expulsion or multi-year suspension. |
| Abolish UJB / centralize discipline | Columbia’s central administration should be responsible for implementation and enforcement of these rules rather than the University Senate or University Judicial Board. | Abolish the University Judicial Board (UJB) and centralize all disciplinary processes under the Office of the President. Empower the Office of the President to suspend or expel students with an appeal process through the Office of the President. |
| Hold student groups accountable | Remove from positions of leadership and curriculum development all Columbia faculty who have violated university policies, including regarding antisemitism, such as professors who have participated in the encampment or who called for violence. | Recognized student groups and individuals operating as constituent members of, or providing support for, unrecognized groups engaged in violations of University policy must be held accountable through formal investigations, disciplinary proceedings, and expulsion as appropriate. |
| MESAAS reform | Hire at least three tenured pro-Israel faculty in MESAAS (Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies) to allow ideological diversity and to combat indoctrination against the West and Israel under the guise of ‘academic independence.’ | Begin the process of placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years. The University must provide a full plan, with date certain deliverables, by the March 20, 2025, deadline. |
| Relieve Prof. Massad | Immediately relieve Joseph Massad of his teaching responsibilities with Columbia students. Investigate Massad’s actions to determine if he violated Title VI, and if substantiated, immediately dismiss him from Columbia University. | — Not included |
| Reinstate Prof. Davidai | Reinstate Professor Shai Davidai’s access to campus. | — Not included |
| Tel Aviv Global Center | Announce a date for the opening of the Global Center in Tel Aviv. | — Not in the March 13 letter, but announced March 24, 2025 on federal goverment website for the General Services Administration respond to Columbia University’s actions to comply with Joint Task Force pre-conditions: "Advance Columbia's Tel Aviv Center. Programming for the Columbia Tel Aviv Global Hub will launch in Q2 2025." |
| Campus law enforcement authority | — Not included | The University must ensure that Columbia security has full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators who foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment, or otherwise interfere with classroom instruction or the functioning of the university. |
| Admissions reform | — Not included | Deliver a plan for comprehensive admissions reform. The plan must include a strategy to reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices to conform with federal law and policy. |
This comparison does not establish how federal officials became aware of the February 2025 petition signed by Columbia affiliates, nor does it prove that the petition influenced the federal government. It does establish that many of the proposals later presented as federal demands had already been publicly advocated by a relatively small group of Columbia affiliates weeks earlier.
With that in mind, one particularly noteworthy example concerns Columbia's proposed Tel Aviv Global Center. The Tel Aviv Global Center is especially notable because it illustrates that Columbia's subsequent commitments extended beyond the demands contained in the federal government's March 13 letter. Opening the center was explicitly requested in the February petition but did not appear in the federal government's March 13 written demands. Nevertheless, on March 24, the federal govt GSA announced that Columbia had agreed to move forward with the Tel Aviv Global Center as part of the negotiations, suggesting that discussions between Columbia and the federal government extended beyond what appeared in the formal March 13 letter.
The Tel Aviv Global Center was not the only example. University leaders also maintained that the review of MESAAS was distinct from the federal demands. Yet the review ultimately recommended expanding teaching about Israel—another proposal that echoed priorities advanced in the February petition. Whether these developments reflect coincidence or a broader alignment is something readers can judge for themselves.
While the February petition was framed around combating antisemitism, many of the proposals that later appeared in the federal demands addressed broader questions of university governance: the concentration of disciplinary authority, oversight of academic departments, campus policing, admissions, and the balance of power between faculty and administrators. As Columbia implemented these reforms, their effects extended well beyond the issues of antisemitism, reshaping institutional governance in ways that affected every member of the Columbia community regardless of where they stood on the underlying political issues.
Those who publicly advocated these policies should also be prepared to publicly account for their consequences. If they continue to believe these reforms strengthened Columbia, they should explain why. If experience has revealed unintended harms, they should acknowledge those as well. Accountability requires more than advancing proposals; it also requires accepting responsibility for the institution those proposals helped shape.
The purpose of revisiting this history is not simply to understand where these proposals came from. It is to ask how Columbia should evaluate the consequences of the agenda that followed. Many of the proposals advanced in the February petition ultimately became university policy, fundamentally reshaping governance, academic oversight, disciplinary authority, and campus policing. Those changes deserve the same public scrutiny and accountability as the decisions that produced them.
Tomorrow, President Mnookin begins a new chapter in Columbia's history. She inherits a university transformed by decisions made during the past year. A new administration offers an opportunity not simply to turn the page, but to examine it honestly. That means asking whose voices shaped Columbia’s agenda, whether those decisions served the university well, and whether those who publicly advocated them are willing to account for their consequences. Rebuilding trust requires accountability from everyone who helped shape Columbia’s course—not only those who protested it.
The question is no longer simply what happened in 2025. It is whether the priorities that reshaped Columbia during that extraordinary period should continue to define its future.
End Notes
February 2025 petition from Columbia affiliates: Submitted by Larisa Geskin, Ran Kivetz, William Levine, and Clifford Stein, with 200 additional signatories. The letter references a January 17, 2025 in-person meeting with Interim President Armstrong and a prior October 30, 2024 letter signed by ~550 affiliates.
Federal letter sent March 13, 2025 : Signed by acting general counsels of the GSA, HHS, and Dept. of Education. Issued as “preconditions for formal negotiations” on Columbia’s continued financial relationship with the U.S. government. Compliance deadline: March 20, 2025.
Columbia faculty and Staff signers of February 2025 petition. By rank: Full Professors: 73, Associate Professors: 30, Assistant Professors: 15, Adjuncts: 19, Lecturers: 15, Emeritus: 12, Non-faculty (staff, students, postdocs, administrators): ~39. By school — it is overwhelmingly a medical center letter: CUIMC (medical/clinical): ~109 (~54%), Business School: ~13, SEAS: ~13, Teachers College: ~9, Law/Social Work/Journalism: ~6, Everything else: ~53
