Was Columbia University president Katrina Armstrong lying when she committed to a series of “decisive actions” to combat anti-Semitism on campus, including “immediately strengthening our processes for enforcement of rules on demonstrations, identification and masking”?
Or was she lying when she told Columbia faculty members, behind closed doors, that “there is no change to masking and protests … no change.”
A spokeswoman for Columbia University declined to address our questions about whether there has, in fact, been a change to masking policy and it’s too early to tell whether Columbia is committed to the reforms it announced last week as a result of the financial pressure applied by the Trump administration, which has revoked $430 million in federal grant money from the school.
Armstrong’s doublespeak doesn’t bode well, and in the case of the academy, the administration should modify Reagan’s dictum before turning the spigot of taxpayer dollars back on: distrust and verify.
In the meantime, there are plenty of more worthy recipients of Columbia’s federal largesse. There is something rotten in American higher education, but the rot is far more severe at America’s most elite private institutions than at their public counterparts. State schools across the country are educating many more students at much lower cost and with a far less politicized approach.
What could $430 million do if spread across the SEC to fund programs teaching American kids how to build drones or to build anything of use? How about $400 million for vocational training for kids who aren’t going to college—building roads and bridges and anything else that requires heavy equipment and hard work and the skills that will be necessary if the worst comes to pass in a confrontation with China?
Elite schools act as though they are entitled to federal dollars while indoctrinating students to hate the very government that subsidizes their work. Enough. Let them hold bake sales for research into transgender mice and let the federal government pour money into young people who would use their skills and education to make this country strong, to grow our industrial base, and to prepare us for the conflict we all fear is on the horizon.