Jonathan W. Gray writes:

The detention of Mahmoud Khalil signals a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on campus dissent. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to punish colleges and universities that allowed what he characterized as “illegal protests” against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, singling out Columbia University for special opprobrium. His administration followed up on that threat on Friday by canceling roughly $400 million in grants and contracts. Combined with an earlier interruption of funds from the National Institute of Health, or NIH, and the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, that affected research centers and medical schools at colleges and universities across the nation, the Trump administration’s actions on Friday meant that the loss in funding for the Manhattan-based Ivy could total as much as $1.5 billion.

Last Friday, in the hopes of forestalling these reprisals, Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong asserted in a statement that “Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus.… This is our number one priority.” Less than 24 hours later, Columbia demonstrated just how much it prioritized getting back into the good graces of President Trump—to say nothing of an influential group of antagonistic alumni—when it allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, into a university-owned residence to take Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil into custody. To reiterate: Columbia University invited enforcers handpicked by ICE’s leader, the controversial Tom Homan, onto its private property to abduct someone in retaliation for a constitutionally protected act of political protest—a stark contrast to how other civic leaders have treated prospective ICE incursions.

While these deplorable actions have generated outrage and protest, defunding Columbia is part of a coordinated plan to stifle the independence of colleges and universities across the nation. Less discussed nationally is how the cuts at NIH and HHS will undermine important regional institutions like the University of Alabama at Birmingham. While the students there did not engage in widespread protests against the Israeli state’s conduct that some misconstrued as antisemitic, and while Alabama is a deep-red state that has elected two sycophantic MAGA senators, this did not stop UAB from suffering projected cuts that threaten to upend employment in the region.

If the cuts stand, UAB will be collateral damage in the larger MAGA project to reshape the United States in the image of Victor Orbán’s Hungary, where there are no independent institutions capable of fomenting dissent through criticism or demonstration. To this end, Linda McMahon, newly confirmed to lead the Education Department, announced a list of 60 schools that, like Columbia, were under investigation for antisemitism and might lose federal funding as a result. But the colleges and universities included on the list—and the ones that are rather conspicuously missing—give the game away: The list of colleges and universities currently under investigation for antisemitism reveals that the Trump administration’s true motivation is to identify institutions receptive to bullying. [Continue reading…]