Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –
Dr. Katrina Armstrong
Interim President, Columbia University
officeofthepresident@columbia.edu
David Greenwald
Claire Shipman
Co-Chairs, Columbia University Board of Trustees
secretary@columbia.edu
Dear Dr. Armstrong, Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Shipman:
We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom, joined by the African Studies Association, to express our outrage about the letter dated 13 March 2025 that was sent to you by three Trump administration officials, and to urge you to respond in a principled and forceful manner to the unprecedented, unacceptable and extreme demands that it sets forth. The letter requires that Columbia University immediately comply with its specific demands as a precondition for any negotiations concerning the administration’s earlier cancellation, on political grounds, of some $400 million in federal funding for the university. That egregious action, which MESA’s board of directors discussed in a statement dated 13 March 2025 and which a number of Columbia’s legal scholars have analyzed, and the Trump administration’s letter on which we focus here, constitute a wholesale assault on the independence and integrity of Columbia University and all of this country’s institutions of higher education. They are also a direct attack on academic freedom and the constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech and assembly. We believe that this assault must be resisted at all costs, to defend our colleges and universities as well as our democracy.
MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.
The letter in question, signed by the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Education, the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, and an official of the General Services Administration, makes a long list of apparently nonnegotiable demands of Columbia that would fundamentally alter longstanding policies and practices of university governance, student rights and disciplinary procedures, while also forcing it to comply with the current administration’s ideological agenda. For example: the letter demands that Columbia impose specific penalties – expulsions or multi-year suspensions – on students currently undergoing disciplinary procedures for participation in protests, bypassing the institution’s own policies and practices. The demand that the University Judicial Board, composed of representatives of faculty, students and staff, be abolished and that all power to discipline students be concentrated in the Office of the President is an equally egregious violation of Columbia’s history and traditions.
The letter also demands, inter alia, that the university “formalize, adopt, and promulgate a definition of antisemitism” and that “[a]nti-Zionist discrimination against Jews in areas unrelated to Israel or Middle East [sic] must be addressed.” We have repeatedly pointed out (for example, here, here and here) the problems with the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its accompanying examples, which the Trump administration apparently wants Columbia to fully embrace, as well as the dangers inherent in the conflation of criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism. Capitulating to the government’s threats and demands on this issue, as on the others, would signal the end of Columbia’s independence as an educational institution.
Finally, we note the outrageous demand that Columbia place its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) in academic receivership for at least five years, apparently because the Trump administration does not like the opinions of certain members of its faculty. Allowing the US government to so crudely blackmail Columbia and interfere in its internal academic affairs would not only destroy one of this country’s preeminent centers for research and teaching on these specific areas of the world, it would also set an extremely dangerous precedent. One can easily imagine the same threat of withholding government funding being deployed to compel a university to, for example, compel a biology department to teach “creationism” on an equal basis with modern evolutionary theory, or to require that history courses portray slavery and segregation in a favorable light.
In the last year and a half, Columbia University has taken numerous actions to suppress student activism protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, apparently to appease some of its donors and outside pressure groups. More recently, it failed to speak up vigorously on behalf of former graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States seized by ICE agents inside university housing and facing deportation. And while President Armstrong declared herself “heartbroken” about recent ICE raids on students’ dorm rooms, your administration has done nothing to protect other students seized or threatened by ICE. Meanwhile, it has continued to comply with the administration’s diktat by expelling and suspending student protestors. Columbia’s actions, and its failure to stand on principle and defend its students, its faculty and academic freedom, have only emboldened the Trump administration to escalate its assault, culminating in its 13 March 2025 letter.
Acceptance of the demands set forth in that letter would destroy the independence of Columbia University and threaten the independence of every other college and university in this country. Compliance would also gravely undermine our democracy, already under severe threat in so many arenas. We therefore call on you to, at long last, stand up in a principled way for Columbia and for higher education in this country, as well as for academic freedom, by forcefully resisting the Trump administration’s authoritarian campaign to impose its ideology on our institutions of higher education.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School
Laurie A. Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
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