Why Trump’s Ultimatum to Columbia Could Upend Higher Education

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It was an obscure, 44-word demand toward the end of the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Columbia University this month ordering a dramatic overhaul of admissions and disciplinary rules. But it could prove to have consequences for colleges and universities nationwide.

With $400 million in canceled government grants and contracts on the line, federal officials ordered Columbia’s administration to place the university’s Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership for at least five years.

Typically, a receivership is handled internally. University administrators can take the rare step of imposing the measure when a department descends into chaos. It is viewed as a last-resort solution to extended periods of internal strife and dysfunction.

This time is different. The call for a receivership is coming from outside the university — and directly from the White House. And it arrives at a moment when dozens of other colleges and universities are facing federal inquiries and fear a fate similar to Columbia’s.

“It is one small department in one university,” said Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the Middle Eastern studies department at Columbia. “But it will reverberate across the entire country.”

The interdisciplinary program at the center of the government’s demand — the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department — has been in a pitched battle for decades over its scholarship and employment of faculty members who describe themselves as anti-Zionist.