Defund Columbia!

by Gary Fouse

For several years now, Columbia University has been at or near the top of the list of schools that are hostile to Jewish students thanks to the pro-Palestinian movement that has infected so many campuses. This week, however, Columbia has reached a new low with sit-ins and protests that have shocked the nation in the violence of the rhetoric and threats to Jewish students. Inside the campus, a group of knuckleheads set up a tent city and defied the requests of the university to vacate until the NYPD was called in to remove them. One wonders where the campus police were, if Columbia even has a campus police force. Outside the gates of the school, rioters fought with police and screamed “Death to Israel, Death to America,” and so on. To top it off, four university officials including the president, Minouche Shafik, testified before Congress and demonstrated their weakness and ineptitude. And today we learn that a local campus rabbi has urged Jewish students to leave campus for their own safety. And if that wasn’t enough, the campus newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, is openly supporting the mob and dismissing charges of campus anti-Semitism.

To be fair, the university has taken a few steps to try and fix the problem including suspensions of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Sending in the NYPD to remove the squatters was a positive step, no matter what the Spectator claims to the contrary. However, it is not enough, and it is clear that the administration has lost control of the campus to the pro-Hamas mobs. Minouche has failed miserably, and she should go, just as radical professors like Joseph Massad should go. But who should stay-anyone?

Columbia does receive public money even though it is a private institution, and under the present conditions, it is time for radical solutions. This university, at the present, has no business remaining open. Whatever their sources of funding are, they should stop. Jewish families should refrain from sending their children to Columbia. Non-Jewish families should stand with Jewish students by not sending their own children to Columbia. Donors should follow suit and find other uses for their philanthropy. According to its 2023 fiscal year statement, 20% of Columbia’s revenue came from government grants (1.2 billion dollars). That would be a good place to start. In addition, 562 million dollars (9%) came from private gifts and grants. What if most of that were to go away? Net tuition was 1.5 billion dollars (24%). A serious drop in enrollments would cut into that total dramatically.

Columbia is not the only university that deserves to be shut down. There are plenty of public universities that are unworthy of public funding. Like Columbia, they are awash in money from places like China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, who use that leverage to influence the corrupt curricula (i.e., Middle East Studies). Astronomical tuitions do nothing but feed the astronomical salaries of professors, deans, chairs, etc., so they can teach worthless courses like gender studies, LGBTQ studies, and ethnic studies, all the while denigrating America, the West, whites, Jews, and trying to figure out ways to decrease the Asian-American student population (because they do so well academically). Let’s face it: A college education today is not worth what it used to be.

Returning to Columbia in particular, it is time to make an example out of this cesspool and shut it down. The question begs, however: Just who will shut it down? (The university is run by 24 trustees.) Thus, the only answer I see is to make it go bankrupt.