Why Columbia gave in to Trump’s extortion

On July 23, Columbia University entered into a resolution agreement with the federal government to settle claims that it didn’t do enough to prevent harassment of Jewish students.

Columbia promised to pay $200 million in fines, plus $21 million to settle employment discrimination claims. It also agreed to a raft of policy changes, pledging to further support Jewish students, to comply with laws banning consideration of race in admissions and hiring, to provide the government with admissions data and disciplinary information about international students, to ensure its Middle Eastern Studies programs are “comprehensive and balanced” and to roll back DEI efforts.

In return, the government agreed to close multiple civil rights investigations, release most of the $400 million in previously frozen research funding and consider future grant proposals from Columbia “without disfavored treatment.”

Earlier this month, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Trump’s claims about prejudicial editing of a CBS News “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Though many legal experts considered the suit baseless, Paramount executives feared it might become an obstacle to a multi-billion dollar sale of the company requiring approval by the Federal Trade Commission. That approval finally came, in a two-to-one vote, on July 24.

In March, Paul Weiss, one of the country’s top law firms, agreed to represent clients without regard to their political affiliation and perform $40 million in pro bono work for causes supported by Trump in return for termination of a manifestly illegal and financially crippling executive order restricting the firm’s security clearances and barring its lawyers from federal buildings.

The firm’s offense? Primarily that it had a former partner who, while serving as a Manhattan prosecutor, had overseen the criminal investigation into Trump and then written a book urging his prosecution.

These three cases demonstrate that, even in long-established democracies, a leader willing to ignore legal constraints and social norms “has the cards,” as Trump would say, to settle personal scores with his long list of enemies, using one pretext or another.

Columbia, Paramount and Paul Weiss could have all chosen to fight the Trump administration in court. Confronted with demands restricting its autonomy and authority, Harvard decided to sue. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal, seems inclined to fight Trump’s lawsuit over his newspaper’s reporting on Trump’s birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. Faced with executive orders similar to the one directed at Paul Weiss, four other law firms chose to litigate rather than capitulate.

But Columbia lacks Harvard’s resources. The Wall Street Journal is not for sale. The law firms that sued did not confront as grave a risk to their billings as Paul Weiss and the eight other firms who struck similar deals.

Critics have praised those choosing to fight and pilloried those choosing to settle. It is worth noting, however, that lawsuits can turn into settlements and settlements can collapse into lawsuits.

Also, in these three cases, those deciding to fight cannot be made whole. Lawsuits can stop some administration tactics but cannot stop them all.

Suing may prompt Trump to double down on penalties, but may also serve as a bargaining chip in settlement talks. And settlements, especially with the Trump administration, can serve as the prelude to more demands.

As Claire Shipman, Columbia’s interim president, put it, “The desire for a simple narrative: capitulation versus courage, or talking versus fighting” ignores the reality “that real-life situations are deeply complex.”

No tactic will immunize a university, media corporation or law firm from a government willing to color this far outside the lines.

And individual institutions have no pathway to protect the rule of law against a government willing to ignore it. Columbia’s settlement does set a dangerous precedent. As Joseph Slaughter, a Columbia faculty member, stated, the agreement normalizes “political interference in teaching, research and the pursuit of truth.” The administration is already using the settlement as a template for negotiations with other universities, including Harvard, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown.

In our view, Columbia — which cannot survive as a research university without substantial funding from the federal government — had little choice but to cut a deal.

Harvard may yet come to the same conclusion. It has won some short-term victories and will likely win more. But even if the university wins every case it brings, it cannot compel the government to award it future grants, issue visas to foreign nationals seeking to study or work at Harvard or block every perversely creative form of intimidation the administration dreams up.

So even when it loses in court, the Trump administration still wins. Its goal is not just to intimidate its direct targets, but the sectors the targets represent: higher education, the media and law firms. These are the mainstays of the civil society of any democracy. Not coincidentally, they also house many of the president’s most visible critics.

Colleges and universities that care about their research funding, or fear the burdens of trumped-up civil rights investigations, must think twice about pursuing any action likely to incur the administration’s ire. For this reason, many of them are already engaging in “anticipatory obedience” — terminating DEI programs, mandating tougher punishments for campus protesters and shying away from public statements on sensitive issues.

As U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote when striking down Trump’s executive order against the law firm WilmerHale, "the order shouts through a bullhorn: If you take on causes disfavored by President Trump, you will be punished!” Law firms are listening, and even though those that sue are winning, a growing number are declining to take cases likely to upset the Justice Department, which is on the verge of becoming on a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization.

And as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has observed, Paramount’s settlement in the “60 Minutes” case sends a “chilling message to journalists everywhere.”

Authoritarian governments routinely seek to undermine civil society, but strong popular opposition can force a change in behavior. Most Americans disapprove of Trump’s assault on higher education and the legal system, but they can do more to make their voices heard — in the organizations they support, with their elected representatives and, of course, at the ballot box.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.