Columbia University Once a Bellwether of Protest
March 28, 2025
Photo by Chenyu Guan
When I interviewed a Columbia University student about campus protests (“A Conversation With a Columbia University Undergraduate,”) CounterPunch, September 6, 2024), I had no idea that this citadel of higher education would turn into a subservient gofer for Donald Trump and his dictatorial administration. At stake was $400 million in federal funds to Columbia, but the story of Columbia kowtowing to power has a much longer history, decades longer, than the current debasement by Trump and rightwing political and economic forces.
Critics may complain about the economic piece of this two-part equation, but the reality on the ground is that Columbia is sensitive to its donor base and some of its donor base demands strict adherence to Zionism and a narrow definition of antisemitism. Criticism of Zionism in no way implies antisemitism for the majority of critics, especially Jewish critics like myself.
Columbia University agreed on Friday to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which has refused to consider restoring $400 million in federal funds without major changes. (“Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds are Stripped” New York Times, March 21, 2025).
Columbia University was and is repressive in its relationship with students both in the past and now, and recently with its relationship to both students and their faculty supporters during protests against the Israel-Gaza war (“Police Clear Building at Columbia and Arrest Dozens of Protestors” New York Times, April 30, 2024). During the antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, students did not want guns brought onto the Columbia University campus and stored in an existing gym as part of its ROTC program.
Columbia’s students’ opposition to Columbia’s expansion on its property in Morningside Heights brought police onto the campus (“’Gym Crow’: Looking back on the 1968 Morningside Gym protests” Columbia Spectator, February 15, 2022). Columbia’s gentrification of Morningside Heights involved the removal, through campus expansion, of Black community members and others.
Columbia brought in over 1,000 police from the New York Police Department. While the 86 students in Hamilton Hall surrendered immediately to the police, protests associated with the Students for a Democratic Society, a mostly white organization, ended violently, with 700 students arrested and over 100 injured. The spring 1968 semester ended early due to the chaos. (Columbia Spectator, February 15, 2022).
The police presence at Columbia in the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, was repeated once again during protests against the Israel-Gaza war, this time by a militarized police force from the New York Police Department. The current repression of dissent seen at Columbia is reminiscent of the official crackdown by governments of now-defunct countries in Eastern Europe, China, and the similar crushing of dissent in places such as France in 1968. Repression of dissent is not new.
In 1971, my friend Ron and I rode the subway to the West Side of New York City and got off at Columbia University. Ron was a graduate student at New York University and I had also been a graduate student there. Ron had been accepted into a Ph.D. program at Columbia, and it was exciting to walk on the expansive campus near the classic Low Library and around the campus where some of the antiwar protests had taken place just three years earlier.
I returned to Columbia in 2010 to attend a business school graduation and Columbia seemed a staid place compared to 1971. The keynote speaker told of how as a CEO he had shed jobs to keep his company afloat in the US and seemed proud of his accomplishments.
After I interviewed the Columbia undergraduate mentioned above, I could not walk onto the campus at Columbia, as it was occupied by police following the protests against the Israel-Gaza war. One entrance from Broadway on the upper West Side was patrolled by NYPD police and Columbia security guards were everywhere with no easy access to the campus. These “snapshots” of Columbia University over time tell much about how freedom of movement and speech and protest have been harmed in the US and in New York City in particular over time.
The US has attempted to criminalize speech at Columbia University in the case of Mahmoud Khalil (“Columbia Activist in Detention Was Public Face of Protest Against Israel” (New York Times, March 10, 2025). Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student, who is being actively hunted by ICE, is suing the government to prevent her deportation for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Chung is a legal permanent resident who has lived in the US since she was 7 (“Columbia Student Hunted by ICE Sues to Prevent Deportation” New York Times, March 24, 2025).
Columbia University’s Profile in Cowardice Is Nothing New
Erick Berlanga / Columbia Daily Spectator
A crucial requirement for a dictatorship to take hold is widespread acquiescence. That is being put to test as the United States slides toward right-wing dictatorship with a real possibility of going beyond ordinary dictatorship to outright fascism. With grassroots activists still gaining their bearings after two months of relentless, unprecedented attacks by the Trump régime and Democratic Party leaders not only unable to mount a coherent opposition but, with Chuck Schumer’s capitulation, handing Donald Trump and Elon Musk a blank check, all the more important is that large institutions with the ability to fight back do so.
Yes, bringing a halt to the Trump régime’s plans and ultimately reversing the slide into right-wing despotism is the work of working people on the ground, organizing across lines and linking the many movements and causes into a mass movement of movements. Social movements are what bring about positive change. That has always been so. But it would be helpful if institutions that can resist would stop capitulating. Once one institution capitulates, bullies with a goal of fascism, now emboldened, will go after others. One example is the giant Paul Weiss law firm, one of the country’s largest, a $2 billion operation with lawyers who surely could make winning constitutional arguments while there are still courts to hear cases. But, no, a huge institution that would have the law on its side has chosen craven surrender, going so far as to donate $40 million of pro bono work to the Trump régime. But the example I’d like to discuss is Columbia University.
Paul Weiss is a business concern, one intimately connected to corporate boardrooms across the United States and in other countries. Perhaps it is to be expected that a business that needs connections would choose to humiliate itself as the price to keep business moving. Columbia University, on the other hand, is theoretically something different. But only “theoretically” — in reality, Columbia is a big business, too, which does much to explain its cowardice. Explain, but of course in no way excuse.
Columbia handing control of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department to an overseer under demand by the U.S. government is beyond disgraceful, a self-humiliation. The so-called senior provost installed as an overseer is in reality intended to be a censor. How will the content of courses be changed? What courses will be eliminated? Will whitewashing of Israeli atrocities now be packaged as neutral scholarship?
This is the act of a business seeking to curry favor with powerful officials. Acts that have a long history at Columbia. For Columbia has long been a big business with an accompanying toadying to power.
For example, during the 1920s, Columbia University “was concerned with repelling the ‘invasion of the Jewish student,’ and whatever devices were used, they obviously had the desired effect,” according to the book The High Status Track. The proportion of Jewish students at the university declined from 40 percent to 20 percent.
Protesting Nazi Germany got you banished from Columbia
A true profile in cowardice is Nicholas Murray Butler, who spent 43 years as president of Columbia University. His silence during the Nazi atrocities against Jews in Germany under the Nazi régime — and his de facto approval of fascist anti-Semitism — speaks volumes. Butler was silent when, in May 1933, the Nazis “burned tens of thousands books at universities across Germany”; among those whose books were burned was Franz Boas, a Columbia anthropologist known for his sharp criticisms of the Nazi government.
A December 2021 report by Matthew Wills, published on the JSTOR Daily newsletter, notes that “When the Nazis expelled Jewish faculty members and students from universities, Butler stayed silent, continued sending Columbia students to Germany and welcomed Nazi-approved students in exchange.” But Butler went beyond mere silence. “Butler’s actions spoke volumes when he welcomed the Nazi ambassador the United States to Columbia, months after the book-burnings; when he refused to appear with a notable German dissident when the latter spoke at the university; and when he repeatedly violated a boycott of German shipping,” Mr. Wills wrote.
And, in moves that echo Columbia’s harsh crackdowns on students, Jewish students included, who oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza, it was those who opposed Nazi Germany who were punished in the 1930s. Mr. Wills wrote, “[S]tudents on campus who protested Nazi barbarism were met with a heavy hand. Faculty members who recognized the necessity of public protest against Nazis were punished as well—Butler ended the careers of two of them. Columbia’s student newspaper noted that the school’s reputation suffered because of ‘the remarkable silence of its president’ about the ‘Hitler government.’ ”
Butler was a long-time admirer of Benito Mussolini, the originator of fascism. The Columbia president’s attitude toward democratic institutions was made clear when he declared that “totalitarian systems” produced “men of far greater intelligence, far stronger character and far more courage than the system of elections.”
Butler’s welcoming of that Nazi ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, came only seven months after the Nazi book burning that destroyed tens of thousands of works they deemed “un-German.” That welcome came also after Columbia’s Jewish Students Society “collected over 500 signatures on a petition denouncing these outrages [the book burnings],” wrote historian Stephen H. Norwood in a 31-page article published in the Oxford University journal Modern Judaism. Moreover, “Columbia’s advisors to Protestant and Catholic students both signed the petition, which demanded ‘concerted action,’ against Nazi antisemitism.” In response to criticism, Butler replied that he held Luther in “high esteem,” declaring him “intelligent, honest, and well-mannered.”
Dr. Norwood noted in his article that Butler refused to make an appearance at a rally featuring an escapee from a Nazi concentration camp, former Social Democratic parliamentary delegate Gerhart Seger, who was on a tour publicizing the barbarity of the Nazi régime. As to Mussolini, Dr. Norwood wrote that Butler, a “longtime admirer of Benito Mussolini,” sought to deepen ties between Columbia and Fascist Italy. “He aggressively defended the university’s Casa Italiana, which housed the Italian department, when charges by liberals and anti-Mussolini Italian exiles that it constituted a principal center for the dissemination of Fascist propaganda in the United States received national attention in late 1934 and 1935.”
Butler’s anti-Semitism was nothing new; during the 1910s he introduced methods to “to screen out academically qualified Jewish students.” Nor was Butler less reactionary in other matters, according to Dr. Norwood. “President Butler’s distaste for campus anti-Nazi protestors, and the extremely harsh punishment he inflicted on some of them, was reinforced by his disdain for the labor movement, which conservatives associated with picketing and public protest. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell stated that Nicholas Murray Butler ‘loved the rich with a passion.’ ” Nor was Butler alone — a Columbia dean, Thomas Alexander, was a defender of Hitler, declared “unqualified approval” of the Nazi sterilization program and tried to publish a translation of Hitler’s speeches.
Nor was Butler’s kneeling before power an isolated series of events. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia, has noted that the university was an eager participant in McCarthyism. “In 1953 its president signed a letter pronouncing communists unfit to teach,” Dr. Khalidi wrote. “Columbia trustees fired two faculty members for opposing the first world war on pacifist grounds, while student conscientious objectors were arrested and jailed.” Columbia, as an institution, “is a place where trustees, donors and powerful professional schools dictate its policy, not the rest of its faculty.”
Is it necessary to spell out what appeasement leads to?
Fast forward to today. Not only has Columbia University acted toward pro-Palestinian students in the same manner that the university acted toward anti-Nazi students in the 1930s, it has gone further, capitulating so thoroughly to the Trump régime’s reactionary thugs that it has ceded control of its curriculum. Despite repeated capitulations to, first, Republican Party no-nothings in Congress and then to the Trump administration, more demands are made. What should Columbia administrators have expected? Appease a bully, and the bully will only demand more. Worse, not only has Columbia disgraced itself, meekly allowing the Trump régime to dictate the content of academic courses, but now that the White House has succeeded in humiliating one of the wealthiest universities in the United States, it will only be emboldened to make similar demands of other universities. We can be certain that Columbia will not be the last target.
The university agreed to create a force of three dozen “special officers” empowered to arrest protestors, ban the wearing of face masks, adopt the right-wing definition of anti-Semitism under which criticism of the Israeli government is declared to be anti-Semitic and appoint an overseer over its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department, what the Trump administration calls “academic receivership.” This last item can only mean censorship. In response to this extraordinary appeasement, the Trump administration’s secretary of education, the spectacularly unqualified Linda McMahon, called them a “positive first step” but said these actions were only the beginning of negotiations to restore the $400 million in federal research grants that had been cut off. How many more hoops will Columbia have to jump through? What more academic censorship will be asked? Columbia’s cowardice will undoubtedly lead to more demands, more surrendering of academic freedom to Trump no-nothings who have only contempt for knowledge and scholarship.
The damage has only begun. Not only is there the saga of Mahmoud Khalil, kidnapped and thrown into a Louisiana prison without due process on the mere whim of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there is Yunseo Chung. Ms. Chung wasn’t even a leader or spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus; she merely participated in a sit-in. For the “crime” of participating in a demonstration, the Trump régime is attempting to deport her despite her being a legal resident with green-card status. Ms. Chung is currently in hiding after ICE agents attempted to arrest her; we will see if a judicial order prohibiting her arrest is honored. She has been a resident of the United States since age seven, when her family immigrated to the country; ICE agents told her lawyer her status as a permanent resident is “revoked,” something that Secretary Rubio can not legally do unilaterally. Legal statutes have hardly been a barrier for Trump and his minions in these first months of his second term.
Reaction to the capitulation has been swift, even if voices for academic freedom are likely to be met with indifference by Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who in an outrageously gaslighting statement had the nerve to say she is “putting academic freedom … at the fore of every decision we make.” Faculty and students, however, would beg to differ.
Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, “This is not the outcome we wanted to see. We wanted to see Columbia stand up for their rights for academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campus and we did not expect for them to not only capitulate to the demands of the federal government but actually go beyond the initial demands as far as we can tell.”
The program director for campus free speech at PEN, Kristen Shahverdian, said, “Columbia’s concessions today strike at core principles of academic freedom and self-governance in the higher education sector. This is hardly business as usual. The Trump administration’s demands go far beyond the typical requests the federal government might make to address issues of discrimination and harassment. And the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia was a clear attempt to intimidate the university into complying—which it now has.” A Columbia history professor, Karl Jacoby, noted that “Trump et al. are only getting started.”
As in the 1930s, one-sidedness prevails at Columbia
In an echo of Columbia’s shameful 1930s expulsion of anti-Nazi students and firing of anti-Nazi professors, the same upside-down one-sidedness has prevailed since the unrestrained Israeli assault on Gaza began following the Hamas attacks of October 2023. The full range of this one-sidedness was compiled by Amba Guerguerian, writing for the Indypendent, a community newspaper in New York City that had its origins in the Indymedia movement of the first years of the 21st century.
Several Columbia students demanding Columbia divest from investments that support Israel’s imposition of apartheid that has morphed into ethnic cleansing and genocide have been expelled and the campus remains on lockdown. More punishments are on the way — even an announcement that degrees will be rescinded! (It remains unclear how a university could declare someone to no longer be a degree holder. Do they intend to send police to the homes of graduates to confiscate their paperwork?) Mere participation, even passive actions like sit-ins on the central plaza, is enough for suspensions and expulsions. In contrast, pro-Israel students have carte blanche to carry out violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Ms. Guerguerian reports on an attack by pro-Israel students who unleashed a chemical attack on pro-Palestinian students that resulted in a horrid stench that couldn’t be removed. She wrote, in the February issue of the Indypendent, “Protesters say the smell clung on to their bodies, clothes and even the sheets they slept in after multiple washes. ‘I tried vinegar, bleach, Dawn dish soap, plain laundry detergent, and I just could not get rid of the smell,’ said Layla Saliba, another student who was at the protest. ‘I was in the shower just scrubbing myself for hours and could not get rid of it.’ ”
Video footage showed “two students, both former Israeli soldiers disguised in keffiyehs, spraying a substance out of a small bottle among the pro-Palestine protesters,” Ms. Guerguerian wrote. “At least ten of the protesters ended up seeking medical care, with symptoms such as burning eyes, breathing problems, nausea, extreme fatigue and long-term vaginal bleeding.” At least one person had to be hospitalized with what was diagnosed as “chemical exposure.” A weapon used by the Israeli military, called Skunk, is believed to have been the agent used, Ms. Guerguerian reported. Skunk is routinely used against Palestinians, who have to throw out all their furniture after coming under Israeli attack because the stench is so intense and not removable with any amount of washing.
Amazingly, one of those two, who was initially suspended for the attack, not only had all charges dropped but Columbia gave him $400,000 as part of a legal settlement! A law professor who denounced the attack was fired. A farce of an “investigation” by the Republican Party-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce concluded that a chemical agent wasn’t used but rather was a harmless “fart spray,” although none of the Columbia students on which the agent was used were contacted. Columbia University officials, responding to a request for comment from the Indypendent, agreed with the Republican “investigation” that the substance was a harmless “legal, novelty item,” without providing any evidence for its conclusion.
Meanwhile, the student who had to go to the hospital after being attacked with the spray has been suspended for two years and had her scholarship revoked, which she called an “effective expulsion.”
Declaring a “thought crime” easier than dialogue
All this has been done in the name of “combatting anti-Semitism,” which, in the right-wing and Israel-apologist conception, means criticizing Israel, now apparently a thought crime. A group of Jewish Columbia faculty members sharply challenged the second report of the university “Antisemitism Task Force,” writing in an open letter:
“The report is marked by conspicuous neglectful omissions of context and climate that cast the real challenges it discusses in a political vacuum. A research method that conflates feelings with facts and uses conveniently slippery definitions of important central concepts – not just antisemitism, but also Zionism and anti-Zionism – also fails to represent with any nuance the complex motives and commitments of many parties on campus. In some cases, outright factual misrepresentations of specific incidents or speech call into question not only the report’s central narrative but its seriousness in confronting the problem of prejudice and bias. Finally, its policy recommendations in some cases threaten to damage the fabric of our community further, and seem unlikely to address the real needs of all parts of our campus affected by the conflict in Israel-Palestine. Nuance and precision matter as we seek to restore trust, openness, and free speech in a climate of open inquiry. Intellectual honesty and respect for all parties affected matter if we are to protect community members in a time of armed conflict. We cannot achieve these crucial goals with the blunt instrument of the Task Force’s report.”
We should instead be at a point where terming Israeli actions toward the Palestinian people genocide is an accepted part of serious discussion, given how common the terminology has become in reports by human rights organizations. Amnesty International, a throughly mainstream organization and perhaps the world’s best known mass human rights group, has stated that “Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip” and that “Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.” Human Rights Watch, an organization that has subtle biases toward U.S. foreign policy, nonetheless said, “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide,” pointing to the intentional destruction of water and infrastructure supplies and concluding that “Israeli authorities have intentionally created conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part.” Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontières has also declared Israeli destruction of Gaza as a genocide, pointing out the blockade of food, water and medical supplies and of humanitarian assistance.
Finally, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said that “mass killings” and “ethnic cleansing”are being perpetrated in Gaza and that “All international bodies and institutions must act now to compel Israel to stop the war and end the carnage.” Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz, has published an article stating that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is “precisely what genocide looks like.” Is B’Tselem anti-Semitic? Is Haaretz? Is Jewish Voice for Peace?
What ultimately is behind the furious campaign to silence criticism of Israel? A forceful attempt to silence dissent, of course, and to criminalize not simply criticism of the Israeli government but to criminalize opposition to U.S. foreign policy and imperialism, without which Israeli’s sustained human rights abuses would not be possible. The two are intimately connected, and right-wingers, with the full force of the U.S. government now behind them, have decided this is their chance to eliminate dissent once and for all. But the situation at Columbia is emblematic of larger issues, not only the opening Columbia has given to the Trump régime and the enemies of education.
Sharpening the attacks on education and what education does
What corporate leaders of the United States have long wanted, and even industrialists and financiers who feel squeamish at the more extreme antics of Trump but nonetheless salivate at the giveaways he will shower on them, is to create a world of drones. Their desire is to mold children to be proficient in narrow technical skills without the ability to think originally. Thus the never-ending attacks on liberal arts education, and higher education in general, and the mania for standardized testing. If courses that teach philosophical concepts and creative, independent thinking are eliminated, and students are simply given only a series of technical courses as if university is nothing more than a training program for corporate jobs, then the ability of newer generations to comprehend their world and act upon it is reduced. That is the point. Such a world might be fine for corporate elites wishing for a compliant future workforce, but is no benefit to the students themselves.
This dovetails with not only the Trump régime’s intention to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — that a government department can only be eliminated by congressional vote and not White House diktat seems to be of little concern in the White House — but also with the corporate push for charter schools. That push in turn dovetails with the drive to destroy public education. A powerful lesson in how to fight back was provided by the public school teachers in Chicago in 2012. As part of the “war against teachers,” then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (the infamous “Mayor 1%”) and the hedge-fund managers funding him and the privatization of schools via charters apparently believed that the teachers, primarily African-American women, believed they would be easy targets. But the teachers had worked hard at organizing community support.
The successful 2012 strike demonstrated that democracy and community involvement are indispensable. Chicago teachers and their union worked with the community ahead of time to explain the stakes, and to prepare parents for the possibility that they would be forced to go on strike. When the inevitable attacks came in the predictable form — “the teachers are greedy,” “the teachers only care about getting more of your tax money” — they did not have the usual impact. Mayor Emanuel had clearly expected the community to be on his side; instead the people were with the teachers.
The Trump régime has launched an all-out war on the working people of the United States and begun an intensified renewal of U.S. imperialism; no diplomatic niceties now. Yes, of course the U.S. has imposed a highly exploitative imperialism on the world regardless of what party is in power and has long imposed a particularly vicious brand of capitalism at home and abroad. But the Trump régime has drastically upped the stakes. Its coalition of far-Right ideologues, White supremacists, misogynists and Christian fundamentalists seemed determined to undermine what few safeguards ordinary bourgeois formal democracy remain with an ultimate goal of imposing a fascist dictatorship. The first Trump administration did not succeed in going beyond those formal democratic bounds but is more organized and determined for this second term.
Once again, it is necessary to ask when does a bourgeois formal democracy tip over into a fascist dictatorship? This question is not necessarily separable from asking if the current phase of capitalism, known as neoliberalism to most of the world, is coming to an end. Fascism, or some somewhat less severe right-wing dictatorship on behalf of capital, would be one way for industrialists and financiers to keep their party going, at our expense. Any social base for such a movement would, in the U.S., prominently include the Christian fundamentalists, White supremacists and misogynists already emboldened by the rise of Trump’s “MAGA” movement. The hostility of this noxious coalition is unavoidable, and the attacks on Columbia University, and its administration’s capitulation to those attacks, are but one manifestation of an all-out assault on what democracy remains in the plutocratic United States. The pushback against this needs to be much stronger and more systematic, connecting and linking movements, or we will see worse.
Demonizing opponents to the point of calling those who participate in pickets against Tesla dealerships “terrorists” is dangerous language that has begun to, and will, have consequences. Dehumanizing people for their ethnic, racial or immigration status, or for disliking their politics, has consequences. History is clear about this slippery slope, as noted by Henry Giroux, who has been sounding the alarm bells:
“Under Trump, the treatment of dissenters does not mirror exactly what we saw under Hitler, Pinochet, or the Argentine dictatorship, but it bears what Martin Wolf has called “authoritarianism with fascist characteristics.” As history teaches, repression begins with language before it becomes law, and law before it becomes violence. The Nazis labeled dissenters as terrorists, with Heinrich Himmler making clear that students who defied the Reich had no place in its vision, likening them to pests that needed to be eradicated. Pinochet branded universities as breeding grounds for terrorists, justifying mass arrests, torture, and executions. Argentina’s military regime abducted students, hurled them from planes and murdered over 30,000. Trump’s administration has not committed such atrocities, but the rhetoric and policies are in place. The machinery is being built, and history warns us: once the conditions are set, the horrors we thought belonged to the past can return in forms we failed to imagine.”
Let’s have no more pretending we can’t tell the difference between bourgeois formal democracy, deeply constricted and repressive as it is, and actual fascism. We are not having this conversation in a concentration camp. Yet.
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Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet, and photographer. He has been involved in various activist organizations, including Trade Justice New York Metro, National People’s Campaign, and New York Workers Against Fascism, among others. He has authored the books "It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment," which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future and "What Do We Need Bosses For: Toward Economic Democracy," which analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis. He authored the book "It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment," which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future.
By Pete Dolack
March 26, 2025
Source: Systemic Disorder
Erick Berlanga / Columbia Daily Spectator
A crucial requirement for a dictatorship to take hold is widespread acquiescence. That is being put to test as the United States slides toward right-wing dictatorship with a real possibility of going beyond ordinary dictatorship to outright fascism. With grassroots activists still gaining their bearings after two months of relentless, unprecedented attacks by the Trump régime and Democratic Party leaders not only unable to mount a coherent opposition but, with Chuck Schumer’s capitulation, handing Donald Trump and Elon Musk a blank check, all the more important is that large institutions with the ability to fight back do so.
Yes, bringing a halt to the Trump régime’s plans and ultimately reversing the slide into right-wing despotism is the work of working people on the ground, organizing across lines and linking the many movements and causes into a mass movement of movements. Social movements are what bring about positive change. That has always been so. But it would be helpful if institutions that can resist would stop capitulating. Once one institution capitulates, bullies with a goal of fascism, now emboldened, will go after others. One example is the giant Paul Weiss law firm, one of the country’s largest, a $2 billion operation with lawyers who surely could make winning constitutional arguments while there are still courts to hear cases. But, no, a huge institution that would have the law on its side has chosen craven surrender, going so far as to donate $40 million of pro bono work to the Trump régime. But the example I’d like to discuss is Columbia University.
Paul Weiss is a business concern, one intimately connected to corporate boardrooms across the United States and in other countries. Perhaps it is to be expected that a business that needs connections would choose to humiliate itself as the price to keep business moving. Columbia University, on the other hand, is theoretically something different. But only “theoretically” — in reality, Columbia is a big business, too, which does much to explain its cowardice. Explain, but of course in no way excuse.
Columbia handing control of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department to an overseer under demand by the U.S. government is beyond disgraceful, a self-humiliation. The so-called senior provost installed as an overseer is in reality intended to be a censor. How will the content of courses be changed? What courses will be eliminated? Will whitewashing of Israeli atrocities now be packaged as neutral scholarship?
This is the act of a business seeking to curry favor with powerful officials. Acts that have a long history at Columbia. For Columbia has long been a big business with an accompanying toadying to power.
For example, during the 1920s, Columbia University “was concerned with repelling the ‘invasion of the Jewish student,’ and whatever devices were used, they obviously had the desired effect,” according to the book The High Status Track. The proportion of Jewish students at the university declined from 40 percent to 20 percent.
Protesting Nazi Germany got you banished from Columbia
A true profile in cowardice is Nicholas Murray Butler, who spent 43 years as president of Columbia University. His silence during the Nazi atrocities against Jews in Germany under the Nazi régime — and his de facto approval of fascist anti-Semitism — speaks volumes. Butler was silent when, in May 1933, the Nazis “burned tens of thousands books at universities across Germany”; among those whose books were burned was Franz Boas, a Columbia anthropologist known for his sharp criticisms of the Nazi government.
A December 2021 report by Matthew Wills, published on the JSTOR Daily newsletter, notes that “When the Nazis expelled Jewish faculty members and students from universities, Butler stayed silent, continued sending Columbia students to Germany and welcomed Nazi-approved students in exchange.” But Butler went beyond mere silence. “Butler’s actions spoke volumes when he welcomed the Nazi ambassador the United States to Columbia, months after the book-burnings; when he refused to appear with a notable German dissident when the latter spoke at the university; and when he repeatedly violated a boycott of German shipping,” Mr. Wills wrote.
And, in moves that echo Columbia’s harsh crackdowns on students, Jewish students included, who oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza, it was those who opposed Nazi Germany who were punished in the 1930s. Mr. Wills wrote, “[S]tudents on campus who protested Nazi barbarism were met with a heavy hand. Faculty members who recognized the necessity of public protest against Nazis were punished as well—Butler ended the careers of two of them. Columbia’s student newspaper noted that the school’s reputation suffered because of ‘the remarkable silence of its president’ about the ‘Hitler government.’ ”
Butler was a long-time admirer of Benito Mussolini, the originator of fascism. The Columbia president’s attitude toward democratic institutions was made clear when he declared that “totalitarian systems” produced “men of far greater intelligence, far stronger character and far more courage than the system of elections.”
Butler’s welcoming of that Nazi ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, came only seven months after the Nazi book burning that destroyed tens of thousands of works they deemed “un-German.” That welcome came also after Columbia’s Jewish Students Society “collected over 500 signatures on a petition denouncing these outrages [the book burnings],” wrote historian Stephen H. Norwood in a 31-page article published in the Oxford University journal Modern Judaism. Moreover, “Columbia’s advisors to Protestant and Catholic students both signed the petition, which demanded ‘concerted action,’ against Nazi antisemitism.” In response to criticism, Butler replied that he held Luther in “high esteem,” declaring him “intelligent, honest, and well-mannered.”
Dr. Norwood noted in his article that Butler refused to make an appearance at a rally featuring an escapee from a Nazi concentration camp, former Social Democratic parliamentary delegate Gerhart Seger, who was on a tour publicizing the barbarity of the Nazi régime. As to Mussolini, Dr. Norwood wrote that Butler, a “longtime admirer of Benito Mussolini,” sought to deepen ties between Columbia and Fascist Italy. “He aggressively defended the university’s Casa Italiana, which housed the Italian department, when charges by liberals and anti-Mussolini Italian exiles that it constituted a principal center for the dissemination of Fascist propaganda in the United States received national attention in late 1934 and 1935.”
Butler’s anti-Semitism was nothing new; during the 1910s he introduced methods to “to screen out academically qualified Jewish students.” Nor was Butler less reactionary in other matters, according to Dr. Norwood. “President Butler’s distaste for campus anti-Nazi protestors, and the extremely harsh punishment he inflicted on some of them, was reinforced by his disdain for the labor movement, which conservatives associated with picketing and public protest. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell stated that Nicholas Murray Butler ‘loved the rich with a passion.’ ” Nor was Butler alone — a Columbia dean, Thomas Alexander, was a defender of Hitler, declared “unqualified approval” of the Nazi sterilization program and tried to publish a translation of Hitler’s speeches.
Nor was Butler’s kneeling before power an isolated series of events. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia, has noted that the university was an eager participant in McCarthyism. “In 1953 its president signed a letter pronouncing communists unfit to teach,” Dr. Khalidi wrote. “Columbia trustees fired two faculty members for opposing the first world war on pacifist grounds, while student conscientious objectors were arrested and jailed.” Columbia, as an institution, “is a place where trustees, donors and powerful professional schools dictate its policy, not the rest of its faculty.”
Is it necessary to spell out what appeasement leads to?
Fast forward to today. Not only has Columbia University acted toward pro-Palestinian students in the same manner that the university acted toward anti-Nazi students in the 1930s, it has gone further, capitulating so thoroughly to the Trump régime’s reactionary thugs that it has ceded control of its curriculum. Despite repeated capitulations to, first, Republican Party no-nothings in Congress and then to the Trump administration, more demands are made. What should Columbia administrators have expected? Appease a bully, and the bully will only demand more. Worse, not only has Columbia disgraced itself, meekly allowing the Trump régime to dictate the content of academic courses, but now that the White House has succeeded in humiliating one of the wealthiest universities in the United States, it will only be emboldened to make similar demands of other universities. We can be certain that Columbia will not be the last target.
The university agreed to create a force of three dozen “special officers” empowered to arrest protestors, ban the wearing of face masks, adopt the right-wing definition of anti-Semitism under which criticism of the Israeli government is declared to be anti-Semitic and appoint an overseer over its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department, what the Trump administration calls “academic receivership.” This last item can only mean censorship. In response to this extraordinary appeasement, the Trump administration’s secretary of education, the spectacularly unqualified Linda McMahon, called them a “positive first step” but said these actions were only the beginning of negotiations to restore the $400 million in federal research grants that had been cut off. How many more hoops will Columbia have to jump through? What more academic censorship will be asked? Columbia’s cowardice will undoubtedly lead to more demands, more surrendering of academic freedom to Trump no-nothings who have only contempt for knowledge and scholarship.
The damage has only begun. Not only is there the saga of Mahmoud Khalil, kidnapped and thrown into a Louisiana prison without due process on the mere whim of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there is Yunseo Chung. Ms. Chung wasn’t even a leader or spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus; she merely participated in a sit-in. For the “crime” of participating in a demonstration, the Trump régime is attempting to deport her despite her being a legal resident with green-card status. Ms. Chung is currently in hiding after ICE agents attempted to arrest her; we will see if a judicial order prohibiting her arrest is honored. She has been a resident of the United States since age seven, when her family immigrated to the country; ICE agents told her lawyer her status as a permanent resident is “revoked,” something that Secretary Rubio can not legally do unilaterally. Legal statutes have hardly been a barrier for Trump and his minions in these first months of his second term.
Reaction to the capitulation has been swift, even if voices for academic freedom are likely to be met with indifference by Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who in an outrageously gaslighting statement had the nerve to say she is “putting academic freedom … at the fore of every decision we make.” Faculty and students, however, would beg to differ.
Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, “This is not the outcome we wanted to see. We wanted to see Columbia stand up for their rights for academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campus and we did not expect for them to not only capitulate to the demands of the federal government but actually go beyond the initial demands as far as we can tell.”
The program director for campus free speech at PEN, Kristen Shahverdian, said, “Columbia’s concessions today strike at core principles of academic freedom and self-governance in the higher education sector. This is hardly business as usual. The Trump administration’s demands go far beyond the typical requests the federal government might make to address issues of discrimination and harassment. And the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia was a clear attempt to intimidate the university into complying—which it now has.” A Columbia history professor, Karl Jacoby, noted that “Trump et al. are only getting started.”
As in the 1930s, one-sidedness prevails at Columbia
In an echo of Columbia’s shameful 1930s expulsion of anti-Nazi students and firing of anti-Nazi professors, the same upside-down one-sidedness has prevailed since the unrestrained Israeli assault on Gaza began following the Hamas attacks of October 2023. The full range of this one-sidedness was compiled by Amba Guerguerian, writing for the Indypendent, a community newspaper in New York City that had its origins in the Indymedia movement of the first years of the 21st century.
Several Columbia students demanding Columbia divest from investments that support Israel’s imposition of apartheid that has morphed into ethnic cleansing and genocide have been expelled and the campus remains on lockdown. More punishments are on the way — even an announcement that degrees will be rescinded! (It remains unclear how a university could declare someone to no longer be a degree holder. Do they intend to send police to the homes of graduates to confiscate their paperwork?) Mere participation, even passive actions like sit-ins on the central plaza, is enough for suspensions and expulsions. In contrast, pro-Israel students have carte blanche to carry out violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Ms. Guerguerian reports on an attack by pro-Israel students who unleashed a chemical attack on pro-Palestinian students that resulted in a horrid stench that couldn’t be removed. She wrote, in the February issue of the Indypendent, “Protesters say the smell clung on to their bodies, clothes and even the sheets they slept in after multiple washes. ‘I tried vinegar, bleach, Dawn dish soap, plain laundry detergent, and I just could not get rid of the smell,’ said Layla Saliba, another student who was at the protest. ‘I was in the shower just scrubbing myself for hours and could not get rid of it.’ ”
Video footage showed “two students, both former Israeli soldiers disguised in keffiyehs, spraying a substance out of a small bottle among the pro-Palestine protesters,” Ms. Guerguerian wrote. “At least ten of the protesters ended up seeking medical care, with symptoms such as burning eyes, breathing problems, nausea, extreme fatigue and long-term vaginal bleeding.” At least one person had to be hospitalized with what was diagnosed as “chemical exposure.” A weapon used by the Israeli military, called Skunk, is believed to have been the agent used, Ms. Guerguerian reported. Skunk is routinely used against Palestinians, who have to throw out all their furniture after coming under Israeli attack because the stench is so intense and not removable with any amount of washing.
Amazingly, one of those two, who was initially suspended for the attack, not only had all charges dropped but Columbia gave him $400,000 as part of a legal settlement! A law professor who denounced the attack was fired. A farce of an “investigation” by the Republican Party-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce concluded that a chemical agent wasn’t used but rather was a harmless “fart spray,” although none of the Columbia students on which the agent was used were contacted. Columbia University officials, responding to a request for comment from the Indypendent, agreed with the Republican “investigation” that the substance was a harmless “legal, novelty item,” without providing any evidence for its conclusion.
Meanwhile, the student who had to go to the hospital after being attacked with the spray has been suspended for two years and had her scholarship revoked, which she called an “effective expulsion.”
Declaring a “thought crime” easier than dialogue
All this has been done in the name of “combatting anti-Semitism,” which, in the right-wing and Israel-apologist conception, means criticizing Israel, now apparently a thought crime. A group of Jewish Columbia faculty members sharply challenged the second report of the university “Antisemitism Task Force,” writing in an open letter:
“The report is marked by conspicuous neglectful omissions of context and climate that cast the real challenges it discusses in a political vacuum. A research method that conflates feelings with facts and uses conveniently slippery definitions of important central concepts – not just antisemitism, but also Zionism and anti-Zionism – also fails to represent with any nuance the complex motives and commitments of many parties on campus. In some cases, outright factual misrepresentations of specific incidents or speech call into question not only the report’s central narrative but its seriousness in confronting the problem of prejudice and bias. Finally, its policy recommendations in some cases threaten to damage the fabric of our community further, and seem unlikely to address the real needs of all parts of our campus affected by the conflict in Israel-Palestine. Nuance and precision matter as we seek to restore trust, openness, and free speech in a climate of open inquiry. Intellectual honesty and respect for all parties affected matter if we are to protect community members in a time of armed conflict. We cannot achieve these crucial goals with the blunt instrument of the Task Force’s report.”
We should instead be at a point where terming Israeli actions toward the Palestinian people genocide is an accepted part of serious discussion, given how common the terminology has become in reports by human rights organizations. Amnesty International, a throughly mainstream organization and perhaps the world’s best known mass human rights group, has stated that “Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip” and that “Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.” Human Rights Watch, an organization that has subtle biases toward U.S. foreign policy, nonetheless said, “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide,” pointing to the intentional destruction of water and infrastructure supplies and concluding that “Israeli authorities have intentionally created conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part.” Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontières has also declared Israeli destruction of Gaza as a genocide, pointing out the blockade of food, water and medical supplies and of humanitarian assistance.
Finally, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said that “mass killings” and “ethnic cleansing”are being perpetrated in Gaza and that “All international bodies and institutions must act now to compel Israel to stop the war and end the carnage.” Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz, has published an article stating that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is “precisely what genocide looks like.” Is B’Tselem anti-Semitic? Is Haaretz? Is Jewish Voice for Peace?
What ultimately is behind the furious campaign to silence criticism of Israel? A forceful attempt to silence dissent, of course, and to criminalize not simply criticism of the Israeli government but to criminalize opposition to U.S. foreign policy and imperialism, without which Israeli’s sustained human rights abuses would not be possible. The two are intimately connected, and right-wingers, with the full force of the U.S. government now behind them, have decided this is their chance to eliminate dissent once and for all. But the situation at Columbia is emblematic of larger issues, not only the opening Columbia has given to the Trump régime and the enemies of education.
Sharpening the attacks on education and what education does
What corporate leaders of the United States have long wanted, and even industrialists and financiers who feel squeamish at the more extreme antics of Trump but nonetheless salivate at the giveaways he will shower on them, is to create a world of drones. Their desire is to mold children to be proficient in narrow technical skills without the ability to think originally. Thus the never-ending attacks on liberal arts education, and higher education in general, and the mania for standardized testing. If courses that teach philosophical concepts and creative, independent thinking are eliminated, and students are simply given only a series of technical courses as if university is nothing more than a training program for corporate jobs, then the ability of newer generations to comprehend their world and act upon it is reduced. That is the point. Such a world might be fine for corporate elites wishing for a compliant future workforce, but is no benefit to the students themselves.
This dovetails with not only the Trump régime’s intention to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — that a government department can only be eliminated by congressional vote and not White House diktat seems to be of little concern in the White House — but also with the corporate push for charter schools. That push in turn dovetails with the drive to destroy public education. A powerful lesson in how to fight back was provided by the public school teachers in Chicago in 2012. As part of the “war against teachers,” then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (the infamous “Mayor 1%”) and the hedge-fund managers funding him and the privatization of schools via charters apparently believed that the teachers, primarily African-American women, believed they would be easy targets. But the teachers had worked hard at organizing community support.
The successful 2012 strike demonstrated that democracy and community involvement are indispensable. Chicago teachers and their union worked with the community ahead of time to explain the stakes, and to prepare parents for the possibility that they would be forced to go on strike. When the inevitable attacks came in the predictable form — “the teachers are greedy,” “the teachers only care about getting more of your tax money” — they did not have the usual impact. Mayor Emanuel had clearly expected the community to be on his side; instead the people were with the teachers.
The Trump régime has launched an all-out war on the working people of the United States and begun an intensified renewal of U.S. imperialism; no diplomatic niceties now. Yes, of course the U.S. has imposed a highly exploitative imperialism on the world regardless of what party is in power and has long imposed a particularly vicious brand of capitalism at home and abroad. But the Trump régime has drastically upped the stakes. Its coalition of far-Right ideologues, White supremacists, misogynists and Christian fundamentalists seemed determined to undermine what few safeguards ordinary bourgeois formal democracy remain with an ultimate goal of imposing a fascist dictatorship. The first Trump administration did not succeed in going beyond those formal democratic bounds but is more organized and determined for this second term.
Once again, it is necessary to ask when does a bourgeois formal democracy tip over into a fascist dictatorship? This question is not necessarily separable from asking if the current phase of capitalism, known as neoliberalism to most of the world, is coming to an end. Fascism, or some somewhat less severe right-wing dictatorship on behalf of capital, would be one way for industrialists and financiers to keep their party going, at our expense. Any social base for such a movement would, in the U.S., prominently include the Christian fundamentalists, White supremacists and misogynists already emboldened by the rise of Trump’s “MAGA” movement. The hostility of this noxious coalition is unavoidable, and the attacks on Columbia University, and its administration’s capitulation to those attacks, are but one manifestation of an all-out assault on what democracy remains in the plutocratic United States. The pushback against this needs to be much stronger and more systematic, connecting and linking movements, or we will see worse.
Demonizing opponents to the point of calling those who participate in pickets against Tesla dealerships “terrorists” is dangerous language that has begun to, and will, have consequences. Dehumanizing people for their ethnic, racial or immigration status, or for disliking their politics, has consequences. History is clear about this slippery slope, as noted by Henry Giroux, who has been sounding the alarm bells:
“Under Trump, the treatment of dissenters does not mirror exactly what we saw under Hitler, Pinochet, or the Argentine dictatorship, but it bears what Martin Wolf has called “authoritarianism with fascist characteristics.” As history teaches, repression begins with language before it becomes law, and law before it becomes violence. The Nazis labeled dissenters as terrorists, with Heinrich Himmler making clear that students who defied the Reich had no place in its vision, likening them to pests that needed to be eradicated. Pinochet branded universities as breeding grounds for terrorists, justifying mass arrests, torture, and executions. Argentina’s military regime abducted students, hurled them from planes and murdered over 30,000. Trump’s administration has not committed such atrocities, but the rhetoric and policies are in place. The machinery is being built, and history warns us: once the conditions are set, the horrors we thought belonged to the past can return in forms we failed to imagine.”
Let’s have no more pretending we can’t tell the difference between bourgeois formal democracy, deeply constricted and repressive as it is, and actual fascism. We are not having this conversation in a concentration camp. Yet.
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Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet, and photographer. He has been involved in various activist organizations, including Trade Justice New York Metro, National People’s Campaign, and New York Workers Against Fascism, among others. He has authored the books "It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment," which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future and "What Do We Need Bosses For: Toward Economic Democracy," which analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis. He authored the book "It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment," which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future.
