I almost cheered out loud when I read that the Trump administration has cancelled $400 million in funding for Columbia University, despite the fact that when I taught there about three-and-a half-decades ago, I no doubt directly benefitted from federal money flowing in, enjoyed my colleagues, and was treated very well.

My animus and support for the cuts derives from the reluctant conclusion that as an institution, it has been corrupted, and nothing less than traumatic levels of change are required.

The level of change required includes firing administrators, faculty, and admissions officers, expelling students, and revising hiring and admissions criteria. Only fear of financial catastrophe would suffice to strengthen sufficiently the spines of trustees and the administration sufficiently.

Consider this abuse:

Some Columbia University professors canceled in-person classes on Monday in support of Mahmoud Khalil, the student activist and foreign national whom the Trump administration moved to deport over his pro-Hamas campus organizing. The cancellations—which came amid a pressure campaign from the school's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter—put the professors at odds with Columbia's provost, who emailed "faculty colleagues" Monday morning to issue "a reminder that faculty must meet all scheduled classes."

Faculty who cheat their students in order to make a political point should be immediately fired.

They are defrauding the young minds whose families have coughed up the exorbitant tuition Columbia (and every other prestige college) charges: $71,170 per year.

That works out to a quasi “ticket price” per hour of classroom instruction of $182 to $228, depending on whether a student takes 4 or 5 courses per semester. (See Columbia’s requirements, regulations and costs posted online for the underlying data)

Imagine a theatre cancelling a performance that people spent over $200 to attend and refusing to refund the tickets.

It’s obvious that deeply politicized faculty, staff, and students are so numerous that they dominate the campus and poison the atmosphere, making the campus unsafe of Jews and any other minority that they may decide to target. They can’t be “reformed” because as ideologues, they will resist.

(Columbia's renamed School of International and Public Affairs, where I taught.)

Image: Lisianthus1215, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed