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As Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman put it, the higher education swamp is being drained.
In recent days, no institution has been hit harder—rightly so—than Columbia: the Trump administration has pulled $400 million in federal grants from the university for its failure to protect Jewish students from persistent anti-Semitic harassment. The Department of Education (ED) declared in a press release last Friday,
[T]he Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Education (ED), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.
And the administration isn’t stopping there. In a move that signals a serious commitment to enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the ED sent letters to 60 universities—Columbia among them—warning of potential enforcement actions if they fail to protect Jewish students on campus.
So far, so good. But once again, the courts make me ask: what’s the point of elections if a single judge can override a president acting on the will of the people?
[RELATED: The Right Is Right—Conservative-Led Reforms Are Not Threats to Higher Ed]
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Palestinian Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil could not be deported. Khalil, a prominent leader in Columbia’s pro-Hamas protests, had been arrested the previous Saturday and had his student visa revoked. Citing national security concerns, Trump argued that Khalil’s presence in the United States conflicted with U.S. foreign policy interests. Leftist pundits, however, claim his arrest is a threat to free speech—but the First Amendment does not protect vandalism or violence.
Deporting foreign students who undermine U.S. national interests would serve as a necessary check on the long unchecked influx of foreign students, whose growing numbers pose broader security risks. As Jay P. Greene wrote in Tablet, “Skyrocketing foreign student enrollment at American universities is giving foreign governments power over what our universities teach while acculturating American students in third-world hatreds.” (For more on this, see Neetu Arnold’s “The Takeover.”)
Additionally, it’s crucial to remain vigilant about media distortions of anti-Semitism. Reuters, for example, concludes its report on Khalil by subtly implying that the real anti-Semite is Trump, writing: “The president and his allies have themselves been accused of enabling antisemitism. Following a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where some demonstrators carried torches and chanted ‘Jews will not replace us,’ Trump said there were ‘fine people on both sides.’” It’s almost unbelievable that publications are still peddling this lie—a full viewing of the speech makes it clear that Trump explicitly condemned the white supremacists at that rally.
The administration’s efforts to rein in the ideological excesses of higher education don’t stop at funding cuts and deportations. The ED itself is undergoing a dramatic downsizing, reducing its workforce by half, a move that the National Association of Scholars supports. Rumors swirled last week about an executive order shuttering the department altogether, but it now appears the White House is opting for a scalpel over a chainsaw.
‘Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,’ said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. ‘I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.’
Critics may lament job losses, but the reality remains—Americans elected Trump to shrink our bloated bureaucracy, and he’s delivering. Even those who champion big government should at least acknowledge that departing bureaucrats are receiving generous severance packages—more than they’d likely receive in the private sector.
Of course, eliminating the ED entirely remains a taller order. As Minding the Campus contributor Richard Vedder notes, “Since the ED was created by Congress, it would take formal Congressional action to eliminate it, and the administration lacks the votes.” Still, he argues, “the end of the ED would not be a mortal blow to education in America. Indeed, it might be a necessary precondition to ending the decline in learning at all levels, from pre-school to advanced adult professional education.”
And the swamp draining has stopped here, as higher education’s resistance to reform remains stubbornly entrenched.
Take the new survey from Inside Higher Ed, which revealed that most college presidents refuse to adopt institutional neutrality policies. As Sam Abrams writes:
[J]ust 29 percent of college and university presidents indicate their institution has a neutrality policy; most leaders report that their schools do not have such a policy (66 percent), and amazingly, some (five percent) report they are unsure if they have a policy at all. Amazingly, the data show that among presidents who, in 2025, say their institution has no institutional neutrality policy, just 11 percent report that their institution is considering adopting one. Most college and university presidents say their school is not considering a policy of neutrality (79 percent), and a handful (10 percent) are unsure.
[RELATED: Resistance to Trump’s Orders Sows Doubt About Reform]
Clogging the drain pipe further, my colleague Louis Galarowicz has exposed that despite Texas having one of the nation’s strictest anti-DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) laws, its universities are still awash in DEI programs and funding. For instance:
The University of Houston received $1.2 million from the NSF for STEM Education Equity Postdocs and another $1.2 million from NASA for the Partnership for Inclusivity in Engineering Education and Research for Space. NSF also funds a ‘Structuring Equitable Participation in Undergraduate Proofs’ math postdoc at Texas State University.
The revelation sparked outrage, including from Texas state representative Brian Harrison, who retweeted my post about Galarowicz’s findings, noting, “The Texas government supports, promotes, and funds DEI… with tax dollars. The Austin uniparty is furious I’ve been exposing this. Thrilled to see others pointing it out!”
So, the Texas legislature is well aware of the extent of DEI in its state. The real question is—will they do something about it? We’ll have to wait and see.
Hoping to unclog the drain next week!
Follow Jared Gould on X
Image: Columbia University by Scarlet Sappho on Flickr
First and foremost, read this: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/foreign-money-international-students-american-campuses
When Sputnik started beeping in 1957, we responded by building our high school science departments so that our own children could become the scientists who put AMERICANS on the moon a dozen years later. Can you imagine the response were to ask the American taxpayers to instead educate Soviet scientists?
Not all of the Chinese students are here to spy, but some of them are actually officers in the People’s Liberation Army and we very much are in a new Cold War with China. The countries you mention have up and coming technologies that they are stealing from us… Most of these students aren’t coming from Switzerland or England — as Ms. Arnold points out, they instead are largely coming from countries that don’t like us. Countries that do not believe in our shared American values, and these foreign students don’t share them either.
So while it may cause a few professors to lose their jobs, it is actually good for the country to lose them. These are swamps that truly need to be not only drained but disinfected.
If we cleaned up K-12, we actually could have AMERICAN scientists again. If we gave Black children the K-12 educations they deserve, we could have AMERICAN BLACK scientists in our universities — if we seriously started now, we could have this accomplished by 2040.
It is neither vandalism nor nihilism to say that America’s taxpayer-supported colleges and universities ought to be for Americans…
And there are two more gone at Columbia… 🙂
Great, Trump and his madmen will succeed in destroying American science, if they have their way. I will sadly farewell the exodus to China, Europe, India, and the other rising science countries.
I will feel bad for all the scientists, especially young, Jewish and non-Jewish, who will be losing their positions.
It’s really sad seeing the National Association of Scholars descending into this vandalism and nihilism. Shame! To think that I was once a member in good standing.