Columbia University’s President Katrina Armstrong has resigned after pressure from Trump administration, , Heidi Zhou-Castro of Al Jazeera reports.
“Columbia University’s President Katrina Armstrong had only had this job since August,” the reporter said, adding that she is resigning amid accusations that she folded too quickly to the Trump administration.
Last week, Columbia announced that it would carry out a list of reforms demanded by the federal government, including giving campus police arrest powers and new oversight for the Department of Middle East Studies, they added.
According to the reporter, this was in order to begin the process of restoring $400m of annual federal grants that the Trump administration cancelled for Columbia. That’s about a fifth of its operating budget.
“This punishment was for alleged anti-Semitism and for the university’s response to encampment protesters who have been demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza,” they continued.
“Many of Columbia’s faculty, though, were not happy about what they viewed as their president’s acquiescence without even so much as a legal battle. There’s also concern that this will further embolden the Trump administration to go after other universities, which it already has,” they concluded.
