How do you solve the antisemitism crisis at Columbia?
Simple: Hit it in what it cares about the most, its pocketbook.
Much as the mega-rich school loves to coddle its mini-army of terror thugs, it loves money more.
Back in its business-as-usual days, Columbia let Jew-hating, Hamas-loving criminals run wild on campus for months after Oct. 7 as they occupied public spaces, assaulted and intimidated Jewish students, disrupted classes and more.
But then the Trump team canceled $400 million in contracts and grants and followed with a list of requests Columbia had to comply with or risk losing all its federal funding.
The list includes a ban on thugs masking up to assault and intimidate Jews, as well as a demand that the school actually follow its own rules around on-campus behavior, without making a huge exception where attacks on Jews are concerned.?
And the school’s board of trustees has reportedly begun to fracture as it mulls acceding to the administration’s requests.
Hilariously, those opposed to following these needed corrective measures reportedly are worried over the school “trading away its moral authority and academic independence.”
Too late: Columbia traded away its moral authority when it embraced Jew-hatred and terror.
And it gave up its independence to the institutional left long ago.
If Columbia “caves” by reluctantly enforcing its own rules, expect a domino effect: Remember, dozens of other schools are under scrutiny for their failure to protect Jewish students.
Note that the Biden team could have used these same measures — but instead gave tacit approval to these on-campus obscenities.
Rooting out institutional antisemitism requires powerful shocks and even more powerful new incentives to bring major, top-down change.
Alumni can and should play a role by cutting off giving; prospective students, by boycotting schools that foster hate.
But the vast public payments to academia give Uncle Sam the biggest stick of all.
For all their woke posturing, America’s elite schools are big business.
President Trump gets that — and he knows only threatening that will wake them up.?