Education Secretary Linda McMahon says Columbia University is on track to regain its federal funding after the Ivy League institution yielded to the Trump administration’s demands on Friday. The demands include banning face masks on campus, hiring 36 new security officers with greater power to arrest and crack down on students and appointing a “senior vice provost” to oversee the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies. Students say they will continue to fight for Palestinian rights and for Columbia to divest from Israel, but free speech experts are sounding the alarm. “We have no idea what comes next, but groveling before a bully, we all know, just encourages the bully,” says Katherine Franke, former professor at Columbia Law School.
Every business and country that kneels before trump just empowers him and encourages his worst impulses. They all know it, yet they keep doing it. That's why we're fucked. We're in the beginning of the end of a pretty decent run of mostly civilised society.