Open Letter to the President of Columbia Claire Shipman

April 14, 2025

Dear Ms. Claire Shipman,

I am writing to you to add my voice to the chorus of folks encouraging you to stand up to Trump.

I can only imagine how excruciating the choice would be between resisting the government’s efforts to curtail academic freedom and supporting life saving research.

The thing is, I don’t think that is the actual choice before you. I don’t think there is any chance of Columbia appeasing the government. Columbia has already made substantive concessions. Despite those concessions, the Trump administration has not renewed your funding. Instead, the Trump administration is considering insisting on a consent decree. The judicial oversight from the consent decree would deepen the Trump administration’s control of Columbia. It seems likely that the Trump administration will continue to insist that whatever Columbia does is not good enough and always ask for more and more concessions, dangling the possibility of returning the funding but never actually doing so. The harassment will not end, at least not until Trump leaves office, because the point isn’t the changes that Columbia might make, the point is to deprive Columbia of the funding to oppose Trump and to punish them for their prior opposition. Even after the prior president of Columbia stepped down, the Trump administration continued to harass her, questioning her for three hours in a closed door session that was then leaked to the press, with no seeming goal other than to embarrass and punish her.

In On Tyranny Timothy Snyder persuasively argues that anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. In that light, while Columbia’s concessions were well intentioned, they were a mistake; you have given ground which will only encourage Trump to ask for more. If Columbia grants further concessions to the Trump administration, those concessions will lead to worse, not better, outcomes for Columbia and society than if Columbia resists. The reason is because the Trump administration’s motivations have nothing to do with anti-semitisim or nondiscrimination, which is just a fig-leaf to cover Trump’s vindictive nature and real agenda which is to weaken Columbia and other academic institutions so that they cannot as effectively oppose him in the future. That goal is not achieved by granting Columbia funding in exchange for concessions.

Alan Garber, the President of Harvard University, stated the reasons to fight better than I ever could in his piece in his open letter. Columbia should be a leader in this fight; do you really want Harvard to be the institution people think of for decades hence as the one that led the fight against Trump while Columbia bent the knee? If any academic institution can oppose Trump, it should be Columbia with its strong legacy of fighting for academic freedoms.

I urge you to change course. Instead of concessions, the better path is to fight. Fight against the President in every way you can. Bring suit in court to enlist the judiciary on your behalf. Fight against his lawless actions by calling them out publicly. Fight against his war on DEI and “wokeness” by reiterating the long history of racism in this country and its impact on marginalized peoples. Fight for every inch of academic freedom and civil liberties. If a time comes again when Trump tries another coup, like he did on January 6th, 2021, we are going to need Columbia to be a strong, independent institution that can oppose Trump. If Columbia does bring a lawsuit, it is entirely possible that a judge may restore funding, as they have done with National Institute of Health, and rule the cuts in funding to Columbia are illegal and restore them immediately via a temporary restraining order.

If these were ordinary times and the President was making reasonable requests to fight anti-semititism and discrimination, then this course would be unthinkable. But these are not ordinary times. This President is hell bent on taking as much power as possible, even if in doing so he veers into lawlessness. Therefore, you are opposing a would-be dictator, not a reasonable request from the Federal government. On those grounds, you should fight for every last breath of academic freedom and civil liberties for yourself, your faculty, staff, and students.

Respectfully,

John O’Brien, CBS ‘06