Australian Columbia student denied entry to US after being grilled on Israel-Gaza views<\/a><\/p>\nMelbourne writer Alistair Kitchen was detained for 12 hours at Los Angeles International Airport, had his phone seized and was “interrogated” about his views on the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
As part of the agreement, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was “comprehensive and balanced” and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also promised to end programs “that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets or similar efforts.”<\/p>\n
The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs “do not promote unlawful DEI goals.”<\/p>\n
In a post on Wednesday night on his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump said Columbia had “committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.”<\/p>\n
He also warned, without being specific, “Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming.”<\/p>\n
Crackdown follows Columbia protests<\/p>\n
The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the 270-year-old university.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was among the first targets of Mr Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students to be threatened and harassed.<\/p>\n
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Protesters gathered outside Columbia University to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia. (Reuters: Kylie Cooper)<\/p>\n
Columbia’s own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism, and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they are not targeting Jews, but rather criticising the Israeli government and its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Columbia’s leadership \u2014 a revolving door of three interim presidents in the past year \u2014 has declared that the campus climate needs to change.<\/p>\n
Columbia agrees to question international students<\/p>\n
Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students “questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,” and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to “civil discourse.”<\/p>\n
In a move that would potentially make it easier for the Trump administration to deport students who participate in protests, Columbia promised to provide the government with information \u2014 upon request \u2014 of disciplinary actions involving student-visa holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions.<\/p>\n
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Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, center, speaks after his release from federal immigration detention in Jena in LA.\u00a0 (AP: Matthew Hinton)<\/p>\n
Columbia on Tuesday announced it would suspend, expel, or revoke degrees from more than 70 students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the main library in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year.<\/p>\n
The pressure on Columbia began with a series of funding cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who had been a visible figure in the protests, became the first person detained in the Trump administration’s push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who are not US citizens.<\/p>\n
Next came searches of some university residences amid a federal Justice Department investigation into whether Columbia concealed “illegal aliens” on campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The interim president at the time responded that the university was committed to upholding the law.<\/p>\n
Columbia overshadowed by Harvard<\/p>\n
Columbia was an early test case for the Trump administration as it sought closer oversight of universities that the Republican president views as bastions of liberalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet, it was soon overshadowed by Harvard University, which became the first higher education institution to defy Trump’s demands and fight back in court.<\/p>\n
Why Harvard is suing Trump<\/a><\/p>\nHarvard University’s fight to keep billions of dollars in US government funding has made its way to court. Here is what you need to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has used federal research funding as its primary lever in its campaign to reshape higher education.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than $2 billion in total has also been frozen at Cornell, Northwestern, Brown, and Princeton universities.<\/p>\n
Administration officials pulled $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania in March over a dispute around women’s sports. They restored it when school officials agreed to update records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and change their policies.<\/p>\n
The administration is also looking beyond private universities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
University of Virginia president James Ryan agreed to resign in June under pressure from a US Justice Department investigation into diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A similar investigation was opened this month at George Mason University.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,5613,8609,8854,159,5618,27807,803,27809,27808,3,3479,21,19,22,20,6671,25,24,1139],"class_list":["post-33379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-columbia","tag-death","tag-dei","tag-funding","tag-gaza","tag-harvard","tag-israel","tag-israel-gaza","tag-livy-league","tag-news","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-university","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}