Columbia faculty sidestep Palestine as they protest against Trump's assault on academic freedom

It was a cold and wet day in New York City. The slow and persistent rain soaked to the bone.

At the entrance of Columbia University on 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, around 50-60 faculty members stood calmly in a coop of steel barricades on the sidewalk.

Monday afternoon's faculty-led picket was arranged to protest against the university's decision last week to implement US President Donald Trump's demands to overhaul and tighten rules for protests and disciplinary processes, as well as to assume control over an academic department as penance for failing to address what the administration has described as "antisemitism" on the institution's campus. 

Earlier this week, the Trump administration said Columbia's response to its demands was a “positive first step" in securing back the federal funding it had cancelled earlier this month. In a separate development on Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Faculty Members' Union in Manhattan, filed a suit against Trump for what they described as "an unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students".

Read more: Columbia faculty sidestep Palestine as they protest against Trump's assault on academic freedom