Last time I presented some of the PBS NewsHour interview of Wesleyan University president, Michael Roth, on Columbia University’s agreement with the Trump administration. President Roth was distressed that “in this country today, the executive branch of the federal government wants to be able to dictate terms to private universities, law firms, newspapers, TV stations.” Excerpts from this interview continue below.
AMNA NAWAZ: So, you’re saying they should be concerned. As you note, Columbia is not the only university that’s been targeted by this administration. Harvard, as we have been covering, has actually been fighting the administration in court, but we know there’s also settlement talks going on. Do you believe universities and colleges will have no other choice but to make some kind of deal in order to move forward?
MICHAEL ROTH: Well, I do think that, when you’re dealing with a very, very powerful entity like the federal government, especially when it doesn’t obey its own laws– I mean, there are no findings of fact here about what the specific actions of antisemitism were — or discrimination against white people. There’s no finding of facts there.
It’s just, you give us $221 million, and then we allow you to compete for grants.
I mean, it’s a very old-fashioned game. You pay the powerful figure so that you can go along and continue to operate. Now, you operate in a way, of course, that you don’t want to annoy that powerful figure or that powerful organization.
And it sends a chilling message across America that, if you have a late-night comedy show, if you have a law firm, if you are working in an educational institution or a library, or, as we read today, in a museum like the Smithsonian, if you don’t please the president, you are at risk.
And, again, I don’t blame them for trying to make the best of that situation, but, as Americans, I’m not worried about Columbia. I’m not worried about Wesleyan. I’m worried about the country, where we are being subjected to a White House that thinks it could tell us what to do at every turn.
AMNA NAWAZ: As you know, the administration has long argued that this was about combating antisemitism on campus. This was a deal welcomed by Columbia’s Hillel Jewish organization. The executive director said in part: “The announcement’s an important recognition of what Jewish students and families have expressed with increasing urgency.
Antisemitism at Columbia is real. It has a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety, belonging, and their civil rights.”
I guess the question, President Roth, is if it makes Jewish students and staff feel safer, did the administration pressure and the deal do what it intended to do?
MICHAEL ROTH: How does paying the government $220 million to do basic science make Jews safer?
As a Jew, I find this horrific. I know antisemitism is real, and I know it was real and is real at Columbia, as it is in Congress, as it is in most places in the United States. But the idea that you pay off the government in order to get them off your back so you can do cancer research, and that’s good for the Jews, I think it’s ridiculous.
We don’t need the White House to tell us antisemitism is real two weeks after the Defense Department contracts with Grok, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence entity, after he praised Hitler.
This is an administration that is not concerned with Jewish welfare. I am concerned with Jewish welfare as a Jew, as a professor, as a college president.
I think it’s really important to call out antisemitism. But to pay up basically protection money in a way that’s supposed to make Jews safer, I think, in the long run, it’s — as we say in my community, it’s not good for the Jews.
