Behaviour that gets rewarded will be repeated. It’s a basic tenet of behavioural science — and it’s the reason those of us who care about expressive rights and academic freedom on American campuses are deeply worried about Columbia University’s $200 million settlement with the Trump administration this week. By capitulating to a months-long government pressure campaign that violated both federal law and the First Amendment, Columbia has rewarded the administration’s transgressions and set the stage for more lawless overreach to come.

This week’s settlement is the coup de grâce, but Columbia started to fold back in March. That’s when the administration’s newly announced Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the abrupt revocation of $400 million in federal grants to the school, claiming action was necessary in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests and threatening further cuts.

The funding cuts were accompanied by an extensive list of demands, with the authorities seeking to dictate Columbia’s decision-making about speech, discipline, instruction, and admissions. Fearing further reprisal and the potential loss of billions more in federal funding, Columbia started to make changes. The university received the feds’ message loud and clear: “Nice little private university you have here; it’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”

For example, Columbia quickly adopted a speech code that was designed to target “antisemitic” speech, but which was so vague and sweeping as to capture core political speech, such as criticism of Israel. The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from pressuring any college, private or public, to censor speech critical of any country. But by forcing Columbia to police protected political speech, that’s exactly what it did.

The administration also demanded that Columbia surrender control of an entire academic department and relinquish its right to make independent decisions about discipline and admissions. This was another violation of the First Amendment, not to mention longstanding precepts of academic freedom, institutional independence, and university self-governance.

Of course, addressing discrimination is a worthy end. And Columbia’s response to campus protests which sometimes veered into unlawful misconduct raised legitimate concerns about whether the university met its obligations under federal anti-discrimination law. But if Columbia’s conduct was legally questionable, the government’s sudden cancellation of funding was flatly unlawful. That’s because the same statute which requires schools receiving federal funding to take action against allegations of antisemitic harassment — Title VI — also requires the authorities to give schools notice, a hearing, and an opportunity to comply with the law voluntarily before terminating that funding.

These important legal safeguards protect students, faculty, and institutions from repressive government overreach. Yet Columbia didn’t benefit from any of them. Despite its professed interest in taking on campus antisemitism, the administration entirely ignored the lawful means by which it could do so.

As well as the payment involved in this week’s settlement, Columbia is set to agree to a list of reforms which largely track the demands the government made in March. Some of the demands sound relatively benign: Columbia must now require students to commit to free inquiry and open debate, for instance. But these reforms can’t be separated from the unlawful pressure campaign that produced them. And requiring students to promise to honour vague, subjective concepts such as “equality and respect” gives the federal government and the administrators now in its sway far too much cover to punish dissenting or minority viewpoints — the exact outcome the First Amendment is designed to prevent.

Sacrificing institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and expressive rights on campus won’t be worth whatever temporary peace Columbia believes it has bought. Speech at the university will be chilled under the watchful eye of the feds, and the message this week’s settlement sends to other colleges and universities is clear. If a wealthy Ivy League institution like Columbia can’t stand up for itself, what chance do other universities have? After all, now that this government action has been rewarded, it will be repeated.

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Will Creeley is the Legal Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

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