Trump Pulled $400M from Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next | Hacker News Reader

Trump Pulled $400M from Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next

nytimes.com

24 pointsbreadwinner14 comments

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, the total value of Columbia's endowment was $14.8 billion. I think they're gonna be OK.

They will be fine... but not all of the research will be funded. PhD students are getting the axe [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/trump-univers...

That just means that Columbia doesn’t value research except as a way to get money from the government.

And the people dismantling the government are philantrophists /s

No, clearly not. A philanthropist may spend their own money however they want, but the government is spending taxpayer money and should not be so profligate. Why should we give that money to racists and antisemites? Especially a really wealthy institution like Columbia? Let the money go to a school that doesn’t employ racists, or directly to researchers. Researchers do not need to work at schools, you know. Or return the money to the people it was taken from; that would be the best policy economically. Either way we can do something better with it.

When you say antisemite, are you referring to Trump [1] and Musk [2] because none of the other entities mentioned are racist or antisemitic.

[1] https://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/14/13288138/donald-trump-a...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67446800

Endowment are almost always earmarked and released over time for specific things. Uou acting like they have an endless $15 billion fund to do whatever they want with shows you're either entirely ignorant of how this world works or that you're intentionally being misleading.

Grants are required for research.

Trump released a statement on Truth Social saying: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”

What is an "illegal protest"? Do we have a 1st amendment or not? JD Vance went to Europe and chided them for not allowing free speech.

This is not about antisemitism at all, this is after all an antisemitic president [1], this is about political payback for those who didn't support him.

Many schools have paused hiring and reduced the number of doctoral students admitted in response to the financial uncertainty.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/trump-his...

> What is an "illegal protest"?

A protest that the sitting president doesn't agree with.

Carl Schmitt would agree, or maybe Helmut Schmidt, too, when he was Mayor of Hamburg in 1962: "We didn't refer to the Constitution much, in those days"

> What is an "illegal protest"? Do we have a 1st amendment or not?

They are living in the future, more specifically in April 20:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/insurr...

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