hankyoreh

Robert Newton, a former senior research scientist and current member of the Columbia University American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Executive Committee, speaks to the Hankyoreh over Zoom on March 31, 2025. (Kim Won-chu/Hankyoreh)

To understand Donald Trump’s war on US colleges and universities, justified as combating antisemitism and undoing supposedly unfair diversity policies, one must first look at Columbia University. The elite university in New York is on the frontline of this battle and has already lost US$400 million in federal funding, as well as its president, in the process.

Speaking to the Hankyoreh over Zoom on Monday, Robert Newton, a former senior research scientist and current member of the Columbia University American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Executive Committee, said that antisemitism on college campuses is only a red herring in the administration’s effort to reshape how higher education operates in the United States, and warned that Trump and his administration are headed in the direction of dictatorship.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Hankyoreh: When did the protests of the war in Gaza begin on campus?
Robert Newton: On the day of Oct. 7 and in the aftermath of those violent attacks against Jews in Israel, there was an outpouring of solidarity and empathy and support for Israel, Israelis and Israeli students on the campus. Then, when the reaction by Israel was this very aggressive siege and bombing of neighborhoods in Gaza, the mood turned, and there started to be demonstrations on the campus. The university leadership restricted those demonstrations to a narrow space and a short amount of time. These time and place restrictions made it very hard for the students to communicate with their peers, with the rest of the student body. So the students broke those rules and demonstrated outside the times and outside the places where they were supposed to stay.
In response, the university decertified the organizations; Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a Jewish organization in favor of Palestinian freedoms, and Students for Justice in Palestine, which is a Palestinian-led pro-Palestinian organization, were told they were not permitted to do anything on campus for the rest of the semester. Students who, from their perspective, were protesting against a genocide, weren’t willing to simply go back to their dormitories and forget about it. They continued to demonstrate. So the university started disciplining those students. So in response to the discipline, the students set up an encampment.

Hankyoreh: The encampment became a symbol of the protests at Columbia. What was the mood like at the time?
Newton: They encamped on the grounds quite peacefully. They were holding discussions all day. They had signs, they were sleeping in tents. They were not running around the university. They weren’t doing anything violent. There was a small pro-Zionist Jewish counter demonstration on the steps of Butler Library.

On April 18, 2024, Columbia called the NYPD to campus to arrest students and clear the encampment. On April 30, the students escalated their protest by occupying a campus building. Police were mobilized and over 100 people were arrested. Newton called the police response “very rough.” Students were knocked down, slammed into walls, and thrown down steps. “The repression against the pro-Palestinian demonstrators was quite harsh.”

Hankyoreh: The Trump administration has referred to antisemitism as justification for its pressure on Columbia. Is there truth to allegations of antisemitism at Columbia? (*The US Civil Rights Act prohibits “exclusion from participation in, denial of benefits of, and discrimination under federally assisted programs on ground of race, color or national origin.”)
Newton: While I have seen very, very little antisemitism on campus, there is a very strong anti-Zionist movement on campus. I think that this war and the violence taking place in Gaza, really mark the first time in my memory that a major fraction of American Jews have pushed back against the policies of Israel. About a third of the students who have participated in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations are themselves Jewish. A very large fraction of Jews on the Columbia campus said, “No, this is wrong. The war is wrong.” 
I think that this has created a real crisis for Zionist Jews in America, including on the Columbia campus. They, for the first time, have a sense that this argument over Israel and Palestine is not just with Palestinians or with Arab people, but is, in fact, with other Jews. And I think that is what the context for these accusations of antisemitism is based on. They’re not based on antisemitic incidents, antisemitic speech, or antisemitic bias. They’re actually a reaction to a strong anti-Zionist movement.

People protest outside Columbia University on March 27, 2025, carrying signs with the face of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate, who was detained by immigration authorities for his participation in pro-Palestine protests at the school. (Reuters/Yonhap)

Hankyoreh: But it’s true that some Jewish students have reported feeling intimidated on campus.
Newton: What happened is that the Jewish students had to walk past very vocal anti-Israel demonstrations. From what I saw between those students, there was a strong effort not to make it personal, not to call the Jewish students names, not to be too aggressive with them, but to really focus on Palestine. There was this extensive study done; [Columbia President Minouche] Shafik created a presidential task force on antisemitism and they interviewed hundreds of students. What's documented in that report, really, between Columbia students and Columbia students is a lot of shouting and a lot of chanting. In these demonstrations, there are a few — six or seven incidents — of real antisemitism. 

Hankyoreh: What kind of incidents were these?
Newton: A student was backed against a wall and spit on and screamed at. Another student had a gold Star of David chain torn off. But if you looked at those incidents, they weren’t actually on the campus, and the aggressors were not actually Columbia students. Because when the demonstrations took place, Columbia became a lightning rod, an attraction point. This was not just Columbia students anymore. This was just whoever showed up to demonstrate.
There was an incident that, to me, really was antisemitic, which was that a group of students came into a classroom where an Israeli visiting scholar was teaching about the modern history of Israel. Four students came in, and they handed out flyers. And while the text on the flyers was fine — it basically criticized Israel and Israeli actions — the imagery on the flyers really was antisemitic: A boot crushing the Star of David. That was over the top.

The pro-Palestine protesters have faced their own share of attacks. Newton pointed to an incident in which two Israeli students sprayed skunk spray at a group of students chanting pro-Palestinian slogans. Multiple students went to the hospital. “Some of the kids were traumatized,” he said. “There have been a very small number, really a handful of moments where you would have to say someone really crossed the line and was antisemitic or anti-Arab or Islamophobic. What there have been are very strong words criticizing Israel, or criticizing Hamas.”

Hankyoreh: The Trump administration is saying that Columbia’s failure to handle the protests properly constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act. What do you say to that?
Newton: From the very beginning of the protests, the university leadership really bent over backward to try to accommodate the comfort of the Jewish students on the campus. They have disciplined any students who speak out strenuously against Zionism. These students who distributed those flyers have been suspended. The students who occupied Hamilton Hall were pulled out and arrested. Six of them have been expelled from school, and 22 of them have been suspended. This is unheard of that you would expel students for participating in political demonstrations.
Others have accused various faculty of criticizing Israel in their classes, and making things uncomfortable. Every single one of those accusations has been investigated. The professors have had to produce their emails, their curriculum, and they have had to go to hearings and answer to charges. Some of the professors have been disciplined. The university set up this antisemitism task force and gave them a budget and a staff. On the other side, a similar level of protection has not been made available to Palestinian students, Arab students, or even Jewish students who are protesting against Israeli policies.

Hankyoreh: Say that there were violations of the Civil Rights Act. Isn’t there still a process that the federal government is supposed to follow with these funding cuts?
Newton: The federal government is saying that the cuts are because Columbia is an unsafe environment for Jewish students. That’s inaccurate. It’s not true. But, as you said, let’s assume for the moment that it were true, and there is substance to these allegations. There’s a legal process specified in administrative law for how such cuts could be enacted. If there is an allegation of bias, the charges have to be brought. The institution has to respond to the charges. The charges have to be adjudicated. If there's a finding of bias, the institution is given a certain number of weeks in which to respond and appeal. If, on appeal, the finding of bias is still upheld, then cuts are permissible.

Hankyoreh: The areas and activities being affected by funding cuts aren’t all ones that were accused of antisemitism, though.
Newton: If the federal government, after this process of adjudication and appeal, were to find that a department’s curriculum were biased against an ethnic group or a religious group, it would have the right to cut funding to that department. But it is quite clear in the administrative law that to cut funding across a wide range of activities or to cut funding to an unrelated activity is simply not permissible by law. On administrative law. These cuts are an illegal response to the charge. (*Most of the US$400 million in funding cuts Columbia faces are in the fields of medicine and science.)

Hankyoreh: Why is Trump and his administration waging war on colleges?
Newton: They’re trying to change the way higher education operates in the United States and bring it under the influence of the federal government. They keep talking about what they call the unitary presidents, the unitary executive. They are operating with the theory that the primary body of government is the executive and the legislative and the judicial are secondary, and have no right to monitor or control what the executive can do. In other words, they have a kind of a soft path they want to follow towards a dictatorship. That’s not an exaggeration. 
If that’s your plan, an independent educational system where people are taught critical thinking and history, and learn to work together with people of diverse perspectives and diverse ethnicities, and where the institution is operated somewhat democratically, is antithetical to this project that they're operating in Washington. If you’re educated and you know something about history, and you think critically and read books, you’re unlikely to want to live in a dictatorship. Columbia is at the tip of the spear. They have a list of 60 universities they plan to go after next. 

By Kim Won-chul, Washington correspondent

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