Hundreds Of Jewish Academics Condemn Trump Attacks On Universities

“The knock-on effects of this will be catastrophic,” one co-author told HuffPost.

Hundreds of Jewish professors, scholars and students have signed a letter condemning the Trump administration for canceling $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University and threatening other universities.

Columbia is reportedly nearing an agreement with the Trump administration, which pushed an aggressive slate of demands on the university that critics said were a grave threat to academic freedom.

The administration has justified the demands, and the funding cuts, by alleging Columbia has “failed to protect American students and faculty” from antisemitic harassment, in addition to other unspecified legal violations.

But the signatories to the “Open letter in response to federal funding cuts at Columbia” argued otherwise — that the cuts did nothing to protect Jews, and in fact, could be used to target them.

“History teaches us that the loss of individual rights and freedoms for any group often begins with silencing scientists and scholars, people who devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge — a pursuit that is core to Jewish culture,” stated the letter, which has so far been signed by over 350 people. “Moreover, destroying universities in the name of Jews risks making Jews in particular less safe by setting them up to be scapegoats.”