“Columbia University Loses $400 Million in Federal Grants and Contracts.”
This March 7 New York Times headline was followed by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s statement that the cuts were due to Columbia’s “failure to protect Jewish students from harassment.” She warned that more funding losses would follow unless the university took stronger action against antisemitism.
At first glance, this might seem like a move American Jews would support — a president taking a firm stand against campus antisemitism. But is that really what’s happening?
As with everything in President Donald Trump’s world, this is spectacle, not substance. His actions are never driven by principle but by political and financial self-interest. The threat to cut funding isn’t about combating antisemitisn. It’s about rallying his base and punishing an elite university that opposes him.
In Trump’s transactional universe, morality is irrelevant. Every decision is based on what benefits him politically or financially. If a policy plays well on TV and energizes his supporters, he pursues it. If Saudi Arabia or Russia can offer something in return, it hardly matters whether their leaders have butchered journalists or invaded sovereign nations.
Every move is calculated for personal gain.
In the classic play “Death of a Salesman,” Willy Loman’s neighbor Charley tells him:
“The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. … Who liked J.P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath, he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked.”
Willy is blinded by the “bitch goddess” of success, making him tragic. But Trump is no Willy Loman. He is America’s ultimate salesman, a man for whom the presidential oath is merely a pledge to Mammon and bombast, dragging the country toward division and chaos.
Trump’s move to defund Columbia signals unwavering support for Israel, but it has nothing to do with defending Jewish people or their rights. If it weren’t politically useful, would he be taking this step? Instead, it’s about punishing an Ivy League institution that opposes him and appeasing both the extreme Christian right, which sees Israel’s survival as a religious prerequisite, and his base’s deep-seated anti-intellectualism.
But the real reason for this attack on Columbia may lie elsewhere: Trump’s recent treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Zelensky, not just a head of state but a Jew, was treated with disdain, as if he were a beggar tracking mud into Trump’s gilded palace rather than a leader fighting for democracy against a war criminal.
His offense? Wearing a T-shirt instead of bowing to the self-proclaimed king.
By targeting Columbia, Trump does what he does best: divert attention, manipulate public perception and change the subject. Rather than scrutinizing his vanity and contempt for democracy, we are supposed to applaud his supposed fight against antisemitism. But this is just another round of three-card monte, a sleight of hand that benefits oligarchs while pretending to protect Jews.
We must not be fooled. Never again.
