AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon says Columbia University is on track to regain $400 million in federal funding after the Ivy League school yielded to the Trump administration’s demands Friday. Those include banning face masks on campus, hiring 36 new security officers with greater power to arrest and crack down on students and appointing a senior vice provost to oversee the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.

Students say they will continue to fight for Palestinian rights and for Columbia to divest from Israel. Free speech experts are sounding the alarm.

For more, we are joined by Katherine Franke, former professor at Columbia Law School. She was forced to resign after two members of the Columbia community claimed she created a hostile environment for Israelis at Columbia after Franke appeared on our show, Democracy Now!, in January 2024 to discuss a chemical attack on pro-Palestinian student activists. Franke serves on the board of Palestine Legal.

We welcome you back to Democracy Now! Professor Franke, first, if you can talk about what has happened at Columbia University? Talk about this agreement that they have made. And also, if you want to comment on your own status at Columbia University?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, it’s lovely to see you, Amy. Thank you for inviting me back.

I think it would be inaccurate to describe what Columbia and the federal government have entered into as an agreement. The federal government seized funds that they were legally obliged to deliver to Columbia researchers, and then issued a ransom note, saying, “We will consider negotiations further with you if you do the following things.”

Columbia considered it and did more than what the ransom note demanded, for which it got nothing in return. Normally, when someone is kidnapped or there’s some kind of ransom taken, you agree to the things in the ransom note, and then you get your stuff back. You get your money back. You get your person back. In this case, Columbia merely supplicated itself before the federal government, and then we hear Linda McMahon say, “Well, this is on the road, on track to what we’d like to see.” So we have no idea what comes next. But groveling before a bully, we all know, just encourages the bully.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go through the points that Columbia University has either acquiesced to or just says that they will institute. And let’s remember, today is the day students return after spring break. Is this already in force? I’d like you to address the issue of this new, unusual security force — it’s not exactly Columbia security, it’s not the New York Police Department, but it has the power to arrest students on campus — also the issue of masks on campus and the new vice president, this kind of provost, in charge of several academic departments.

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, they only announced these changes last Friday, and today is Monday. It’s the first day of school after spring break. So we’ll see. But remember, Amy, the university has been on lockdown for months and months. I still have to go through two checkpoints in order to get to my office at the law school. We have public safety officers inside the campus everywhere, and NYPD outside the campus. And it seems the university was more than willing to call in the NYPD both at Columbia and at Barnard to arrest students. So, in some ways, this isn’t a huge change for daily life for the students. They’ve been living in a kind of security state, while they’re trying to learn and do the things that students do, for quite some time. But the rest of these new initiatives will take some time to roll out.

But those people who are in the departments, whether they’re students, faculty, staff, that are now being monitored by a newly created senior vice provost, are really worried. My syllabus is going to be looked at. Is someone going to be sitting in my classes? Are they going to be reviewing our graduate students and who we admit into our programs?

You know, Columbia has gone from being really a bastion of free speech — it’s why I went there as an undergrad in the late '70s and ’80s, and the president we had until quite recently, Lee Bollinger, was one of the most stellar stars in defense of academic freedom and free speech — to the situation where now Columbia University has become part of the apparatus of chilling speech critical of the state of Israel and critical of the United States. It's not just managing a difficult situation. It is actually implementing that censorship in the name of the university’s mission. And I think that’s what’s shocking the faculty, the students, the members and the alums. I’m hearing from so many alums. They want to burn their degrees. They’re so embarrassed by how Columbia has been behaving itself.

AMY GOODMAN: In a letter, Columbia’s interim President Katrina Armstrong wrote, quote, “Amidst a historically charged and divisive political atmosphere, academic institutions, of all places, must be able to operate with wisdom and deliberation, even as our various constituencies are moved to articulate different positions. Responsible stewardship means we must consider every appropriate action, work with our partners across the nation, and we are doing so. Legitimate questions about our practices and progress can be asked, and we will answer them. But we will never compromise our values of pedagogical independence, our commitment to academic freedom, or our obligation to follow the law.” Your response, Professor Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I mean, those are lovely words, but if you look at what the university is doing and the statement that they issued of these new policies last Friday, they’re doing the absolute opposite of what President Armstrong has professed. So, they’re speaking out of two sides of their mouth and trying to make the best of what is in a very difficult situation — I would, of course, admit that.

But if you look at what Bill Treanor, the dean at the law school at Georgetown, that you were just reporting on earlier, has said and what other university officials at other schools have said, there’s a path for universities to stand up to this. And the time to negotiate is over. These are test balloons. What they’ve done with Mahmoud Khalil, what they’ve done with other students by threatening to deport them or deport them, what they’ve done to Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, these law firms, and what they’re doing to Columbia, these are test balloons to see what kind of resistance and pushback they’re going to get. So far, very little.

And I think, you know, Amy, we need to buckle our seat belts. Things are about to get a lot worse in April and in May, because this administration knows that it can get away with an awful lot of conduct and chilling speech and authoritarian governance with very little resistance from institutional actors, like universities as powerful, we thought, as Columbia or law firms that we thought were as powerful as Paul Weiss. So, these actions are designed to sort of test the water: How far can we go? And they now know they can go all the way.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about targeting law firms like Paul Weiss. But I want to just ask you about this, this amazing piece in The New York Times, “Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million.” And it says, “A quarter-century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered and rejected property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it. … When he did not get his way, he stormed out of a meeting with university trustees and later publicly castigated the university president as 'a dummy' and 'a total moron.' That drama dates back 25 years.” You can’t help but notice that there he stood to gain $400 million, and he was going to sanction the university, take away $400 million in federal funding, unless they complied. Your quick response to that, Professor Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I mean, who knows if that number, $400 million, today, which they’ve withheld from Columbia — and, indeed, I think that they’ve actually held more. It just hasn’t been in the media. It certainly corresponds to that earlier number. And we well know that President Trump is known for holding a grudge and holding it for many, many years. So I presume it’s possible that this number he came up with relative to Columbia relates in some way to that earlier real estate deal. But to be honest, I find that to be a bit of a distraction.

I think we need to look forward and to think about how we can salvage our universities at this moment. At noon today, the faculty is going to be holding a vigil outside the gates of Columbia University for the university that has now died. And we’re trying to figure out: Where do we go from here? So, I think looking backward is actually less productive than thinking about where we go in this moment, where I personally feel like we have to work with our university — we need each other — rather than seeing it as only our enemy.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about Mahmoud Khalil. You had helped to advise him, the former Columbia graduate student who sought out the Columbia president’s help when he thought he was being followed and he felt threatened, and is now — has been picked up, apparently, by the Department of Homeland Security, is in immigration jail in Louisiana. What should the university do, Katherine Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, the university should have stood up for him and corrected what I know to be horrible falsehoods said about Mahmoud. I’ve worked with him for over a year. He was chosen by the leadership of Columbia University to be the mediator, the voice they wanted to speak to when the encampment started last spring. He’s a mature, reasonable, careful, responsible person. And they saw in Mahmoud someone who could play that role of mediator between both sides. The students trusted him. The university trusted him.

And then, when people in our community at Columbia set him up — I mean, it’s important to recognize that the finger was pointed at him by members of the Columbia University community calling for the federal government to arrest him. And the university did not stand up for him. They let it happen. He had written to Katrina Armstrong asking for help. And other students are in the same position right now, I will note. He will not be the only or last one who faces this kind of situation. And the university did nothing. They left him as a sitting duck. And then they didn’t speak out in defense of the role that he has played at Columbia, with their invitation and consent. So, I see Columbia as playing a role of putting a target on his back, in essence.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about other students. This comes as Indian national Ranjani Srinivasan left the U.S. earlier this month after her enrollment and student visa was unlawfully revoked before she was expected to graduate this year with a doctoral degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Her lawyer said she was arrested the night students took over what’s now known as Hind’s Hall, though she did not actually participate in that protest. On Saturday, she released an open letter that read in part, “With the rapidly escalating situation, the criminalization of free speech, and eminent travel bans, what has happened to me can happen to you. Therefore, we must exert maximum pressure on Columbia and other universities to protect international students from these arbitrary state actions. And we must fight for complete amnesty and reinstatement for those whom Columbia has sacrificed in the hope of reversing funding cuts. Now is the time to come together and demand universities do the right thing,” Srinivasan wrote. Very quickly, your comment on this, Professor Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I think her case is a horrendous object lesson. She was not part of the protests. She was not arrested connected to the protests. And her visa was revoked nevertheless. I think her leaving and going to Canada was a reasonable action on her part, because she knew what would come next, even though there was absolutely no reason to revoke her visa or to detain her.

And I would say that the other students who were involved in other protests, they, too, were engaging in what we should understand to be protected First Amendment political speech. But she wasn’t even involved in those actions. So, that’s where it’s radiating out, is that they’re identifying students who are vulnerable, and in most cases, Black and Brown, students of color, who are vulnerable in the sense that they have visas that could be revoked based on completely specious charges.

And I feel horrible for her, as I do for Mahmoud and the other students who are cowering in their dorm rooms right now, afraid to leave the building, because there are sketchy guys out front with big vans with tinted windows waiting for them. I mean, I can’t overemphasize how frightening it is for our students to be attending a university, hoping to get an education, when the university is actually collaborating in their very peril.

AMY GOODMAN: In this last 30 seconds we have, Professor Katherine Franke, how would you characterize this moment in time, this moment in U.S. history?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I think what we’re seeing — and this is, what’s happening at Columbia and these other schools is just a small piece — is the collapse of a constitutional order that the Trump administration has very deftly exploited. There are anti-democratic elements in our constitutional system that this administration has very adeptly exploited and has put out these test balloons, as I’ve said, with universities and law firms. And what they’re about to do next, I think we all have to be very worried about.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to continue —

KATHERINE FRANKE: As we saw the Berlin Wall — fine.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this discussion and post it online at democracynow.org. Katherine Franke, former professor at Columbia Law School. As she puts it, the university retired her. To see our conversations with her in the past, go to democracynow.org, and to see our new conversation with her, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.