Trump’s College Crackdown

The federal government has some “legitimate concerns,” said Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong last week, after the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of $400 million in federal grants because, it claimed, Columbia had not addressed rampant anti-Semitism on its campus. Armstrong’s words suggest that Columbia has gotten the message. But what about other institutions of higher education? 

A recent survey of university presidents suggests not. Unless they take steps to address not only anti-Semitism but also the profound ideological bias that has engendered it and other forms of radicalism on campus, they may be in line for similar sanctions, write Naomi Schaefer Riley and the Manhattan Institute’s James Piereson. If they fail to act, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

In 2022 and 2023, the U.S. introduced export controls that prevented Chinese companies from purchasing American AI chips. That was the intent, anyway.

The controls have been leaky, argues Samuel Hammond, chief economist for the Foundation for American Innovation. “Chinese buyers have circumvented the controls on a mass scale by routing chips through third parties in nearby regions, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. In other words, East Asian allies and U.S. firms are enabling the transmission of chips to a geopolitical adversary,” he writes.

Now China is catching up to U.S. advancements in AI. Read Hammond’s look at the consequences here.

In Boris Johnson’s memoir Unleashed, he “writes breezily, and often with a near-adolescent facetiousness that either amuses or irritates,” writes Theodore Dalrymple. “For someone seeking always to be amusing, the dread of failure also arises, for telling a joke that falls flat is an excruciating social experience.” Read Dalrymple’s assessment not only of the book but of Johnson’s character and career here.

New York’s MTA prioritizes diversity quotas in contracting over making public transit faster and more efficient. The result? Higher costs, wasted funds, and a subway system that still isn’t getting better, argues Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Judge Glock. Read his article here.

In an article that will also appear in City Journal’s Spring 2025 issue, Heather Mac Donald examines the National Institutes of Health’s decision to limit the amount that it would pay universities for indirect research costs—things like salaries, office equipment, janitorial services, and more.

Universities claim that the effect will be “devastating.”

Not quite, Mac Donald argues. “Even if universities had not undermined their claims of barebones efficiency with their uncontrolled and politicized spending, setting a single rate for indirect cost recovery will save the universities and the federal government millions of dollars in accounting, audits, and, at least superficially, aversive negotiations,” she writes. Read her in-depth analysis here.

In a new collection, A Town Without Time: Gay Talese’s New York, the famed writer finds desperation and loneliness never far from the surface, even when chronicling the city’s most celebrated individuals. Read City Journal Contributing Editor Jonathan Clarke’s review.

“The old racism restricted what kind of jobs blacks can have. The new racism, even more diabolical, restricts what thoughts they can have.”

Photo credits: KENA BETANCUR / Contributor / AFP via Getty Images