Good morning, and welcome to Monday, March 17. Sarah Brown wrote today’s top. Laura Krantz wrote the rest. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Columbia’s delicate dance

The feds are pulling out all the stops to try to force Columbia University to bend to their will.

Late last week, the Trump administration ratcheted up its targeting of Columbia over allegations of antisemitism. A Thursday letter from the Education Department and two other agencies leading an expansive review of the university’s federal funding said Columbia needed to fulfill nine demands to preserve a “continued financial relationship with the United States government.” The demands included:

• Seize control of Middle East studies. The letter called on the university to place the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies under “academic receivership” for five years. In such arrangements, the university’s administration appoints its own department chair and controls decision-making that’s usually left to the faculty.
• Turn campus security into a police force. Officers, per the letter, should have “full law enforcement authority” to arrest people if they “foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment” or “interfere with classroom instruction.” Columbia, in the heart of New York City, currently relies on the New York Police Department if safety problems escalate.
• Expel or suspend protesters. The demand applied to students who participated a year ago in pro-Palestinian encampments and the occupation of a campus building — events that spurred a national movement for colleges to divest from Israel. The letter also said that the university should centralize discipline under the president’s office.

Almost simultaneously, Columbia’s president announced expulsions of some of those protesters. Political pressure to punish the students had been building for months, long before President Trump took office. A Columbia statement said the university imposed a range of punishments, including expulsions, multi-year suspensions, and temporary degree revocations, but didn’t say how many students were kicked out.

Earlier expulsions had already caused a stir. Barnard College, the women’s institution affiliated with Columbia, recently expelled two students who disrupted an Israeli history class in January. According to an activist group, a third student was expelled for participating in the spring 2024 encampments.

This is all connected to last week’s other big story. The Barnard punishments prompted student sit-ins. Present at one of those protests, according to a video that circulated online, was Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate student. Three days later, Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

To some observers, Columbia’s expulsions on Thursday felt like yet another capitulation to Trump — just days after ICE was able to enter university housing and detain Khalil. He is being held in Louisiana and faces deportation proceedings.

Given the real and immediate consequences they’ve faced, Columbia officials seem to be treading carefully. The university has spent the past 10 days telling some researchers that they’ve lost their funding because of the cancellation of many National Institutes of Health grants. The Trump administration’s Thursday letter indicated that the feds will pursue additional funding cuts as they see fit.

But on campus and across higher ed, many are wondering: Will complying with Trump’s directives even help? Last fall, Columbia administrators had already increased enforcement of campus rules and opened a new investigative unit to go after allegations of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. It wasn’t enough to appease the government.

ICE agents were back on Columbia’s campus last week. On Thursday, shortly after the expulsions were announced, another missive came out from the university. Administrators took a softer tone than previous statements:

• “I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two university residences tonight,” Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote. She added: “I understand the immense stress our community is under.”
• Armstrong said she wouldn’t have allowed the agents into private areas without warrants, but warrants were produced, enabling them to enter the dorms. No one was arrested, she said.
• The Department of Homeland Security shared sparse updates Friday about two other Columbia protesters. One was a Ph.D. student who had her visa revoked this month for being “involved in activities supporting Hamas” and “self-deported” last week. The other, a former student whose visa expired in 2022, was arrested.

Later on Friday, a Justice Department official said the DHS activity was connected to yet another probe of Columbia. The department is investigating whether the university has been “harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” according to the Associated Press.

The bigger picture: Columbia administrators are doing a delicate dance with the Trump administration. They’re wedged between a government that’s proven unafraid to leverage its vast arsenal of institutional sanctions, and a campus community that is calling for them to fight back and protect students. The courts might eventually scrutinize how Trump’s actions potentially run afoul of laws and regulations, but damage is already being done.

Sure, this is an elite-college spat that in many ways doesn’t reflect the rest of the sector. But how Columbia handles this clash will set the tone for higher education’s relationship with the federal government over the weeks and months to come.

For more from The Chronicle: Can Trump Force Columbia U. to Expel Student Protesters?
The Trump Administration Told Columbia to Put a Department in ‘Academic Receivership.’ What Is That?
An ICE Arrest at Columbia U. Stokes Outrage and Raises Legal Questions

Quote of the day

“I can’t keep investing my money or my student debt here.”

— Marie Krebs, a graduate student in the University of Iowa’s School of Social Work.

Krebs decided to leave the university after facing discipline for a presentation she and a classmate gave about diversity, equity, and inclusion at a national social work conference last fall, The Daily Iowan reports.

Krebs presented about the experiences of students of color in the UI social work program and also discussed Iowa’s new anti-DEI legislation. It drew scrutiny from university leadership, which ultimately issued her a disciplinary reprimand.

Quick hits

• More than 50 colleges under federal investigation: The Trump administration is investigating institutions for alleged racial discrimination caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that it says exclude white and Asian American students. The probes, announced Friday, come one month after a memo warned colleges they could lose federal funding over “race-based preferences” in any part of admissions or student life. The list includes Arizona State, Ohio State, Rutgers, Yale, Duke, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Associated Press)
• Parents sue Ed. Dept. over mass firings: Two parents, along with the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national disability-rights group, sued the Trump administration on Friday, attempting to stop the layoffs of civil-rights investigators and lawyers. Plaintiffs say the administration is sabotaging civil-rights enforcement by laying off the entire staff of seven of the 12 regional civil-rights offices. (ProPublica)
• College apps spike among underrepresented groups: A report released last week by the Common App revealed that first-year college applications for the 2024-25 admissions cycle showed strong growth among first-generation students and those from underrepresented groups. The report showed a 4-percent jump in applicants over all, with a 13-percent increase in Latino applicants and a 10-percent increase in Black applicants. White applicants’ share of the pool continued to decline, from 48 to 46 percent. (Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Common App)
• Wittenberg U. placed on “distress” list: The Higher Learning Commission, its accrediting agency, assigned the “financial distress” designation after Education Department auditors raised concerns about its ability to continue operating. Accreditors plan to visit the university later this year to assess whether it has addressed its financial challenges. (Springfield News-Sun)
• Sexual-misconduct charges hurt citations: When scholars are accused of sexual misconduct, their work is cited less frequently within three years of the allegations surfacing. But when they’re accused of scientific misconduct, they face no such citation penalty in the same time frame, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California at San Diego. (PLOS One)

Comings and goings

• Michael E. Hill, president of the Chautauqua Institution, in New York, has been named president of Randolph-Macon College, in Virginia.
• Jeffrey T. Grabill, deputy vice chancellor for student education at the University of Leeds, in the United Kingdom, has been named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo.
• Corey Zink, associate vice president for enrollment management at Idaho State University, has been named vice president for student success and enrollment management at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

Attention University of California at Davis admissions staff: A national champion might soon be among your transfer applicants.

But maybe look for his application under the letter B — for Baggin’ Dragon, that is.

Sebastian Moretti, who works at the Nugget Market on East Covell Boulevard, in Davis, was recently crowned Best Bagger at last month’s National Grocers Association Best Bagger Championship in Las Vegas, beating fierce competition among supermarket checkout warriors who stack cans, boxes, and bags into reusable grocery bags at lightspeed — all without breaking the eggs.

Moretti, who grew up shopping at the Nugget Market with his parents, is a student at Sacramento City College, and said he plans to transfer to UC Davis to continue studying soil science.

If his bagging training regimen is any indication, he’ll make an A+ student. He practiced four or five hours a week to prepare for the competition under the guidance of Jeremy Jones, a trainer at the market who also coached a second Nugget Market employee to claim the Best Bagger trophy, which is topped with a shiny metal grocery bag.

“I was stoked,” Moretti said. “It was so awesome.”