Since early 2024, I’ve been running a journalism ethics center at Columbia University.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that I see the university’s capitulation to Trump both in terms of journalism and ethics.
I’ve never run a university, but I have run a newsroom. For 13 years (until I moved to New York City in 2012 to be the New York Times public editor), I was the chief editor of the Buffalo News, the regional newspaper in my home town. I had started there as a summer intern. As editor, I made a lot of decisions; the buck stopped at my desk.
It’s not a perfect analogy to Columbia’s situation, but I’ve been thinking about what my options might have been if the paper’s biggest and most powerful advertiser – one important to our financial wellbeing – had gotten wind of an investigation they didn’t like the sounds of. Something that would reveal something negative about their business, let’s say.
Suppose that advertiser had threatened to withdraw all their advertising unless we dropped the story. In fact, suppose they wanted promises of positive coverage – perhaps a fawning profile of their CEO, and a series about the good things the company was doing in the community.
Let’s complicate it more. Let’s say that my boss, the paper’s owner, was on the advertiser’s side, or at least inclined to see their point of view.
What would my options be as editor?
There really would be only one: to hold fast. To make the case to the owner that if we were a legitimate newspaper, we would have to be brave and not allow ourselves to be bullied. And to refuse to pull the story. Make sure it’s bulletproof – every fact nailed down – and proceed with plans to publish it.
What would happen?
That’s hard to say. Maybe the advertiser would blink. Maybe the owner would fire me. Maybe I’d feel I had to resign.
The point of this imperfect analogy is simply that allowing oneself – or one’s institution – to be bullied or threatened into compliance is never the right answer.
And it’s especially important for strong institutions to stand up, to set an example and to insulate those who have fewer resources or are more vulnerable.
Columbia has a huge – nearly $15bn – endowment. It could have withstood the withdrawal of federal funds.
Columbia’s leadership could have chosen to say “see you in court” rather than “yes, sir”.
Some principles are so central to an institution’s purpose that to betray them should be unthinkable. You don’t kill a valid story under pressure. Because journalism, however flawed, is about finding and telling the truth.
And a university – which stands for academic freedom, for freedom of thought, speech and expression, including the right to peacefully protest – cannot buckle to demands to undermine those principles.
Sadly, that’s what Columbia did, even going so far as to put an entire academic department under highly unusual supervision, and to empower beefed-up campus police to detain, remove or arrest students for various supposed offenses.
after newsletter promotion
This action stains a great university, which could have recovered from a financial threat but may not recover from this capitulation.
Of course, Columbia needs to work against antisemitism and against all forms of hatred and discrimination. But that’s not really – or certainly not fully – what’s at the heart of Trump’s move.
“It’s all about intimidation,” as my Guardian colleague Robert Reich, a former labor secretary, wrote this weekend, “not only at Columbia but at every other university in America.”
Columbia’s capitulation mirrors that of many institutions in recent weeks. A major law firm (Paul, Weiss), under pressure, struck a deal with the White House to donate $40m in legal work to enable Trump’s causes. ABC News settled a defamation suit it probably could have won. And newspaper owners, including Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, have been cozying up to Trump in many ways that harm credibility and mission.
Yet some organizations have decided not to cave, but to be true to their stated and long-held principles.
The Associated Press is suing, after the Trump administration severely limited its journalists’ access, punishing them for an editorial decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” on first reference in their stories, not “Gulf of America”. Another large law firm, Perkins Coie, is fighting in court after Trump’s executive order stripped their lawyers of their security clearances and denyed them access to government buildings.
Take this to the bank: there is no satisfying the Trumpian demands. The goalposts will always be moved and then moved again.
With its huge endowment and sea of rich alumni – some of whom, surely, would be in sympathy – Columbia had other choices. Smaller universities may not.
Institutions with resources must resist thuggish bullying, not just for their own sakes, but to protect others who will find it much harder. And for another reason: at an extremely dangerous time in the US and in the world, it’s the right thing to do.
