"Trump administration texted college professors' personal phones to ask if they're Jewish."
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/23/trump-eeoc-barnard-columbia-texts-jewish/

As all academics know, you can't ask this question in a job interview.
https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-religious-affiliation-or-beliefs

But I guess it's OK when it's not a job interview, when it's the govt asking, and the govt includes a high-ranking official who gives #Nazi salutes.

This happened at #BarnardCollege. Probably no accident that Barnard is affiliated with #Columbia. Trump officials said they had a right to the personal contact info, and the school handed it over.

#Antisemitism #Trump #USPol #USPolitics #WTF
@academicchatter

Update. " #NIH freezes funds to #Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-funds-harvard-and-four-other-universities-can-t-tell-them
( #paywalled)

"After freezing all grants to #Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities [ #Brown, #Northwestern, #Cornell, #WeillCornell Medical School]…The move will both block new funding and halt payments to investigators currently working on NIH projects…The Department of Health and Human Services ( #HHS)…instructed NIH staff not to provide any communication to these institutions or to Columbia about whether the funds are frozen or why, according to the email."

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. Here's the letter of demands from the #Trump admin to #Columbia.
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6d3c124d8e20212d/85dec154-full.pdf

Note that it's much shorter and less extreme than the letter to #Harvard.
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf

There are probably many reasons why. Thinking out loud:

* Trump and Trumpists had a long-standing animosity against Harvard.
* Columbia's capitulation emboldened them to reach for more.
* Harvard receives more federal money than Columbia, giving Trump more leverage.

#Academia
@academicchatter