Tag: universities

Trump Administration Weighs Sanctions on Foreign Funders of Pro-Hamas Campus Protests

The Trump administration is mulling plans to sanction the international funders behind pro-Hamas protests, including prominent Qatari nationals who have vast financial holdings inside the United States, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the internal discussions told the Washington Free Beacon.

The effort seeks to build upon President Donald Trump’s January executive order authorizing the deportation of foreign students engaged in often illegal anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Instead of targeting the protests’ participants, it would target their funders. The administration could, for example, slap sanctions on foreign individuals who provide groups like Students for Justice in Palestine with significant funding. In cases where those individuals enjoy U.S. visas, it could revoke them.

“President Trump has made it a priority to ensure that Jewish students, indeed all students, feel safe and free from harassment on college campuses,” one senior U.S. official, who spoke on background to discuss the ongoing deliberations, told the Free Beacon. “To that end, his administration is taking a comprehensive approach, not just looking at the visas and green cards of student instigators, but also, for example, going after the people funding the protests, wherever they may be.”

The plans reflect a growing appetite inside the administration to hamstring Hamas’s allies in the United States by penalizing their most prolific funders, including several former Qatari officials known to maintain relations with the Iran-backed group. Iranian government actors have also funded anti-Israel protests in the United States, former director of national intelligence Avril Haines revealed last summer.

Some officials within the Biden administration discussed similar plans to cut off foreign funding or the protests, according to a former U.S. diplomat involved in the efforts both then and now, who said the administration shelved the plans so as not to upset Doha’s government as it mediated peace talks between Israel and Hamas.

“This was on the menu when I was there, but the previous administration was a bit squeamish about taking extreme measures, like revoking visas,” said the diplomat. “But that’s not a problem in this administration, and we’re hearing they’re looking at all options—from sanctions on individuals to the revocation of visas.”

“You can’t get rid of anti-Semitism on campus without getting rid of the funding, and the funders are Qatar.”

The Trump administration has already taken similar action when it comes to America’s southern border. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on “foreign government officials, including immigration and customs officials, airport and port authority officials, and others believed to be responsible for knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.” Less than two weeks later, Rubio restricted visas for current and former government officials complicit in China’s genocide of the Uyghur minority population.

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Students push back against law school’s WILD woke agenda

Macquarie University law students have condemned their course’s growing ideological focus, revealing they have been pressured to perform a “privilege walk” and adopt personas to understand power and status. They say their education has been hijacked by political activism, with a key course convenor now doubling down on controversial assessment criteria.

Holly Doel-Mackaway, convenor of the elective Age and the Law course, defended the requirement for students to perform an Acknowledgment of Country as part of their assessment. She reportedly said on Wednesday that those who failed to deliver a suitable proclamation would “not meet the metric or rubric.”

Students have pushed back against what they see as a politicised curriculum, with one saying they felt pressured to “express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in.”

A former honours student, speaking anonymously, told The Australian that students were required to deliver an “exceptionally thoughtful and respectful Acknowledgement of Country or Welcome to Country” as part of their thesis presentation, taking up around 30 seconds of their three-minute speech. The student said this had no connection to their thesis subject.

Doel-Mackaway reportedly told students that the requirement was about “acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land.”

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In Internal Documents, Columbia Grad Student Union Spells Out Demands for ‘Sanctuary Campus’ Free From Public Safety Patrols and Protest Records

Columbia University’s graduate student union is demanding the Ivy League institution establish a “sanctuary campus” where public safety officers are barred from patrolling “organizing spaces, including classrooms.” The union, which is embroiled in active contract negotiations with Columbia, also wants the school to provide free “legal support” for student visa holders, destroy “all records” related to campus protest participants, and sue the Trump administration “and other anti-immigrant actors.”

Student Workers of Columbia, which boasts roughly 3,000 members and is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, shared an internal document outlining the demands during a Saturday Zoom meeting, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. The document, written by a “working group” of the union’s international members, cites the “unprecedented detainment of former student-worker Mahmoud Khalil by the Department of Homeland Security while in a Columbia University apartment building and the ongoing presence of ICE around campus” before making “immediate demands of Columbia University.”

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Trump Pulls $175 Million in Federal Funding from UPenn After They Defied His Order on Transgenders in Women’s Sports

President Trump has suspended $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania after they defied his order on transgenders in women’s sports.

The prestigious Ivy League university is currently in violation of Title IX, which prohibits the sending of federal funding to universities or organizations that allow biological men to compete against women.

The news was first reported by Fox Business:

A senior administration official told FOX Business that the administration has paused $175 million in federal funding.

This did not account for UPenn’s total federal funding, which the university previously reported last year was around $1 billion.

The pause is not a direct result of the investigation into UPenn, which the Department of Education announced a day after the president signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order on Feb. 5.

UPenn made headlines in 2022 after placing Lia Thomas, a biological male identifying as a transgender woman, on the women’s swim team.

Thomas went on to win a national title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle, edging out female competitors over whom she had a clear biological advantage.

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Suspended for Pro-Palestine Speech: My Statement on Yale Law School’s Embrace of AI-Generated Smears

The following statement was originally published on Helyeh Doutaghi’s account on the X platform on March 12, 2025. Last week, Doutaghi was placed on administrative leave by Yale Law School following an AI-generated article falsely accusing her of being a “terrorist” over connections to Palestine advocacy organizations.  (Reprinted from Mondoweiss.)

My name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages with Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions. I have specifically examined the mechanisms and consequences of economic warfare on Iran, as well as the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield U.S. military operations from accountability. On October 1, 2023, I was appointed Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and joined the team. I also held the position of Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School (YLS), a non-tenured faculty role without teaching responsibilities.

On the morning of March 3rd, I was notified of an online report about me. An obscure AI-powered right-wing Zionist platform called “Jewish Onliner” published a report falsely accusing me of being a “terrorist”. Rather than defend me, the Yale Law School moved within less than 24 hours of learning about the report to place me on leave.

I was given only a few hours’ notice by the administration to attend an interrogation based on far-right AI-generated allegations against me, while enduring a flood of online harassment, death threats, and abuse by Zionist trolls, exacerbating ongoing unprecedented distress and complications both at work and at home. I endured all of this while fasting, and my request for religious accommodations during Ramadan was dismissed. Just a few hours later, YLS placed me on leave, revoked my IT access – including email – and banned me from campus. I was afforded no due process and no reasonable time to consult with my attorney.

Rather than investigate the source of these allegations first, the nation’s “top law school” accepted them at face value, and shifted the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, treating me, prima facie, as guilty until proven otherwise. Whether Yale Law School’s attorneys knowingly relied on AI-fabricated claims or simply chose willful ignorance remains unanswered.

To conduct the interrogation, Yale Law School retained David Ring from the law firm Wiggin and Dana – an attorney whose public profile includes “Israel” listed as a “service” he provides and whose portfolio boasts advising “the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies.” Twice appointed by the U.S. State Department as a Special Compliance Officer, his career is deeply embedded in the very industries that sustain genocide and war crimes in Palestine. When I raised my concerns about the potential conflict of interests posed by his participation in this process, YLS dismissed them, stating there was “no concern with his ability to conduct a fair interview.” It is reprehensible that YLS would appoint a counsel who profits from the machinery of Palestinian death to “interview” an employee about their public anti-genocide and pro-Palestine positions.

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Two Ivy League schools among 51 universities targeted by Education Department for discriminating against white people

Two prestigious Ivy League institutions are among over 50 universities targeted by the US Department of Education for alleged discrimination against white students. 

On Friday, the DoED announced the sprawling investigations, accusing reputable institutions like Cornell and Yale universities, of using ‘racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.’

The federal department’s Office of Civil Rights said that 45 schools, particularly with their graduate programs, acted in violation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act by partnering with The PhD Project.

The PhD Project is a nonprofit program which helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business, with the goal of diversifying the industry.

The program focuses on supporting Black, Latino and Native American students. 

The Education Department alleges that the project limits eligibility based on the race of participants, and therefore, universities involved with the organization are engaging in ‘race-exclusionary practices.’

‘Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin. We will not yield on this commitment,’ Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.

In response to the allegations, The PhD Project told NPR: ‘Our vision is to create a broader talent pipeline of current and future business leaders…’ The organization added, ‘This year, we have opened our membership application to anyone who shares that vision.’

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Is the Jig up for Elite Higher Education?

Over the last three decades, elite American universities have engaged in economic, political, social, and cultural practices that were often unethical, illegal — and suicidal.

They did so with impunity.

Apparently, confident administrators assumed that the brand of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and other elite universities was so precious to the nation’s elite movers and shakers that they could always do almost anything they wished.

By the 1970s, non-profit universities had dropped pretenses that they were apolitical and non-partisan.

Instead, they customarily violated the corpus of iconic civil rights legislation by weighing race, gender, and sexual orientation in biased admissions, hiring, and promotions.

Graduation ceremonies became overtly racially and ethnically segregated. The same was true for dorms and “theme houses.”

So-called “safe spaces,” in the spirit of the Jim Crow South, reserved areas of campus solely for particular races.

Affluent foreign students often openly protested on behalf of designated terrorist groups like Hamas.

First-Amendment-protected free speech all but vanished on elite campuses. Any guest speaker who dared to critique abortion on demand, Middle East orthodoxy, biological males dominating women’s sports, or diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI) dogmas was likely to be shouted down, or on occasion roughed up.

University administrators either ignored the violence done to the Bill of Rights or quietly approved when their rowdy students were turned loose on supposed conservatives.

But in their hubris, the universities began a series of blunders that may now end them as they once were.

They began gouging government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation by grabbing anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of individual campus grants as “overhead.”

Yet they usually charged most private foundation grants a far more modest 15% surcharge — as if a lax government did not object to overcharging.

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Trump Department of Education Launches Investigations into 45 Universities for Race-Based Exclusionary Practices and 7 for Race-Based Segregation

The Trump administration is about to unleash a massive crackdown against the widespread discrimination whites and Asians are enduring on America’s college campuses.

This morning, the Department of Education opened Title VI investigations into 45 universities for allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary programs in their graduate programs and seven colleges for race-based segregation and using impermissible scholarships.

This makes 52 schools that are trying to return to the dark days when America was separated on the basis of skin color.

Below is the list of colleges engaging in race-exclusionary practices. Note the huge number of state colleges on this list.

  1. Arizona State University-Main Campus
  2. Boise State University
  3. Cal Poly Humboldt
  4. California State University – San Bernardino
  5. Carnegie Mellon University
  6. Clemson University
  7. Cornell University
  8. Duke University
  9. Emory University
  10. George Mason University
  11. Georgetown University
  12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  13. Montana State University-Bozeman
  14. New York University (NYU)
  15. Rice University
  16. Rutgers University
  17. The Ohio State University-Main Campus
  18. Towson University
  19. Tulane University
  20. University of Arkansas – Fayetteville
  21. University of California – Berkeley
  22. University of Chicago
  23. University of Cincinnati – Main Campus
  24. University of Colorado
  25. University of Delaware
  26. University of Kansas
  27. University of Kentucky
  28. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  29. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
  30. University of Nebraska at Omaha
  31. University of New Mexico – Main Campus
  32. University of North Dakota – Main Campus
  33. University of North Texas – Denton
  34. University of Notre Dame
  35. University of Nevada – Las Vegas
  36. University of Oregon
  37. University of Rhode Island
  38. University of Utah
  39. University of Washington-Seattle
  40. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  41. University of Wyoming
  42. Vanderbilt University
  43. Washington State University
  44. Washington University in St. Louis
  45. Yale University

Here are the seven schools under investigation for allegedly using impermissible race-based scholarships and race-based segregation. The University of Alabama and the University of Minnesota are the most prominent names.

  1. Grand Valley State University
  2. Ithaca College
  3. New England College of Optometry
  4. University of Alabama
  5. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  6. University of South Florida
  7. University of Tulsa School of Medicine

Do you see your college on either list?

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NPR Complains Trump Budget Cuts Hurt a Kansas College, Turns Out It’s a “Dropout Factory” with a Prior 9% Graduation Rate

It should come as no surprise that National Public Radio has been propagandizing its aging leftist listeners against the Trump budget cuts, highlighting supposed abuses.

One such recent example is a profile of the Women’s Basketball team at Haskell University, a small college for Native Americans in Kansas. The coverage of the controversy complains about an alleged quarter of its staff who are laid off because they are probationary employees of the federal government.

NPR’s coverage of the University highlights its positives, but omits key details and context that would give its readers a better perspective on why these cuts might be in the best interests of taxpayers and even the students involved.

A lawsuit has been filed to force Trump to fund the Indian college. The federal government funds the college as part of an 1884 Indian treaty.

The case is styled as Pueblo of Isleta et. al v. Secretary of the Department of the Interior, et. al, case number 1:25-cv-00696-AHA  . The student plaintiffs are Ella Bowen, Kaiya Brown, Danielle Ledesma, Victor Organista, and Aiyanna Tanyan. Their attorney is Matthew Lee Campbell of the Native American Rights Fund, out of Boulder, Colorado. Two other attorneys have applied to enter the case Pro Hac Vice: Jacqueline De Leon and Malia Gesuale. The case has been assigned to federal Judge Amir Ali, a 2024 Biden appointee.

The complaint primarily concerns the fact that the various Indian tribes were not consulted prior to the budget cuts.

NPR makes it seem like this is another step in the trail of tears for America’s native population.

“That it would be affected by these executive actions and cuts in budgets, you know, add it to the list of broken promises,” said Bo Schneider, a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, to National Public Radio.

The 54 page, 8 count legal complaint, which includes four students as plaintiffs, complains that they aren’t able to make progress towards their degrees.

However, public records and data suggest that few were likely to ever graduate, because the college has such an awful academic record that 9-30% of the students are likely to graduate.

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Columbia University Folds After Trump Imposes Federal Funding Freeze — Suspends and Expels Students Involved in Anti-Israel Protests

It seems like Columbia University is finally getting the message.

The New York University, long considered one of the world’s leading academic institutions, has announced it will suspend, expel, and even revoke the degrees of students involved in last year’s anti-Israel protests.

The sanctions were confirmed by the Columbia University Judicial Board on Thursday, which said their extent would depend on the severity of their behaviors.

“The outcomes issued by the UJB are based on its evaluation of the severity of behaviors at these events and prior disciplinary actions,” the university said in a statement sent to the entire school community.

“These outcomes are the result of following the thorough and rigorous processes laid out in the Rules of University Conduct in our statutes, which include investigations, hearings and deliberations.”

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