Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of Columbia University’s most renowned professors, denounced the institution where he has taught for more than two decades over its recent capitulations to the Trump administration.
After Donald Trump withdrew some $400 million in federal funding from the university and issued a list of demands, Columbia entered negotiations that concluded with the school caving to pressure from the White House. Among other concessions, the school made concessions about faculty appointments and placing the Middle East studies department under review.
“I worry that our university may have capitulated to some of the demands coming out of the Trump administration,” Stiglitz told The Intercept on Monday. “Academic freedom means that we have the right to criticize any government, anywhere, the American government or the government of any other country. We have to do it with decorum, conviction, and research, but the notion of academic freedom means that we have to maintain those rights.”
Stiglitz reserved his harshest rhetoric for the attempts to deport current and recent Columbia students, including the arrests of Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 and Mohsen Mahdawi earlier Monday in Vermont.
“What is clear is that it appears that there’s a pattern of intimidation,” he said, “a pattern where they’re trying to discourage people to protest, and a pattern that they’re particularly going after Palestinians.”
Speaking to The Intercept about the apparent struggle between protecting the university’s academic independence versus the attempts to regain the $400 million in revoked federal funding, Stiglitz said, “Obviously, the university cannot continue without money, but what is most important is academic freedom. If we lose our academic freedom, we have lost everything. And so at this moment, we have to decide what our priority is. To me, our priority is academic freedom and the defense of our community.”
Stiglitz, 82, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. At Columbia, Stiglitz was named a university professor, the school’s highest academic honor.
What follows is a transcript from The Intercept’s exclusive interview with Stiglitz, conducted in two parts at Columbia’s campus.
Joseph Stiglitz: So, I’m Joe Stiglitz, university professor. I teach at the Department of Economics in the Business School, and School of International and Public Affairs. I won the Nobel Prize in 2001. I’ve spent my life studying what makes for good societies, for good economies — and democracy is essential. An essential part of democracies is free media and strong universities. Strong universities are important because they provide the critique, to evaluate what governments are doing, to ascertain when there’s an encroachment on democracies, to criticize it when they are doing things that are against the interests of people, when there are conflicts of interest. That’s why anti-democratic forces always begin the attack on the media and on universities. And that’s what’s been happening in America today.
Professors have been given the right of tenure. There’s a reason for this tenure. It’s about academic freedom, that we have the freedom to assess what is going on, to talk about it, talk out. But with that right comes obligations. And so, it is our obligation to talk about what is going on, how the attacks on science, on our students, are undermining not only Columbia University and universities throughout our country, but are undermining our democracy and our standing in the international community, and threaten the future of our democracy and of our economy.
Meghnad Bose: Professor Stiglitz, could you answer the question, who is the university? Because a lot of questions are being raised as to how the university will respond if there’s a consent decree that’s demanded. Who is the university, according to you?
JS: The university is a community. It is a community of students, scholars, researchers, where we have shared governance. Obviously, the ultimate responsibility is with the trustees, but the trustees have a fiduciary responsibility, and that fiduciary responsibility is not just about money. Obviously, the university cannot continue without money, but most important, most important is academic freedom. If we lose our academic freedom, we have lost everything. And so at this moment, we have to decide what our priority is. To me, our priority is academic freedom and the defense of our community.
MB: Do you believe the university has capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands?
JS: I worry that our university may have capitulated to some of the demands coming out of the Trump administration. Academic freedom means that we have the right to criticize any government, anywhere, the American government or the government of any other country. We have to do it with decorum and conviction, research, but the notion of academic freedom means that we have to maintain those rights.
MB: Professor, do you want to talk a little bit about these arrests and attempted deportations of Columbia students that have happened—first with Mahmoud Khalil on March 8, and the latest with Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested today, just minutes before we speak right now.
“There’s a pattern of intimidation, a pattern where they’re trying to discourage people to protest.”
JS: I don’t want to speak about each of the individual cases. What is clear is that it appears that there’s a pattern of intimidation, a pattern where they’re trying to discourage people to protest, and a pattern they’re going after particularly Palestinians. Obviously, anybody concerned about democratic rights has to be concerned about this kind of intimidation. The most disturbing to me were some cases where people have been detained, sometimes with people without clear identity. And you realize then at that moment, that could have been you. These individuals’ rights were abrogated. But if that had been me, my rights would have been abrogated.
MB: Now, all of this is happening as part of the Trump administration’s supposed fight against antisemitism on college and university campuses, but as part of the demands that the Trump administration laid out was the demand that the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department at Columbia be placed into academic receivership, essentially that the control of the department be placed outside the department, outside the faculty of the department, for a minimum of five years. Columbia, while not exactly agreeing word by word to that, effectively agreed to it by announcing that it would appoint a senior vice provost whose job primarily, first of all, would be to ensure “fairness” and “balance” in Middle Eastern studies.
Do you see the federal government demanding this of a private university, and one department of a private university, without even substantiation as to why it’s doing so as an impingement on academic freedom?
JS: Very much so. It is a very big impingement. The withdrawal of funds from science without any due process, without proof of the allegations, with disproportionate responses to the allegations even were they proved, is clearly a violation.
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