Comment by Avicebron
9 days ago
I clearly don't follow so bear with me,
> A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt (in a criminal case) or liability (in a civil case).
Why would this be in any way relevant to what I think is happening at Columbia from approximately ~20 min/week of random news snippets
It means instead of accepting Columbia’s word they’ll comply, they want Columbia to enter into a legal agreement, bypassing possibly years of litigation if Columbia changes their minds without such an agreement.
It would give the Trump administration an unprecedented amount of control of a private university.
Only if they want to continue being funded to the same extent. Columbia receives more funding (% of budget and gross) than many public universities.
An alternative for Columbia is to just reject federal funding and look to its endowment and forprofit services
Columbia's endowment is ~$20 billion. A sustainable spending level would be 3-4% of that, assuming no further donations, or 4-5%, if donations continue as usual. In any case, it would be at most $1 billion/year, and that money is already spent on current activities.
Last year, Columbia received over $1.3 billion as government grants and contracts. Even if they stopped everything that currently depends on the endowment and redirected the money to replace federal funding, it would not be enough.
12 replies →
The new part is requiring a legal mechanism that grants the gov't operational control.
It's not full operational control. A consent order means you promise to comply with some stuff. The government will monitor you if you comply or not. In that sense, it's some form of indirect control, but it's far from full control.
To be clear, definitely not full operational control -- just receivership for the Middle Eastern Studies department, hiring security officer with arrest powers, and an official with power to review any departments that offer education on the middle east. (via https://president.columbia.edu/content/fulfilling-our-commit...)