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Dept. Education: Columbia “fails to meet the standards for accreditation”

Dept. Education: Columbia “fails to meet the standards for accreditation”

Columbia “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” DoEd can’t pull accreditation itself, which means there is unlikely to be any consequence to Columbia, which is acting like it already has this one in the bag.

The U.S. Department of Education has notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (the “Commission”) that Columbia University is not in compliance with the Commission’s accreditation requirements.

From the DoEd Press Release:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today notified Middle States Commission on Higher Education (the Commission) that its member institution, Columbia University, is in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws and therefore fails to meet the standards for accreditation set by the Commission. Pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order, Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education, the Department has an obligation to promptly provide accreditors with any noncompliance findings related to member institutions.

The Commission’s “Standards for Accreditation and Requirements of Affiliation” state that “a candidate or accredited institution possesses or demonstrates … compliance with all applicable government laws and regulations.” In light of OCR’s determination, Columbia University no longer appears to meet the Commission’s accreditation standards.

“After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus. This is not only immoral, but also unlawful. Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell Grants. Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “We look forward to the Commission keeping the Department fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws.” ….

On May 22, 2025, the Department of Education’s OCR and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (HHS OCR) determined that Columbia University acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, OCR and HHS OCR found that Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.

Under 34 C.F.R. § 602.20(a), accreditors are required to notify any member institution about a federal noncompliance finding and establish a plan to come into compliance. If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period, an accreditor must take appropriate action against its member institution.

The DoEd is not terminating Columbia’s accreditation, as some headlines have suggested, but rather is now demanding that the Commission take action.

Don’t expect much from the Commission or Columbia. Reuters already is reporting that Columbia has addressed the issue with the Commission:

A spokesperson for Columbia, which has been under pressure from the Trump administration for months, said in a statement that the school addressed the department’s concerns directly with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and is continuing to work with the federal government to address antisemitism.

It was not clear how the Middle States Commission, which like other accrediting agencies is independent, would respond to the notification.

A spokesperson for Middle States declined to comment but confirmed that the organization had received a letter from the Department of Education about the matter on Wednesday.

While the federal government does not directly accredit U.S. universities, it has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that do. Trump has often complained that accreditors approve institutions that fail to provide quality education.

The NY Times assures its readers that Columbia has nothing to worry about:

Experts on the process said that despite the letter, Columbia faced no immediate threat that its accreditation would be revoked, a process that typically takes years.

“This is another semi-random attack against a celebrity institution,” said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, an association that includes many colleges and universities in its membership. “They are trying once again to skirt due process in order to score political points.”

Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a Washington think tank, said she thought the letter was both a threat to Middle States, and to Columbia, about federal aid.

But she said that the Department of Education does not have the authority to determine what violates the accreditation group’s standards. Only the accrediting body can do that, which would require its own review of what is alleged.

Columbia: WE GOT THIS!

Columbia is aware of the concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights today to our accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and we have addressed those concerns directly with Middle States. Columbia is deeply committed to combatting antisemitism on our campus. We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it.

You have to start someplace. Pulling funding was a start and needs to be accelerated. Starting the long process of deaccreditation is another step. But until Columbia and other similar schools view their very existence as under serious threat, nothing will change. Academia has become so rotten at its core that it is incapable of changing on its own.

[Featured image: Jewish student blocked on Columbia campus.]

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Comments


 
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CommoChief | June 4, 2025 at 8:46 pm

Seems pretty simple. If the accreditation body doesn’t take action v Columbia to the satisfaction of the Dept Ed in this instance then the Dept Ed and Trump Admin as a whole would then have to assume that the accreditation requirements for EVERY institution overseen by this accreditation body are now in question. The Dept of Ed would then have to ‘reluctantly’ pull funding from EVERY institution overseen by this accreditation body …restoration contingent upon review by DoJ/Dept Ed Task Force and heavily influenced by the level of willing cooperation and commitment to transparency by the institutions during the investigation.


     
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    Danny in reply to CommoChief. | June 4, 2025 at 10:19 pm

    Exactly.

    The “if it isn’t done now the system is rigged we are defeated the left rules us and there is nothing you could do about it” stuff is wrong.


     
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    Louis K. Bonham in reply to CommoChief. | June 5, 2025 at 7:37 am

    Alternatively, if the accreditor doesn’t take action (which, given how politicized this particular accreditor is, appears likely), then DoEd has grounds to yank the *accreditor’s* status as a federal accreditor.

    Given Trump’s justified complaints that many accreditors are more interested in using their power to push political agendas onto colleges rather than making sure the schools are worthy of federal funding, making an example of MSCHE may be the actual planned move here.

    Indeed, if DoEd withdrew MSCHE’s status as an accreditor for cause, and MSCHE filed suit (which you know they will), there’s a very troubling constitutional / separation of powers issue presented. How can a private organization, selected at the discretion of the executive branch to perform certain services for the executive branch, have the right to exclusively perform those services indefinitely, with zero power by the executive branch to “fire” them for cause? Recent SCOTUS case law doesn’t portend a good result for MSCHE here.

    Such an existential threat to the accreditor (more specifically, it’s staff) would tend to focus their minds, no? And perhaps they would rather stay in business (“we gotta protect our phony-balony jobs here”) than support Columbia.


       
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      CommoChief in reply to Louis K. Bonham. | June 5, 2025 at 9:16 am

      Not a bad option, though it avoids the potential deliciousness of the Universities turning upon the accreditation body and each other to avoid sanctions.


         
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        Louis K. Bonham in reply to CommoChief. | June 5, 2025 at 9:40 am

        While the Trump admin making public examples of Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern, etc., will be fun to watch, the real changes will be below the surface at schools that don’t have eleven-figure endowments and don’t view wokeism as a hill they are ready to die on.

        Are they going to be willing or able to fight a multi-headed assault with the feds that could well result in their going out of business? Or will they bend the knee (and agree to start making structural changes) in order to preserve their jobs? Indeed, some of those schools likely are ready to make such changes anyway, but would welcome the administration giving them the excuse they can give to disgruntled faculty / campus wokesters.

        I suspect most schools (i.e., most administrators at such schools) will choose to bend the knee rather than fight..


           
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          CommoChief in reply to Louis K. Bonham. | June 5, 2025 at 2:01 pm

          You make a.very.good.case for Universities using Trump actions as the excuse to make reforms but there’s two issues with that:
          1. Harvard and Columbia didn’t take the opportunity to do so and inexplicably dug in their heels to keep their discrimination and CRA violations going.
          2. The Faculty/Admin at other Univ are often heavily populated with IVY League Grads steeped in the same sort of wokiesta ideological indoctrination.

          I suspect there’s gonna be a split among Univ and the AAR will eventually show a direct correlation between the % of IVY PhD in Admin/SR Faculty positions and the willingness to comply. It will be interesting to see what the number is; the tipping point % of Ivy PhD that lead a Univ to bad decisions.

In other words, when there is clear discrimination and inaction, do nothing.

As if the connection between the hatred and recent actions did not exist.

What would these people have said about universities that excluded blacks?


 
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smooth | June 4, 2025 at 10:14 pm

What the hell is a celebrity institution? Was that supposed to be celebrated institution.


     
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    DaveGinOly in reply to smooth. | June 5, 2025 at 1:59 am

    It may have been “celebrity,” as in “high profile,” as in a university that is “made an example of.” If that was the word, it also reveals their own image of themselves as academic rock stars who are beyond criticism.


 
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rhhardin | June 4, 2025 at 10:51 pm

It’s not an antisemitism problem . It’s an intimidation problem. Making it a group discrimination problem is just going to produce unworkable precedents, which is to say, mistakes.

    What the hell are you talking about? You sound like those that explain it away.

    You exhibit a compete failure to account for the source of the intimidation and discrimination. Antisemitism! Or that the individual targets are due to antisemitism.

    There’s enough people trying to sound smart and saying much of nothing. Four years is enough.


       
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      DaveGinOly in reply to oldschooltwentysix. | June 5, 2025 at 2:04 am

      I don’t think he’s wrong. The intimidation comes from antisemitism, but nobody has the authority to prevent people from being anti-Semites. OTOH, intimidation can be stopped because nobody has the authority to intimidate innocent, peaceable people. The problem is that Leftists’ beliefs nearly always eventually manifest as violence of some sort, usually after they’ve lost an election.


       
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      CommoChief in reply to oldschooltwentysix. | June 5, 2025 at 4:50 pm

      Look at like an alcoholic who stopped drinking. They are still an alcoholic but they don’t act on it. Just as someone may hold antisemitic views in private but if they don’t act on those views there’s no visible issue b/c there’s no concrete action done based on that antisemitism.

      IOW as a society yes, we need to be concerned about antisemitic speech but should be far more alarmed and prepared to vigorously respond to suppress and prosecute illegal ACTS rooted in antisemitism or other forms of bigotry, ‘ists’ and ‘isms’.


 
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stevewhitemd | June 4, 2025 at 10:56 pm

Over/under for a federal district court judge to issue a TRO is 9:40 am ET tomorrow.

I’m reassured that the NYT says that Columbia has nothing to worry about. When was the last time the NYT was right about something?


 
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MoeHowardwasright | June 5, 2025 at 7:32 am

Pull ALL federal money from all colleges. Grants, student loans, research, all of it. The only way to remove the administrative stranglehold at colleges is to turn off the money spigot. Then demand that the accreditation entities insert language that all college degrees must lead to gainful employment in the private sector. Secondly if you want a degree in art, humanities, women’s studies, you pay your own way.


 
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destroycommunism | June 5, 2025 at 11:32 am

another judge just squelched a lawsuit against pa university (?) for the universities lack of protections for attacked jewish students

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