Oops, Trump Just Bankrolled the Protesters He Intended to Silence

I’ve been thrilled with much of what Donald Trump has done as president. He’s working to end the Ukraine war, secure the border, end the war on cryptocurrency, and cut government waste—all things I strongly support. But cutting federal funding over campus protests backfired so badly, it convinced Columbia’s most insufferable activists that they actually matter.

Last Friday, the Trump administration announced it was cutting $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, in a “first round of action,” intended to pressure universities to take a harder stance against alleged antisemitism in the wake of campus protests over the war in Gaza.

Columbia, like every major university, has been in an impossible position since October 7th. There was no way to satisfy everyone. Whatever a university president said or did, one side would accuse them of cowardice, and the other would call for their resignation. No matter how carefully they tried to balance free expression and campus safety, the media and politicians ripped them apart.

In an effort to prevent recurrence of these events, entering Columbia’s campus now requires showing your ID, as if you’re entering a classified Pentagon briefing rather than a university quad. Students I’ve talked to don’t care about the protests as much as they complain that their campus feels less like an open center of intellectual inquiry than a top-secret compound where the elites are isolated from the dangerous riff-raff. So much for a free exchange of ideas.

Defunding a university because of speech you don’t like isn’t just bad strategy, it’s a full-on violation of the First Amendment. Columbia’s administration may not have been perfect, but they were trying to walk a tightrope in one of the most politically charged environments imaginable. And now, the federal government is stepping in with a sledgehammer – one that won’t silence anyone, won’t protect Jewish students, and certainly won’t defend free speech. 

Columbia’s administration had no good options. Under intense political pressure, they issued a statement promising to “combat antisemitism,” not because universities should be speech police, but because Washington had made it clear that saying the “right” thing is the only way to avoid financial punishment.

And that’s the real danger here: the chilling effect on free expression. Columbia’s self-censorship isn’t an isolated case, it’s a preview of how every university will react when the government starts punishing schools for allowing controversial speech. What happens when a future administration threatens to cut federal grants to MIT unless it silences scientists who challenge climate change models? Once Washington starts dictating campus speech standards, no institution is safe from political coercion.

The first amendment even protects clueless college kids with a megaphone from government interference. Universities should be bastions of free speech, even if that speech advocates for something as absurd as defunding physics departments for perpetuating “toxic objectivity.” 

Columbia does have an obligation to enforce basic behavioral standards. Disrupting classes, harassing individuals, or vandalizing property crosses a line. But those rules must be enforced neutrally, without regard to political content. If students who support Palestine disrupt a class, they should be held accountable, not because of their political views, but because they interfered with university operations. The same standard should apply to any other cause, whether it’s DEI, climate activism, or even “End the Fed” libertarians chanting on the lawn. Content-specific restrictions violate the core principles of both free speech as well as academic freedom.

Conservatives, including Trump, have (rightly) railed against universities for stifling free expression. Yet now, when confronted with speech they don’t like, they’re perfectly happy to wield the power of the federal government as a cudgel to suppress it. That’s not principled, it’s just hypocrisy.

The absolute worst thing you can do to deter campus protesters is to validate their sense of importance. They want to believe they are revolutionaries, that their voices shake the foundations of power. And Trump just proved them right.

And who handed them this power? Fox News.

A tiny protest that most Columbians barely noticed got wall-to-wall coverage on conservative media. Fox anchors breathlessly called it an “insurgency” and warned of “chaos on campus.” You’d think the Quad had turned into Fallujah the way they described it.

In reality? It was a couple dozen students, at most. Not thousands, not hundreds, just a few people with signs and sleeping bags. But every drone-powered camera angle made the crowd look like Tahrir Square 2.0 by zooming in, tilting, and distorting perspectives to manufacture the illusion of an overwhelming uprising.

Here’s what it actually looked like near its peak.

This photo was taken at the height of the most infamous protests in April 2024, when the protests were deemed to be so massive, so out of control, that the university had to bring in police to forcibly shut them down. 

The media didn’t just exaggerate the size of the protests, they exaggerated the size of the protesters, too. It was, oddly, about 75 percent women, and the men who did show up looked like they’d lose a fight with a jar of almond butter—more akin to Hello Kitty than Hamas. And yet, even with those odds, the protests were so fringe that not even the guys who’d normally fake enthusiasm in the pursuit of “extracurricular activities” thought it was worth the effort. But sure, tell me again how Jewish students feared for their physical safety… Their public reaction has seemed almost as performative as the protests themselves. 

And let’s not forget that the “disrupted class” that started this was a History of Modern Israel seminar so small, it could have fit in my kitchen. Let’s be real—if you’re not brave enough to disrupt Macroeconomics 101, maybe you’re not exactly the next Che Guevara.

This wasn’t a revolution, it was a TikTok audition for kids who think screaming is bravery.

Then there’s the masks. Almost every protester wore one—not for COVID, not for a sudden outbreak of concern about air quality, but seemingly to avoid being recognized. If you believe in something strongly enough to shut down a class, occupy a lawn, or get arrested for it, you should at least have the courage to own it. 

If they truly wanted to impact what they describe as an existential struggle, they’d be on a plane to Gaza. Instead, they bravely occupied a grassy lawn, waving signs and doing the absolute bare minimum while demanding maximum moral authority.

Ironically, it was Fox News that gave them all the attention and publicity they dreamed of, and Trump who gifted them real-world power. And in the latest episode of the Keystone Kops, the protest’s most famous “victim,” Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested by ICE and now faces deportation, instantly elevating him from random campus agitator to a cause célèbre on MSNBC, all but guaranteeing him international fame and a book deal.

The next wave of agitators, seeing the enormous impact their peers had, will only be more emboldened.

And for what? This funding cut doesn’t protect Jewish students, it made things worse for them. Now, every future wannabe activist knows that a few dozen people camping on a lawn can make the federal government overreact, turning them into martyrs and giving them national influence overnight. Jewish students should be furious - not at Columbia, but at Trump for empowering the protesters.

Meanwhile, the real victims of these cuts won’t be the TikTok activists but physics PhDs designing AI, medical researchers working on cancer treatments, and economists modeling financial markets, disproportionately many of whom ironically happen to be Jewish themselves—a real effective approach to combating antisemitism... The same STEM departments that fuel American innovation just got caught in the crossfire because a few undergrads wanted to play revolution.

Trump should have left Columbia alone to handle its own affairs. The university already has rules in place to deal with disruptions. If students violate them, they should face consequences. But those consequences should come from the university, not from Washington, D.C. Punishing a university for the political views of a tiny but vocal minority of its students is authoritarian nonsense. 

If Columbia wants to maintain its reputation as a world-class institution, it must uphold its commitment to free inquiry. And if Trump really wants to be a champion of free speech, he needs to stop undermining it whenever it makes him uncomfortable.

For the most part, I love that Trump is taking a wrecking ball to government excess, exposing bureaucratic incompetence, and refusing to play by establishment rules. But in this case, he took that wrecking ball in the wrong direction. Instead of smashing through government overreach, he added to it, handing more power to the very people he wanted to sideline.

If Ivy League protesters love anything more than performative activism, it’s free money, especially when it comes from people they claim to hate. Congratulations, Mr. President, you just became their top donor.

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