Earlier this month, the Trump administration gave Columbia University an ultimatum.

Get tougher on student protests or else lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

Universities are, especially a research university like Columbia,

is dependent on the federal government.

The federal government has the capacity to shut the tap off.

So the school can't operate without the federal government.

And that gives the federal government huge leverage.

That's our colleague Doug Belkin, who covers higher education. Trump's ultimatum

put the storied university between a rock and a hard place and kicked off a big debate inside the

school. If we allow the president to dictate how we work inside the campus, we give away

academic freedom.

And they're really anxious to protect that.

So that's why this choice was so difficult to make,

because you're pitting gold versus principle.

But on Friday, after an intense internal debate,

Colombia gave in and agreed to make the changes Trump wanted.

How big of a deal could this showdown be for America's colleges and universities?

It's like two tectonic plates slamming into each other, and it has the potential to change higher education significantly going forward.

We are absolutely in a generational shift.

I think we're probably in a once-in-50-year shift.

This decision will resonate for a long time to come.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

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