from WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, March 24th.

As you've almost no doubt heard, Columbia University on Friday afternoon, announced steps that it's taking to address anti-Semitism on campus.

This is a big deal for multiple reasons of which fighting anti-Semitism is only one.

The New York Times, for example, describes the set of actions as a concession to a roster of government demands,

as the school sought to restore about $400 million in federal funding

suspended by the Trump administration. The Columbia student newspaper, The Daily Spectator,

headline on Friday, was Columbia to acquiesce to Trump administration's demands amid

federal funding threats. The spectator notes that most of the $400 million at stake came out of grants from the National

Institutes of Health.

And the implications go way beyond Columbia.

The Times reports the concessions are instantly being seen as a watershed in Washington's

relationships with the nation's colleges overall.

Columbia's actions include adoption of an official definition of anti-Semitism, giving 36 new

campus security officers the power to make arrests, banning masks in certain circumstances,

and placing the school's Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under the supervision of a university provost.

Trump had demanded a status called receivership, a word the university announcement does not use.

We'll see how much our guests think this is that, or turns control of the department over to the federal government.

In this segment, we'll have two short interviews with two Columbia faculty members

who have had different relationships to the protest movement on campus since October 7, 2023,

and to the issue of campus anti-Semitism.

One is a former leader of the group, faculty and staff for justice in Palestine.

The other is a leader on the task force that issued a report about campus anti-Semitism

...