Trump demands unprecedented control at Columbia, alarming scholars and speech groups

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration brushed aside decades of precedent when it ordered Columbia University to oust the leadership of an academic department, a demand seen as a direct attack on academic freedom and a warning of what’s to come for other colleges facing federal scrutiny.

Federal officials told the university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.” The demand was among several described as conditions for receiving federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations of antisemitism.

Across academia, it was seen as a stunning intrusion.

“It’s an escalation of a kind that is unheard of,” said Joan Scott, a historian and member of the academic freedom committee of the American Association of University Professors. “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.”

President Donald Trump has been threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges that do not get in line with his agenda, from transgender athletes’ participating in women’s sports to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. On Friday, his administration announced investigations into 52 universities as part of his DEI crackdown.

But he has held particular fervor for Columbia, the Ivy League campus where a massive pro-Palestinian protest movement began with a tent encampment last spring. Officials continued to ratchet up pressure on the school Friday, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying the Justice Department is investigating whether it hid students sought by the U.S. over their roles in the demonstrations.

Trump and other officials have accused the protesters as being “pro-Hamas,” referring to the militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The letter also demands that Columbia ban masks on campus meant to conceal the wearer’s identity “or intimidate others,” adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”

The letter “obliterates the boundary between institutional autonomy and federal control,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.

For generations, the federal government has given colleges space to manage their own affairs, within the constraints of federal law. The Supreme Court has long treated academic freedom as an extension of the First Amendment. Higher education leaders say autonomy is what sets America’s colleges apart and makes them a destination for top international scholars.

Trump has never hidden his contempt for the country’s most prestigious colleges, and he’s aggressively pressing his will. The federal government has almost never used its authority to cut off money from schools and colleges. But along with the initial action at Columbia, a Trump administration letter sent Monday to 60 colleges promised that penalty if they fail to make their campuses safer for Jewish students.

Still, few predicted the Trump administration would pursue the type of control it’s demanding at Columbia.

Putting an academic department under receivership is “beyond the authority of the federal government and would violate academic freedom and the First Amendment,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law scholar and dean of the Berkeley School of Law.

“It is chilling to see the government try to control universities in this way,” he said.

Academic receivership is a rarely used practice that puts an academic department under the oversight of a professor or administrator outside the department. It’s sometimes used to reset a department in financial or political turmoil.

The letter didn’t specify who should take control of the department at Columbia. Scott, of the AAUP, said the department appeared to be singled out because it was viewed as being overly critical of Israel.

“Receivership is a nice way of basically saying get rid of the department,” Scott said.

The Trump administration announced last week it was pulling $400 million in contracts from Columbia and reviewing another $5 billion in grants over complaints of antisemitism. The cuts have already affected research studies at Columbia’s medical center, which has long relied on grants from the National Institutes of Health.

U.S. government agencies said they made the cuts because of the school’s "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Some Jewish groups and the president's supporters have argued the government should be free to condition funding to colleges as it does other entities.

The university said it’s reviewing the Trump administration’s letter. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, it’s leaving college leaders across the U.S. on edge. Mitchell, of the American Council on Education, said college presidents he spoke with were aghast at the letter.

“It doesn’t matter whether they’re in red states or blue states or whether they’re religious institutions or sectarian institutions. This is not the government’s role,” he said.

The letter was condemned by some faculty members and free speech groups.

“Half of this stuff you can’t just do and the other half is insane,” said Joseph Howley, a Columbia professor of classics. “If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called it “a blueprint to supercharge censorship” at colleges.

Binkley reported from Washington, D.C.

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Police guard the entrance to Columbia University as protesters rally in support of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, Friday, March 14, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, March 14, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

FILE - Pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment is seen at the Columbia University, April 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

FILE - As light rain falls, New York City police officers take people into custody near the Columbia University campus in New York, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, after a building taken over by pro-Palestinian protesters earlier in the day was cleared, along with a tent encampment. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

FILE - Using a tactical vehicle, New York City police enter an upper floor of Hamilton Hall on the Columbia University campus in New York, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, after the building was taken over by protesters earlier in the day. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A sprawling storm system crossing the U.S. on Friday overturned semitrucks on highways and fanned dozens of wildfires in several central states, prompting evacuation orders in some communities. At least three Tornadoes touched down in Missouri, and threats of more loomed for the Mississippi Valley into the night and the Deep South on Saturday.

The National Weather Service warned of extreme weather across a vast swath of the country that is home to more than 100 million people. Powerful winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were forecast from the Canadian border to Texas.

Nearly 150 fires were reported in Oklahoma, Andy James, Oklahoma Forestry Services fire management chief, told KOCO-TV. The State Patrol said on the social platform X that dusty winds toppled several tractor-trailers.

“This is terrible out here,” Charles Daniel, a truck driver hauling a 48-foot trailer along Interstate 40 in western Oklahoma, said of the high winds whipping up dust. “There’s a lot of sand and dirt in the air. I’m not pushing it over 55 mph. I’m scared it will blow over if I do.”

Forecasters said the severe storm threat would continue into the weekend with a high chance of tornadoes and damaging winds Saturday in Mississippi and Alabama. Heavy rain could bring flash flooding to some parts of the East Coast on Sunday.

Experts say it's not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.

“What’s unique about this one is its large size and intensity,” said Bill Bunting of the weather service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. “And so what that is doing is producing really substantial impacts over a very large area.”

The National Weather Service said it observed three evening tornadoes, including in south-central Missouri city of Grovespring.

The Storm Prediction Center said fast-moving storms could spawn twisters and hail as large as baseballs, but the greatest threat would come from straight-line winds near or exceeding hurricane force, with gusts of 100 mph (160 kph) possible.

A tornado watch was issued until 11 p.m. for central and eastern Missouri, including St. Louis, as well as parts of Illinois and Arkansas.

Other areas at risk included parts of Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi.

About 47 million people faced an enhanced to moderate severe storm threat from Madison, Wisconsin, to Birmingham, Alabama.

Forecasters grew increasingly worried that intense thunderstorms farther south will likely bring an even greater tornado threat Saturday.

The Storm Prediction Center said parts of Mississippi including Jackson and Hattiesburg and areas of Alabama including Birmingham and Tuscaloosa will be at a high risk. Severe storms and tornadoes are also possible across eastern Louisiana, western Georgia, central Tennessee and the western Florida Panhandle.

“We have a lot of confidence that we most likely will have a tornado outbreak tomorrow,” Storm Prediction Center meteorologist Evan Bentley said in an online briefing.

Wildfires in the Southern Plains threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds, and evacuations were ordered for some communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.

A blaze in Roberts County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, quickly blew up from less than a square mile (about 2 square kilometers) to an estimated 17.1 square miles (44 square kilometers), the Texas A&M University Forest Service said on X. Crews stopped its advance by the evening.

About 60 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, another fire grew to about 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) before its advance was halted in the afternoon.

The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management activated its emergency operations center after several fast-moving fires that prompted evacuations of the town of Leedey in the western part of the state and in a rural area east of Norman.

Firefighters had been were prepositioned in certain areas, which helps authorities jump on blazes early, James said. Firefighting aircraft were also deployed in some parts of Oklahoma and Texas but were generally unable to fly due to low visibility from smoke and dust, he added.

In the evening, the National Weather Service in Norman said a “complex of extremely dangerous fires” was located northeast of Oklahoma City, near Stillwater, and urged some people in the city of about 50,000 to evacuate. Officials issued mandatory evacuation orders via social media that included homes, hotels and a Walmart.

Jennifer Thompson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, described the fire conditions in the central and northern parts of the state as historic and highly anomalous.

Roughly 120 miles (190 kilometers) of Interstate 70 in western Kansas shut down due to blowing dust and limited visibility, and roads in the state’s east were closed amid wildfires and smoke.

Officials urged people in some areas of central Missouri’s Camden County to evacuate due to wildfires, and the State Highway Patrol warned via social media that they were nearing homes and businesses.

High winds also knocked out power to more than 220,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, according the website poweroutage.us.

The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early Saturday. Snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15.2 centimeters) were expected, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) possible.

Winds gusting to 60 mph were expected to cause whiteout conditions. Combined with a light glaze of ice that could fall before temperatures drop, travel in the area could be treacherous that day, the weather service said.

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Mike Hempen in Washington; Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles; and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed.

This photo provided by the Missouri State Patrol shows a tractor-trailer overturned by high winds on highway MO-210 in Ray County, Missouri, on Friday, March 14, 2025.(Missouri State Patrol via AP)

The Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on the campus of the University of Oklahoma is seen covered by dusk and smoke as wildfires spread across Oklahoma on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)

Families evacuated from wildfires near Norman, Okla. talk and watch the latest news information on tv at CrossPoint Church in Norman on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)

Norman Oklahoma fire crews put out hot spots following a wildfire SE of Norman on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)

A wildfire spread through the country side SE of Norman, Okla. on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)

This photo provided by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol shows a tractor-trailer overturned on highway US 183 just south of Hobart, Oklahoma on Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Oklahoma Highway Patrol via AP)

Beach goers trudge through the sand in a windy day south of the pier in Huntington Beach, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025, after strong storms moved through the region overnight. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)

Hudson Kammarcal, 8, runs in the wind as his mother, Heidi Kammarcal, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, tries to keep up on the pier in Huntington Beach, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025, after strong storms moved through the region overnight. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)

Melissa Jones and her husband, Jeff Jones, visiting from Lincoln, Neb., walk through the wind on the pier in Huntington Beach, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025, after strong storms moved through the region overnight. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)

A woman walks the trails at Civic Center Park in Newport Beach, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025, after strong storms moved through the region overnight. (Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP)

Crews work to remove a large pine tree from Glencannon Drive after severe weather hit in Pico Rivera, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025. (David Crane/The Orange County Register via AP)

This satellite image from NOAA shows a March megastorm building across the United States, Thursday, March 13, 2025. (NOAA via AP)