As Trump cuts millions from Columbia, University of Minnesota urged to take action

The Trump administration announced Friday it will pull $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, over antisemitism claims stemming from pro-Palestinian protests on the campus last spring.

The University of Minnesota joins Columbia on a list of colleges facing federal investigation over such protests, and now the man who called for that investigation is warning its regents to take action before the university faces similar funding cuts.

In 2023, professor and former Bush Administration White House ethics attorney Richard Painter and former regent Michael Hsu urged the Department of Education to open up an investigation into the university over a pro-Palestinian statement published on the website of one of its colleges.

Painter spoke with MPR News host Tom Crann about Trump’s actions against Columbia.

MPR News has reached out to the University of Minnesota for comment and is awaiting a response.

Below is a transcript of Painter’s interview, edited for clarity. Press play above to listen to their full conversation.

What’s your reaction to the action by the Trump administration against Columbia University?

Well, first of all, I don’t think cutting off funds from medical research and other scientific research is at all an appropriate remedy for this, whether it’s Columbia or the University of Minnesota or any other university. The NIH funding is vitally important to public health and to the economy of states such as Minnesota.

I just testified last week in front of Congress about conflicts of interest with Elon Musk and the Trump administration, and I wish they would prioritize public funding of medical research, but I should emphasize that our problems at the University of Minnesota and the same with Columbia are not generally in our departments, in the sciences, business and other departments, but in the College of Liberal Arts, these problems are isolated in our universities. They need to be addressed.

We have antisemitic faculty statements on the website paid for by the University of Minnesota for three College of Liberal Arts departments there were violently anti-Israel, posted right after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. I’ve urged those websites to be taken down.

We had a journal, Cultural Critique, on campus. It was boycotting Israel. We had an interim dean of our College of Liberal Arts try to put a political extremist in charge of our Holocaust center.

We’ve had retaliation against faculty who complain about antisemitism, and some of this antisemitism having nothing to do with Israel, but actually revisionist history of the Nazi regime, and retaliation against faculty the reported to the Minnesota Senate. Some of this does need to be addressed.

Yourself and a regent at the U brought a similar complaint against the University of Minnesota. What remedy are you looking for if today's is too severe?

The real remedy here is for the universities themselves, without intrusion by the federal government, to take appropriate action first, to distinguish between official capacity statements such as websites controlled by the departments, which should not be making these types of extreme statements about the Middle East, conflict and personal capacity opinions which everyone is free to express.

I can participate in politics in my personal capacity. I can have a Republican yard sign in my front yard or a Democratic Party yard sign. If someone wants to put a Hamas yard sign in the front yard, we’ve been fine.

That’s the First Amendment, but not on a College of Liberal Arts departmental website. And that’s the point that Regent Hsu and I were making to the Department of Education.

Now you have made this complaint to the Department of Education, do you think it was handled appropriately?

Well, the Department of Education read our complaint, looked at the evidence, and believed there was enough evidence to proceed with an investigation in January of 2024. But there were dozens of other campuses across the country with similar problems. So we don't know exactly what has been done with that investigation over the year 2024. What we do know is the Trump administration has prioritized it.

Now I do not know what the Trump administration is going to do, and once again, I oppose linking this problem to medical research and yanking funds from the department at our university and others that are not responsible for the antisemitism and the chaos that we're now experiencing.

Any regrets about filing that complaint with the Department of Education?

No, I think it’s very important to speak out against antisemitism and Islamophobia and racism against racial minorities, which persist in many of our universities. We must speak out.