Trump is right to defund schools that allow illegal protests

Colleges are so unable to corral their own students that the president of the United States is stepping in to do it for them.

Trump has pledged to halt federal funding for schools that allow illegal protest activity to continue on their campuses — and is even threatening to slap student agitators with expulsion, arrest and deportation.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” the president wrote in a Tuesday morning Truth Social post. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”

It should never have gotten to this point. 

Pulling academic institutions’ funding might seem severe, but it’s an unfortunately necessary last-gasp attempt to restore order on campuses derailed by unlawful protesting.

While I think arresting and deporting kids is a step too far, it’s stunning that elite schools are still, all these semesters later, unable to get protests under control without the president stepping in. 

Trump’s passionate screed came after students at Barnard, Columbia’s women’s college, illegally occupied a campus building in the name of Palestine last week.

They assaulted a security guard and reveled in taunting and shouting “shame” at an administrator after barricading her in her office for hours.

But that spectacle is nothing new. The whole scene was reminiscent of the violent occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last spring that saw more than 100 people arrested.

Similar illegal protests have disrupted learning for law-abiding students at some of the most competitive schools around the country, including Harvard, Yale, NYU, UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania. 

As a Gaza ceasefire deal proves tenuous and warm spring months are ahead of us, surely more pro-Palestine encampments are just around the corner on campuses where administrators have proven they’re completely unable to hold the line.

It’s shameful that executive attention needs to be wasted on campus goings-on, but semester after semester of disruptive, antisemitic and illegal activities have become impossible to ignore.

Withholding federal funding from schools that continuously enable or ignore incontrovertibly illegal activity — like pitching encampments, occupying buildings, holding administrators hostage or assaulting security guards — seems perfectly fair.

And these aren’t tiny money-hungry colleges dependent on government bucks to survive. They’re private cash cows hoovering up federal funding on top of their already exorbitant wealth.

Harvard, a university with an incomprehensible $53 billion endowment, received $646 million from federal agencies in 2024 — the year after it devolved into an antisemitic hellhole, helping to force then-president Claudine Gay’s resignation.

Meanwhile, Columbia could potentially lose as much as $5 billion in federal grant commitments if administrators fail to ensure that Jewish students are adequately protected on campus.

I don’t agree that a president has the right to tell private colleges to expel students, nor to tell students whether or not they’re allowed to wear masks on private property. And certainly I do think that deporting “agitators” is a step too far.

But if there’s one thing Trump knows better than anyone, it’s that money talks. 

Professors quitting out of principle, students expressing fear for their safety and an unsustainable turnover of leadership didn’t snap schools into effective action — but the threat of federal fiscal retribution has succeeded in getting Columbia’s cooperation.

The school promptly released a statement on Monday night after they were notified by federal agencies, affirming they are “fully committed to combating antisemitism” and “look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism.”

College leaders failed spectacularly to maintain law and order in their campus bubbles.

Had they consistently protected free speech and punished illegal actors, we would never have a national leader stepping in and doing their job for them.

Harvard, Columbia and the other schools have no one but themselves to blame.