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Columbia University faces one of the most consequential choices of its nearly three-century history this week. The Trump administration has given the school a deadline of tomorrow to make a series of concessions in exchange for keeping $400 million in federal funding. Columbia has not publicly signaled what it will do, but The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the university was close to yielding to the demands. That would be a disaster for Columbia, for American higher education, and for the United States.
In a letter earlier this month, the Trump administration sought to dictate how the university disciplines students involved in pro-Palestinian protests last year, structures its disciplinary processes, handles masking on…