Trump Slashes Millions More in Columbia Grants and Energy Department Adviser Goes Full Robin DiAngelo
Shalom, Columbia: The Ivy League institution is $30 million poorer after the Trump administration on Friday slashed additional grants to the university from the Department of Health and Human Services, Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson reports.
The cuts hit, among others, Jeanine D'Armiento, the chairwoman of the University Senate Executive Committee who has played a leading role in protecting students involved in the disruption of university life. D'Armiento urged former Columbia president Minouche Shafik to include them in crafting disciplinary rules, and at a university senate meeting held last year, she shut off the microphone of a colleague who said there were "groups who are supporting terrorists" on campus. Grants supporting her work account for roughly $2 million of the cuts.
"The administration is in the process of reviewing the totality of Columbia's $5 billion in federal funding, and the fresh round of cuts comes on the heels of the administration’s decision to cancel $400 million in grants and contracts to the Ivy League school announced earlier this month," writes Johnson.
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Trump Administration Slashes Millions More in Grants to Columbia
Antiracism, meet STEM: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire. She's argued that Einstein's theory of general relativity is undermined by "white empiricism" and suggested that string theory "failed to succeed" because the field has too many white men. The Biden administration appointed her to a physics advisory panel housed within the Energy Department in 2024. If President Trump doesn't remove her, she'll stay on until 2027.
Some scientists think Trump should. They say "that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that 'Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics,'" our Aaron Sibarium reports.
Trump likely agrees: He's "vowed to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the federal government," writes Sibarium. "And while Prescod-Weinstein is not a DEI official, she has espoused some of the most extreme positions associated with DEI." Her inclusion on the Energy Department panel, then, provides "a potential target for the Trump administration as it seeks to stamp out DEI within the federal government."
A DEI lifeline: Trump's aforementioned crusade against equity has put the DEI industry on the ropes. But it has a friend in the state of Illinois, where a little-known law requires private companies to finance DEI nonprofits and promote DEI in their communities.
The more they do so, the higher the state scores them on a "commitment to diversity" factor where they can earn "100 possible points based on their answers to seven DEI questions," the Free Beacon's Andrew Kerr writes. Those questions require companies to disclose how much they spend financing the DEI industry, what percentage of their staff are women and minorities, and whether they have any agreements with female- or minority-owned businesses.
"Since going into full effect last year, Pritzker's DEI Factor has had a major impact on the way Illinois does business," writes Kerr. "Some 44 percent of state contracts awarded in fiscal year 2024 went to the companies that scored the highest on DEI factor, as opposed to their technical competency or price, according to a report published late last year by the Illinois Chief Procurement Office."
READ MORE: Illinois Restricts Government Contracts to DEI Supporters, Propping Up Divisive Industry
Away from the Beacon:
- It's a bad time to be a terrorist. First, Trump smoked an ISIS leader in Iraq, saying his "miserable life was terminated." Then he launched a "decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen," who also received the following message from Trump: "YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON'T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE SEEN BEFORE." Hoorah.
- Margaret Brennan asked Marco Rubio if there's "any evidence" linking Columbia Hamasnik Mahmoud Khalil to terrorism. Rubio didn't hold back: "I mean, you should watch the news. These guys take over entire buildings. They vandalize colleges. They shut down colleges. … We don't need these people in our country, we never should have allowed them in in the first place."
- Democrats have officially hit rock bottom: A new NBC News poll found that their popularity is at an all-time low, with just 27 percent of registered voters saying they have positive views of the Democratic Party.
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