Wesleyan President: “How Does Paying The Government $220 Million To Do Basic Science Make Jews Safer?”
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, reacts to Columbia University’s settlement with the Trump administration.
AMNA NAWAZ, PBS NEWSHOUR: As you know, the administration has long argued that this was about combating antisemitism on campus. This was a deal welcomed by Columbia’s Hillel Jewish organization. The executive director said in part: “The announcement’s an important recognition of what Jewish students and families have expressed with increasing urgency. Antisemitism at Columbia is real. It has a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety, belonging, and their civil rights.” I guess the question, President Roth, is if it makes Jewish students and staff feel safer, did the administration pressure and the deal do what it intended to do? MICHAEL ROTH, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT: How does paying the government $ 220 million to do basic science make Jews safer? As a Jew, I find this horrific. I know antisemitism is real, and I know it was real and is real at Columbia, as it is in Congress, as it is in most places in the United States. But the idea that you pay off the government in order to get them off your back so you can do cancer research, and that’s good for the Jews, I think it’s ridiculous. We don’t need the White House to tell us antisemitism is real two weeks after the Defense Department contracts with Grok, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence entity after it praised Hitler. This is an administration that is not concerned with Jewish welfare. I am concerned with Jewish welfare as a Jew, as a professor, as a college president. I think it’s really important to call out antisemitism. But to pay up basically protection money in a way that’s supposed to make Jews safer, I think, in the long run, it’s – as we say in my community, it’s not good for the Jews.
