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The agreement that the Trump administration struck with Columbia University in July makes one thing very clear: the university will henceforth treat everyone on its campus the same, regardless of characteristics such as race that the law recognises as potentially singling people out for discrimination. One provision declares that Columbia “will not provide benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association or element within the entire Columbia University system”.
That is emphatic indeed. Yet the provision immediately preceding it confers just such a benefit to one such group of potentially vulnerable students: “To further support Jewish life and the well-being of Jewish students on campus,” it stipulates, Columbia will hire an “additional administrator” to communicate with students “concerning antisemitism issues” and advise the school on how “to support Jewish students”. This seems like a fine idea; Columbia has said antisemitism is a problem on campus. But just imagine the Trumpian distress if a college swapped, with the corresponding bigotry, “Jewish” for another word—“black” or “female” or, heaven help the school, “transgender” or “Palestinian”.
As Donald Trump’s administration grinds through the academy, it is not so much eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programmes as inspiring, or mandating, its preferred version. At Harvard some students returning this autumn wondered why they were taking mandatory antisemitism training, but no other anti-bias training, the Harvard...