U.S. Research Funding Should Support American Values, Not Antisemitism

Why is the Biden administration encouraging antisemitism on campus?

College campuses across America – and in particular across the Ivy League – have erupted with antisemitic, pro-Hamas encampments and riots. These anti-American activities are not the peaceful protests on college campuses of the past. They are federally funded demonstrations of support for terrorism. and the Biden administration is encouraging them.

Even more concerning, campus administrators have effectively sanctioned this anti-democratic behavior and implemented policies that harm Jewish students, faculty, and community members rather than addressing the real problem: the dehumanization of and threats against a subset of the community.

Columbia University is among the worst offenders in academia right now. Antisemitic protests were allowed to take root, and the result? A full blown occupation of Hamilton Hall, an immovable encampment, and assaults on Jewish students. Campus life and academic freedom have been irreversibly damaged by the incompetence of Columbia’s and similar administrations and their refusal to take a principled stand against the threat of antisemitism.

University elites already have a history of repressing unfashionable thought, particularly when it comes to tolerance of conservatives. Now, they are blatantly allowing the repression of Jewish students and lifting up those who harbor anti-American sentiments.

American college campuses should be places of free thought and an open exchange of ideas. This also means students should be able to exercise their opinions and protest peacefully. That is not what is happening at Columbia and other universities right now.

Threats and persecution

The threatened minority is being persecuted, attacked, and viciously prevented from participating fully in an education to which they have an equal claim and for which they paid a hefty sum. It is fundamentally un-American and antithetical to freedom for an institution of higher learning to enable this dangerous, intolerant behavior.

Setting aside the obvious moral issues for a moment, there is an economic question at hand: Who is funding these universities that are allowing, and even propagating, antisemitism?

The American taxpayer is. And I don’t just mean with student loans.

How U.S. research grants end up finding antisemitism

Columbia’s own website boasts: “Federal agencies provide about $800 million annually to fund research across every school and campus at the university and a total of $1.1B including direct support of education and contributions to help sustain the underlying research infrastructure.”

So far this fiscal year, Columbia University has already pocketed $72 million in new spending. This begs the question of whether the Biden administration is doling out an even bigger share of Columbia’s budget.

Examining ongoing federal research dollars reveals just how much the federal taxpayer funds Columbia’s projects – what their executive vice president of research calls “the cornerstone” of the university.

The university has 1,441 active projects funded through the National Institutes of Health, totaling $844,885,249 according to NIH reporting. The National Science Foundation is another major contributor to the university’s research; Columbia has 487 active NSF grants, totaling $513,369,807.

That means American taxpayers are already giving Columbia University nearly $1.4 billion for current research projects through the NIH and NSF. That’s $1.4 billion from the American people at the same time that Columbia’s administration actively refuses to uphold basic American principles.

Administrative priorities

Money is fungible, but even if it wasn’t, this particular money is not simply designated for research projects. Much of it goes directly toward subsidizing university administrators’ priorities.

This includes massive amounts of funding for “overhead,” a nebulous allowance for each research grant that can be used for unknown administrative uses, as pointed out by the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene. Greene found that Columbia spends 64.5% of its research funding on “overhead” costs. This is effectively a slush fund that the administration could be using for anything, including support for the radicals who have taken over the campus.

The most obvious example of this is federal research funding being siphoned off for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, hires, and offices. There is little transparency or oversight of these funds, but they are very likely propping up liberal academia’s DEI infrastructure and amplifying faculty like the over 100 professors who sided with the encampment participants as supposed victims and called for an “immediate apology and amnesty” for antisemitic students. Apparently it is the pro-Hamas faction that believes they are being discriminated against here. What about the apology for the Jewish students scared to walk on their own campus? And who will be the next target of this woke mob takeover?

What needs to happen

While antisemitism runs rampant on the Columbia lawn, the university’s trustees are raking in cash by the billions. Approximately six million Jewish American adults contributed to those tax dollars.

Perhaps Columbia could find a way to let enrolled Jewish students at least get to those expensive research labs safely.

If not, perhaps Congress should revoke Columbia University’s ability to pocket Americans’ hard-earned dollars for research projects like its $95,388 study on “weight discrimination” experienced by transgender children.

At its core, federal spending should reflect the federal government’s priorities. It is time to stop prioritizing the woke ideologies of elite academic institutions. It is time to reprioritize and speak out for American values.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.