In President Donald Trump’s intensifying war against higher education, Columbia University has just become the first to face the nuclear option. The U.S. Department of Education has urged the Middle States Commission on Higher Education to revoke Columbia’s accreditation, which would effectively sever Columbia’s access to all federal student aid.
In doing so, the Trump administration has escalated its ideological campaign against elite educational institutions from punitive investigations and budget cuts to a direct threat to the life-blood of major universities though the federal financial aid system.
This is no routine bureaucratic step. Accreditation is what allows students to access Pell Grants and federal student loans. Without it, an institution like Columbia — where nearly a quarter of first-year students receive Pell Grants — becomes functionally inaccessible to the majority of Americans. The Trump administration knows this. And that’s precisely the point.
The campaign of increasing escalation has nothing to do with antisemitism or accreditation. It is about control, coercion and spectacle. While Columbia’s campus, like many, has faced seri-ous challenges in confronting antisemitism — an embarrassing stain on the institution that needs to be addressed meaningfully — that issue has now been weaponized in an effort to at-tack institutional independence.
The threat to Columbia’s accreditation is not the product of a rigorous, objective evaluation. It is pure political theatre — “shock and awe” diplomacy transplanted into higher education, executed in a classic Trump pattern: lead with your most extreme demand, no matter how outrageous, to extract movement on your more “reasonable” demands. The approach isn’t subtle. It’s not intended to be.
Higher education accreditation is supposed to be a nonpartisan process carried out by independent, federally recognized bodies. Accreditation agencies are supposed to be impartial referees, ensuring that institutions meet established academic and administrative standards. They are supposed to monitor and certify compliance and performance, not punish institutions for failing ideological litmus tests set in Washington. The MSCHE is, by all accounts, a serious and credible accreditor. It must act like one.
The Department of Education under Secretary Linda McMahon has no business directing the MSCHE to “keep it informed” of Columbia’s compliance in ways that go beyond oversight into intimidation. And the Trump administration has no right to abuse the accreditation process as a tool to reshape the culture and governance of universities whose ideological alignment doesn’t meet MAGA standards.
Columbia has tried to meet the administration halfway. It revised disciplinary procedures, shut down protests and affirmed its opposition to antisemitism. But those concessions, rather than tempering federal aggression, emboldened it. With $400 million in federal funds already with-held and new accusations now raised, Columbia finds itself in a Kafkaesque loop where every effort to comply becomes further evidence of guilt.
Columbia needs to fight back. And it should be joined by other higher education institutions, professional organizations and accrediting agencies. This is also a clear test for the MSCHE itself, which must honor its role to monitor and evaluate educational quality and institutional integrity but resist efforts to make it an enforcement arm for a political agenda.
If the higher education accreditation process is to have credibility and meaning, it cannot allow government overreach to interfere with the process.
