The Trump Administration is pushing Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong to double down on her promise to ban the wearing of masks at campus protests after she reportedly assured faculty over the weekend that there would be no mask bans, the New York Post reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Armstrong assured faculty in private conversations that the university would not bar the wearing of masks at protests despite agreeing to do so on Friday in its agreement with the government.
Armstrong attempted to backtrack on her assurances to the faculty members yesterday (Tuesday) following the outcry caused by the report.
“I regret any confusion and inconsistent statements and want to make sure our position is clear as we go forward," she stated.
“Let there be no confusion: I commit to seeing these changes implemented, with the full support of Columbia’s senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees," she said. "Any suggestion that these measures are illusory, or lack my personal support, is unequivocally false. These changes are real, and they are right for Columbia."
On Friday, Armstrong announced a series of reforms at Columbia, including placing the university’s Middle East studies department under new oversight, revising protest and student discipline policies, and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.
As part of the agreement, Columbia is supposed to prohibit masks on campus, grant 36 campus police officers expanded authority to arrest students, and appoint a senior vice provost with broad oversight over the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies, as well as the Center for Palestine Studies.
On Tuesday morning, US Education Secretary Linda McMahon warned that the restoration of the $400 million in federal funding to Columbia that was cut due to the university's failure to address the antisemitism crisis on its campuses was not guaranteed and depended on the fulfillment of Columbia's agreement to take steps restore order to campus and protect Jewish students.
During a breakfast meeting with reporters, McMahon was asked, “What happens if it emerges that Columbia is not meeting the demands and complying with the agreements that they said they would?”
“My answer is pretty simple," McMahon responded. “They have to abide and comply with the terms that we have set down and [we’ve] talked with them and they’ve agreed to."
“And that was kind of the basis to get them to the real first step of total negotiations to restore the funding — that, in and of itself, was not to reinstall, to reinstate the funding. So they’ll have to do that. And we certainly hope that, hope that they will, and I’ve had no indication from President Armstrong anything would be contrary to that," she added.
