Rogers Park resident Logan Green poses with his sign at Chicago’s People’s March for Justice at Water Tower Park on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025.
By Morgan Kromer, Staff Reporter
March 4, 2025
President Trump threatened to cut federal funding to colleges and universities that allow “illegal protests” and arrest or expel American students.
In a social media post on Tuesday, March 4, Trump said “agitators” would be imprisoned or deported. “NO MASKS!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Student Government Association President Jenna Davis said protesting is a lifeline for students.
“This impacts student activism greatly. This campus is built on creatives that stand up for what they believe in. If you take away the right to protest, you take away the heartbeat of so many creatives,” Davis said in an email.
In a statement, the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally revoke funds or punish students.
“President Trump also lacks the authority to expel individual students, who are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private campuses as well,” according to the statement.
The ACLU referred a Chronicle reporter to a statement in response to Trump’s social media post.
“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on U.S. college campuses so blatantly,” Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU, said in the statement. “We stand in solidarity with university leaders in their commitment to free speech, open debate and peaceful dissent on campus.”
Lambrini Lukidis, associate vice president of Strategic Communications and External Relations, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Trump has already issued several executive orders targeting colleges and universities, and last month the Department of Education ordered higher education institutions to stop race-conscious programming or risk losing federal funding, as the Chronicle previously reported.
Columbia gets a small portion of federal funding, primarily for its TRIO office and through Pell grants and work study.
In the past, Trump has spoken out against pro-Palestinian protests and the wave of student encampments in spring 2024 to protest Israel’s actions in the war on Gaza.
Columbia College students participated in citywide marches and protests but did not have an encampment on its urban campus. There were encampments at DePaul University, the School of the Art Institute, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, among others.
https://columbiachronicle.com/