Members of the American Association of University Professors and its Columbia chapter held a press conference titled “Vigil to Defend Columbia” outside the 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue gates on Monday to condemn the University’s acquiescence to demands from President Donald Trump’s administration in a Friday memorandum.

The University announced plans to ban masks on campus, allow 36 “special officers” with arrest powers on campus, review admissions procedures, and place the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under review by an appointed senior vice provost. The changes come after the Trump administration cancelled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia earlier this month. The Trump administration sent a subsequent list of “preconditions” the University needed to meet in order to restore funding.

Over 100 individuals attended the rally, holding signs that read “Hands off our students,” “Defend democracy,” and “Columbia, fight back.”

The press conference featured eight speakers, including Michael Thaddeus, vice president of Columbia-AAUP and professor of mathematics, who stated that in the last few weeks, Columbia has “endured one crisis after another.”

Thaddeus referenced Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, SIPA ’24, the “lawless” cancellation of $400 million in federal funding by the Trump administration on March 7, the “thuggish letter” from the government outlining demands for University policy changes on March 14, and the University’s compliance to the Trump administration.

Thaddeus said that the windows of Hamilton Hall next to the gates serve as a “sobering reminder of how politicized our disciplinary process has become.” On March 13, the University Judicial Board issued expulsions, degree revocations, and suspensions for some participants in the April 2024 occupation of the building.

The conference’s speakers also referenced the effects of National Institutes of Health cuts at the University. Out of the $400 million in federal funding revoked from the University, $250 million is comprised of NIH grants and awards.

Mia McIver, executive director of the national AAUP, discussed the Trump administration’s widespread attention on national higher education and the University’s “shocking surrender to the Trump administration’s threats and intimidation.”

“These grants fund research in cancer, Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes and more,” McIver said. “By preventing the development of therapies and cures, Trump’s cuts will kill the critically ill patients who depend on cutting edge biomedical research to save their lives. Trump’s cuts kill teaching and learning. They kill research, they kill knowledge, they kill truth, and they kill people.”

Dr. Melanie Wall, professor of biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, also spoke about the extensive effects that Trump’s federal funding cuts will have on research and livelihoods at the University.

“I want to emphasize the health research being cut is not research for the elite,” Wall said. “It is not about elite priorities. It is research that affects all of us and our future. Over 30 training grants and early career awards were terminated. That’s the training for the next generation of health scientists in the U.S., and it’s going to be lost.”

Faculty speakers also centered their remarks on the government’s hostility to “the free expression of ideas,” Timothy Frye, SIPA ’92, Marshall D. Shulman professor of post-Soviet foreign policy, said that Columbia faces “an existential threat from those who wish to harm us” and that the government’s “assault on higher education erodes our country’s greatest asset.”

Virginia Page Fortna, Harold Brown professor of U.S. foreign and security policy in the political science department, condemned the Trump administration’s attempts to “simply destroy” the University.

“Once upon a time, Columbia was called King’s College. We changed our name after the American Revolution,” Fortna said. “Since then, our nation’s bedrock system of civil liberties, hard-won in the War of Independence and protected in our Constitution, has guided our mission. Columbia will remain the college of no king.”

The press conference speakers also emphasized the AAUP’s goals, as well as faculty responsibility, to support University students. Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson professor of history, asked, “If we the faculty, the teachers, do not stand up for these values, who can we be for our students? Who can we be for each other and for the work to which we have devoted our lives?”

Anya Schiffrin, senior lecturer in Discipline of International and Public Affairs at SIPA, likened the current state of universities to those during the McCarthy era, highlighting their self-censorship and “chilling environment.”

In addition to Columbia speakers, the conference also featured Risa Lieberwitz, president of Cornell-AAUP. Lieberwitz affirmed Cornell-AAUP’s solidarity with Columbia and said that two international students and an international faculty member at Cornell have sued the Trump administration to challenge two of its “unconstitutional” executive orders.

“We are with you, standing together to fight back against the authoritarian Trump regime. And we are with you to fight for our academic freedom, our freedom of expression, and for higher education for all,” Lieberwitz said.

In a statement to Spectator, a University spokesperson wrote, “We respect that there will be vigorous debate on campus about issues of academic freedom and protest, and we welcome that debate. Columbia is fully committed to the steps we announced last week to continue to combat antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and harassment. Our focus will always be on our core mission to teach, create, and advance knowledge while protecting free expression.”

“The climate in which we’re operating is very divisive,” Thaddeus told Spectator. “There’s been an attempt to divide faculty from each other based on our nationality, on our immigration status, on the terms of our employment. One thing that we have to insist on is that we can’t be divided that way. We need to be united, we need to speak up unanimously for the interest of the University as a whole.”