The Ivy That Gave Up
What really happened at Columbia University.
We’ll be getting into the cover story on Columbia University’s surrender to the Trump administration in a second, but first I want to address another New York institution that recently gave up. I’m talking about Choire Sicha.
I’m just kidding! Our brilliant former host is on to his next big thing, and we will miss him dearly. But in addition to his warm good-bye note on Friday, he gave me the secrets to a perfect flagship magazine newsletter — so buckle up as I take the helm for the next few weeks. —Matt Stieb
MORNINGSIDE LOWS
Why Did Columbia Open the Campus Gates for Trump?
Inside a university in crisis.
For this week’s cover, Nick Summers, who served as editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator in his undergraduate days, brings us the definitive story on the school’s capitulation to an administration that wants it to suffer. There are many striking details in his report of the structural issues underlying the university’s leadership collapse — like the fact that senior administrators thought a $250 million funding cut could never happen. (The real cut, $400 million, must have been a shock when it came in March.) But perhaps the biggest surprise was this quote from conservative provocateur Chris Rufo:
“I was surprised by how quickly and how completely the university folded.”
This is coming from someone who helped design the plan to crush elite universities by killing their federal funding. Even Rufo couldn’t believe how easy it was, despite the school’s stature and its $14.8 billion endowment. But, as Nick explains, the seeds for a crisis were already planted on the campus in Morningside Heights as far back as 1968 — the university’s last period of campus-shaking protest.
EVERYTHING’S PLANE
Aviation Safety Experts vs. Nathan Fielder
Who is going to fix this situation?
Some Donald Trump quotes are implanted in my brain deeper than my fondest memories of my most cherished loved ones. The most recent phrase to enter the pantheon was his description of a Tesla dashboard in March: “Everything’s computer.” In a way, he is right; everything is computer. But I’ve decided that everything is, in fact, plane. The year has been dominated by stories about planes, whether it’s because of open corruption or the fact that the system just barely works and we are losing contact with them an alarming amount of the time.
Everything’s plane includes TV. For the second season of his show The Rehearsal, which wraps on Sunday, comedian Nathan Fielder has emerged as an unlikely hero in the ever-important field of aviation safety. New York contributor (and private pilot) Jeff Wise wondered if Fielder’s rehearsal methods could actually help improve in-flight safety. Could these crisis-role-playing exercises during training more effectively help crews respond in the cockpit? Jeff asks, “What if, for once, the extravagance of Fielder’s solutions matched the scale of the problem?” He went to the experts to find out.
Click Your Way Out
Look at me, I’m the newsletter captain now.