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WASHINGTON -- There's a reason why Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, cut a deal with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon last week.

Elite universities like to pose as protectors of free speech, but nobody believes that anymore.

For decades, they've served as taxpayer-subsidized echo chambers.

Then, in March, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in Columbia contracts and grants because, McMahon argued, Jewish students faced intimidation and antisemitic harassment during post-Oct. 7 campus protests that shuttered classrooms.

The protests did not do Columbia proud. Many students apparently believed they could deface university property, get up close and personal with public safety officers, harass Jewish students and pay no penalty for their uncivil behavior.

Because they thought they were above the rules, activists occupied public spaces ahead of school finals and transformed campus quads into trash heaps.

Progressives thought there would be no penalty, and until President Donald Trump returned to the White House this year, they were right.

Under a deal announced last week, Columbia has agreed to pay $200 million to the federal government, eliminate race-based preferences and end DEI programs "that distribute benefits based on race," and discipline student offenders for severe disruptions on campus.

Trump's decision to withhold federal funding to Columbia -- and then restore it -- enraged the ACLU, of course.

"The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints," said a statement signed by bipartisan constitutional scholars and posted on the ACLU website. "This is especially so for universities, which should be committed to respecting free speech."

Yes, universities should be committed to respecting free speech. Too bad they instead have been committed to stacking the deck to the far left with DEI policies that favor like-minded, left-wing academics, and routinely exclude conservative viewpoints.

They've used higher education as their own private sandbox for decades. And now that non-members of the club are in the playground, they see threats to academic freedom.

Jay P. Greene, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, doesn't see the free-speech problem the ACLU sees. "These are just ghost stories," he told me.

The administration's intervention at Columbia -- withholding funds pending investigation -- came after activists blocked students from crossing campus, going to class and studying in the library ahead of finals last year.

Team Trump was standing up for the civil rights of Jewish students, Greene argued, just as President Dwight D. Eisenhower stood up for the rights of Black children in Little Rock in 1954.

For her part, Shipman has a handle on how to go forward.

The former network journalist, who was drafted to the top spot during Columbia's turmoil, released a level-headed statement that noted, "For months, Columbia's discussions with the federal government have been set up as a test of principle -- a binary fight between courage and capitulation. But like most things in life, the reality is far more complex. We established our non-negotiable academic and institutional boundaries clearly, and we chose to talk and to listen."

Listen.

McMahon told NewsNation she hoped the deal with Columbia would serve as a template for other universities.

Shipman's willingness to talk with McMahon, as reported by The New York Times, showed a smarter path than the usual preening one sees in the Ivory Tower.

There's a message in there for the dons of Big Education: You think you own it. You did own it, but not anymore.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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