It is a heavy heart that I must inform you that Columbia University is at it again.

This week, Columbia signed a “deal” with Mr. Art of the Deal himself, President Semi-Senient Rotting Carrot. Just don’t call it capitulation.

The deal, as Future Pariah of History and Columbia University President Claire Shipman said, is about preserving their funding. They gave up millions and their soul.

Columbia University has handed over its undergraduate admissions process to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, who will now decide at their sole discretion whether the university has admitted enough white people. It's no longer an independent institution.

— Kevin Carey (@kevincarey1.bsky.social) 2025-07-24T02:22:56.184Z

I mean, it’s next to impossible not to see this for what it is, a racist takeover of an Ivy League school, enabled by senior administration under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism and preserving funding. Of course, all of this is about as much about fighting anti-Semitism as the Harper’s Letter back in 2020 was about free speech. The deal even has its fans, including Larry Summers, famous for his Eww Ick Girls in Science comment while president of Harvard and for having the worst ideas on the economy of any Very Serious Elite Centrist (very hard to pull off). He posted his thoughts on Columbia University’s deal with Trump on Elon’s Hell Site.

These would be legitimate views if it weren’t for the fact that Donald Trump is Donald Trump, a factoid that Shipman and Summers seem blissfully unaware of. History is littered with powerful people who we all assume are very intelligent and yet get grifted by malevolent con artists. A professor at Columbia goes all the way back to the 16th Century to find the example of Charles II and James II, and they were so shitty, it led to the Glorious Revolution, which began the era of parliamentary supremacy in Britain. Very inconvenient if you are Shippy the President to have in your faculty people who can go all the way back 350 years to find another example of how dumb you currently are.

My example in the feature photo above, of course, is former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, waving his agreement with Hitler that if he was a very good boy, he could get the Sudetenland, now run along now, fine chap, and behave yourself. That was 1938. A year later, the world saw exactly what happens when you appease someone who cannot be appeased.

Social media offers up a more recent metaphor for Donald Trump, one that, given his mushy grasp on history, is something he would more readily recognize – Tony Soprano. In fact, I imagine he’d be thrilled with the comparison.

I suppose, given the senior university administrator’s propensity to have Senior University Administrator Brain, they believe that they are protecting their research and the university. And that this is about “fighting anti-Semitism.” If you really buy that, I have some bad news for you: They’ve already given up the game.

You cannot appease mobsters and other malevolent actors. No matter how much you wish that wasn’t true, it is.

The last word goes to Golden Earring, whose guitarist and c0-founder, George Kooymans, passed this week. There’s been a lot of famous-people death this week, but wanted to make sure the man who wrote this all-timer is remembered.