Linda McMahon Sees Progress With Columbia, Says Harvard 'Strident'
00:00Obviously, several different agencies have revoked billions of dollars in funding to many private universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Princeton. Which schools, if any, are on track to getting their funding back from the government? The first university that we started this process with was Columbia. I visited with the then acting president, Katrina Armstrong, on campus at Columbia. And we basically were starting our conversation relative to the anti-Semitism activities that had gone on before and that were still continuing. In some ways, though, some of it was a little better. We that's how we began our conversation. But then we wanted to look at other aspects of the programs that they had on campus, how they were vetting their students. Did they believe that a lot of the uprisings on campus came from outside agitators or students that were on campus? What were some of the ways that they were managing those activities on campus? And I think we have had really good, open, honest discussions. I've now met with the current president of Columbia twice and and had a telephone conversation with her. I'm sorry. I've met with her once, had you telephone conversations with her. And I think we've made great progress. Harvard's been a little more strident. They responded to our negotiation outreach with the lawsuit and have amended the lawsuit once. Still hopeful that these things can be resolved through negotiations. And I think just sitting in and understanding what is really best for students that are on campus, that they can be sure that they're in a safe learning environment when they're there, not be afraid to go to class. But at the same time, we want to make sure if tax dollars are funding a lot of what is going on, universities and those universities are abiding by the laws of the United States. Do the universities think that they will get their funding back at the end of their negotiations with the administration, or are they saying that they are or are they asking, will they or would the administration allow them to get that funding back? That's part of the negotiations, of course, that we have that are ongoing. It would be my goal that if universities, colleges and universities are abiding by the laws of the United States and doing what we were expecting of them, that they could expect to have taxpayer funded programs. Do you think there's a chance that President Trump leaves the White House in three years and some of these schools never see that funding come back? I would hope that's not the case. We're certainly trying to move much more expeditiously. What we've seen since we really began this effort, you know, it was kind of a hard hammer at first. And so we've now seen a lot of other universities who are starting to look at their practices and their programs and getting ahead of the curve so that they can report back a sort of a self-monitoring step on trends. Probably not a good way to phrase it, because we couldn't allow that at first. But certainly self evaluation I think is a better way to say it.
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