The Trump administration’s coercion of Columbia University involved reciprocal misbehavior by the school and the government. This and other threatened punishment is probably a harbinger of further unlawful behavior by a lawless government against teaching institutions that are slow learners.

Columbia was dilatory and incompetent in dealing with demonstrations that disrupted education and created a hostile campus environment for a disfavored minority, Jews. Columbia deserved to pay a cost for this violation of existing laws and regulations. There are, however, other pertinent rules.

The administration’s March 13 letter to Columbia ordered “immediate compliance” with its demands for: expulsion of certain students and student groups, reform of admissions policies and disciplinary procedures, and government supervision (“receivership”) of the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department. But Keith E. Whittington, director of Yale Law School’s Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech, notes:

“Federal statutes require that the government demonstrate with a written report to Congress and after a full hearing that there has been a legal violation before an educational institution can have its funding cut off. Even if those procedural hurdles had been met, federal law does not permit administration officials to withhold any and all federal funds that might flow to an educational institution. It limits any withholding of funds ‘to the particular program, or part thereof, in which such noncompliance has been so found.’”

The punishment that Columbia seems to have evaded by surrendering was the revocation of $400 million in funding for, among other things, medical and other scientific research. When the next progressive administration in Washington uses such financial coercion to force universities into accepting federal dictation of admissions and disciplinary policies, and supervision of curriculums about, say, race and gender, today’s “conservatives” will be embarrassed, if any are indeed capable of experiencing that emotional condition.

Regarding the University of Pennsylvania, the government has frozen $175 million in federal funding because the 2022 women’s swimming team included a biological male, in violation of a 2025 executive order supported by public opinion. But, per Whittington, the Penn athletic department’s misbegotten policy (reflecting the NCAA’s policy at the time but since changed) should not turn unrelated research into collateral damage from government policy.

There probably is scant public support for Columbia, Penn or universities generally. They are learning, painfully, that when you ask for trouble, you should expect trouble. Of higher education, it is fair to ask: Has so much prestige ever been squandered so quickly? Universities issuing solemn pronouncements about political events have appeared childishly self-absorbed. They seem unaware that few people take seriously what universities think because they think things like this: “Mispronouning” merits punishment, and advocating genocide against Jews deserves “contextualizing.”

Intellectuals, often the last to understand things, are discovering the obvious: When universities adopt stances that are adversarial and disdainful toward the (they say: systemically racist, social-justice-deprived) society that sustains them, the sustaining wanes.

Since 2017, a few of the largest college endowments have been taxed at 1.4 percent. JD Vance has suggested 35 percent, perhaps for all endowments. When the Trump administration seriously comes after endowments, the schools looking around for friends will find few.

Progressives relish enforcing the principle that when government pays the piper, government gets to call the tune — even when the federal government pays a small portion of the piper’s income. Federal money has turned many of society’s institutions — state and local governments, K-12 schools, universities, businesses, and others — into paid pipers. The Obama and Biden administrations spoke of using federal money for a “whole-of-government approach” to coerce all-of-society conformity to government’s preferences (about climate policy, “equity” for the “underserved,” etc.).

In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights division became a civil rights violator with its 19-page “Dear Colleague” letter, a menacing evasion of the Administrative Procedure Act’s due process provisions. The letter, rescinded by the current administration, threatened schools with terminations of federal funding if they did not adopt new “sexual harassment” enforcement policies. Schools were told that accused individuals could be convicted, and given life-shattering punishments, on the basis of only “a preponderance of the evidence,” not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

The current administration’s disregard of the law does not seem like carelessness. It seems to be a chest-thumping expression of the belief that respecting legal boundaries is for weaklings. Defiance of clear legal strictures (again, see Whittington) indicates that some “conservatives” are jealous that progressives have been having all the fun throwing the government’s weight around. Be that as it may — and however much Columbia, Penn and many other institutions have forfeited the public’s sympathy — government should not slice through the law to get at them.

George Will writes a column for the Washington Post.