From the article it sounds like they were revoked due to causing property damage to the university. Even if you disagree with that move, it seems like a rather different situation.
The perpetrator should be sued for damages which is the normal thing to happen. Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.
(EDIT) I've since googled around a bit and am surprised that there does seem to be a degree of discretion available to the university to revoke degrees that I was unaware of. I had always considered degrees to be like an affidavit, a statement of a fact as the institution understands it. There are plenty of horrible people who have done heinous things and I've never heard of their degrees being taken away. Perhaps one difference here is that the behavior under question was during their undergrad.
This one has a significant complication of parallel legal action. They seized and vandalized a building. They’ve been reviewing evidence and building cases for a long time.
These things take time.
Columbia did none of the things in category (2). I know it’s 2025 and we have to pretend that this apparently corrupt thing is innocent, even while the folks involved make no effort to defend it. But it isn’t innocent, and everyone involved knows what’s going on.
There is no point in giving into threats if the other party is still going to follow through regardless. I think the best argument against this being due to political pressure from trump is it doesn't seem effective in getting rid of that pressure. If trump is the thing they care about here, why would they bother if trump is going to do trump things regardless.
The Trump administration is withholding funding and simultaneously making a series of explicit (and completely inappropriate) demands that it wishes Columbia to comply with. I assume what we're watching is a kind of "negotiation" period in which Columbia either does or does not do various things, and then over time the Trump administration decides whether to relent or punish them further. There is no real pressure on the administration to just stop.
One of the explicit demands the administration made was for Columbia to disband the University Judicial Board (the exact group that handed down these decisions) presumably because they felt that it would not sufficiently punish the protesters. Coincidentally, around the same time this happened, the board "independently" decided to punish the protesters quite severely.
I don’t understand why this is even an option? So the degree is never truly owned by the recipient then if it can be withdrawn/ revoked? Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.
No it’s not. Not unless you plan on taking over campus buildings and vandalizing them, I guess.
The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own. It’s an endorsement from the university. There are contractual agreements involved and it doesn’t take much imagination to think of how taking over a campus building and vandalizing it (while encouraging current students to join you) is grounds for them to cancel the degree.
You can come up with whatever justification you want, but this action is unprecedented and clearly a politically motivated punishment.
It is unusual, but the situation is unusual. I think calling it unprecedented is a bit much. Its plausible it could be politically motivated, but it seems equally plausible that the school is pissed that they now have to find thousands in the budget to repair the damage done. Causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages is a plausible reason for the school to be mad.
I agree 100% that people like Ekrem İmamoğlu is a totally different situation. That was the thing i was trying to argue.
In any case Columbia had ample time to address it's students before granting them diplomas - no facts have changed between them and now, nor have any new facts been made public. It's only turning heel because of political pressure by the President of the United States.
This is what I find so surprising. Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me, gross even. I don’t care if you’re the Unabomber. It’s silly for a university to be policing that. I guess I’m naive.
To be clear, so there’s no temptation to move the goal posts, I’m talking about a degree “already earned and received”.
The conduct in question happened pre-degree even if the punishment was after. I think that is a pretty important distinction.
most contracts cover conduct during the contract even if it only comes to light after the end of the contract, so that wouldn't be so unusual.
What annoys me is that revocation is even an option at all. I think this scenario is such an edge case that it really doesn't need an exception, and if supporting it means having the power to revoke a degree, then in my mind it's a lever for abuse and not something we'd want to normalize. It seems, to me at least, like a petty abuse of power that they shouldn't even have.
The article says Columbia “temporarily revoked the diplomas of some students.” I imagine this is what’s going on.
That’s certainly a very different situation than simply being a protestor. I understand that everyone has different definitions of what protest means, but regardless it’s not a free pass to escape the consequences of your actions.
If any current or former students had taken over a campus building, locked others out of using it, and damaged it they’d probably end up in jail with a long list of charges. Having their degrees “temporarily revoked” seems like a massive slap on the wrist for the situation, not some dystopian unfair outcome.
Nope. It is the same. Twisting arms to remove opposing political views. If they've committed crimes then there are laws to deal with it.