José A. Alvarado Jr.

During my 35 years on the faculty of Columbia University’s renowned journalism school, I’ve occasionally referred to myself as its resident “Midwest explainer.” Though I grew up amid the strip malls and chemical plants of New Jersey, I went to college in Wisconsin and worked as a reporter in suburban Chicago. For the past decade, I’ve spent a chunk of each year living in Minneapolis, where I did much of the research for a book about Hubert Humphrey’s early political career.

So I’m the guy at the J School (as we affectionately call it) who can call out a student for stating that Des Moines is adjacent to Iowa City. I’m the guy who, during Tim Walz’s campaign for the vice presidency, corrected students and colleagues who thought Minnesota Nice actually meant nice. More seriously, I could talk about how diverse this supposedly white-bread state actually is with its growing populations of immigrants and refugees.

But now, for a tragic reason, I need to translate in the other geographical direction, from my longtime academic home back east to the university here that graciously supported my Humphrey work with library access and office space. To be all Upper Midwest about it, and to mix a metaphor, think of me as someone who barely survived a tornado and is trying to warn the folks up the road in its path.

On March 21, Columbia capitulated to an extortion plan hatched and executed by President Donald Trump. Under the threat of losing $400 million in federal funding, much of it for potentially life-saving medical research, Columbia essentially submitted to the Trump administration’s nine demands concerning campus protests, academic freedom, and future hiring and admissions decisions.