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Columbia Hires Trump Transition Alum to Lobby on ‘Appropriations’ amid Threats to Tax $15 Billion Endowment

Education Higher Ed

Rampant anti-Semitism continues to plague the Ivy League university

Columbia University has enlisted a Trump transition alumnus to lobby for the institution on "issues related to higher education and appropriation" as Republicans threaten to tax the Ivy League institution's $15 billion endowment.

Columbia tapped BGR Government Affairs to "provide strategic counsel and advocate on issues related to higher education and appropriations," according to lobbying disclosures filed with Congress.

The hiring comes as Columbia continues to deal with rampant campus anti-Semitism. On Wednesday, for example, the school posted a security guard outside at least one of its Jewish studies courses a day after pro-Hamas students stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers.

Dan Murphy, who will lobby on behalf of Columbia, worked on President Donald Trump’s first transition team and was chief of staff to former Housing and Urban Development secretary Mel Martinez.

Columbia is not the only one scrambling to avoid Trump’s wrath as he lays waste to DEI programs and targets Hamas supporters on elite college campuses. On Tuesday, Trump issued an executive order requiring all government agencies and federally funded universities to terminate all race- or gender-based diversity programs. He ordered the agencies to identify up to nine organizations, including universities, with endowments of over $1 billion with diversity policies that violate civil rights laws.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Free Beacon

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Lexi Boccuzzi is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute. Jessica Costescu is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon.

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