Columbia, Barnard ordered to refrain from turning over student disciplinary records until Mahmoud Khalil hearing
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Thursday ordered Columbia University and Barnard College to refrain from complying with a Republican-led House committee’s demand for student disciplinary records, at least until he holds a hearing next week on a request by Mahmoud Khalil and other students for a temporary restraining order.Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student arrested and facing deportation for his role in campus protests against Israel, along with other students identified by pseudonyms, filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block the House Committee on Education and the Workforce from obtaining disciplinary records for students involved in demonstrations.US District Judge Arun Subramanian set a hearing in the case for Tuesday.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan against the schools, the committee and its chairman, Rep.Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, seeks a permanent injunction barring Congress from forcing the schools to provide the records and the universities from complying with the demand.The committee sent a letter last month demanding that Columbia and Barnard provide the records or risk billions of dollars in federal funding.The judge’s order came as Columbia faces a deadline this week from the Trump administration to comply with demands for sweeping changes in order to receive federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations that it failed to protect students and staff from antisemitism amid the wave of pro-Palestinian protests.The list includes the school placing its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under academic receivership for at least five years, adopting a new definition of antisemitism and overhauling its admissions policies.On Thursday, a group of history professors at Columbia wrote a letter to the school’s leadership urging them to reject what they called “authoritarian” efforts to dominate colleges and universities.“Should this control be realize...