It is foolish to think that Trump will keep his word. He doesn't have to; he's too powerful. [Columbia]

Suresh Naidu, Columbia’s Administrators Are Fooling Themselves, NYTimes, July 23, 2025.

In economic history, we teach the 1688 creation of parliamentary supremacy as a solution to what economists call “commitment problems.” In the absence of a third party sufficiently strong to make sure all sides stick to their promises, the powerful can renege on the powerless. The powerless, seeing this, wisely choose to not contract with the powerful. [...]

The entities that have been striking deals with Mr. Trump, my own employer included, have not learned the lessons of the Glorious Revolution. Trade negotiators from longtime partner countries, government contractors, law firms, federal employees, permanent residents, the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, even the Transportation Security Administration labor union are all experiencing contractual vertigo, finding out that the administration will not honor previous agreements.

The first Trump administration renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement to get the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, but Mr. Trump has imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada in violation of even that agreement. Parties thinking they can wheedle their way into a bargain with a capricious administration are bringing intuitions from the world of private deals, backstopped by the rule of law, into the very different realm of political bargains with absolutism-adjacent executive branches.

The torture is not over:

This deal won’t end Columbia’s torture. Whatever onerous terms the school has agreed to will be deemed to have been broken in the face of a campus protest, an edgy syllabus, a leaked classroom discussion or even an acerbic student opinion piece. New civil rights violations will be imagined, new vistas of anti-Americanism on campus will be discovered, and the attacks will continue.

It is unsurprising that a coalition of election deniers, Christian nationalists and supplement- and crypto-hawkers would have little regard for academic freedom, scientific progress and learning. It was always a stretch for Columbia to think a good-faith agreement was in the cards, but when the government is too often behaving unchecked by the law, the idea of a binding contract is a fantasy.

Columbia should recognize this agreement won’t placate the Project 2025 apparatchiks, and it should prepare accordingly. Donors and university leaders might consider moving more of the scholarly mission outside the United States, as the prestigious Central European University left Hungary for Vienna in response to Viktor Orban’s assault there. [...] Or Columbia could follow Harvard to the Supreme Court. In either case, a poorer, smaller Columbia would at least still be a university committed to freedom of expression and academic autonomy.