"Let me be clear about our path forward," Columbia University's interim president told the community Wednesday in a meandering and evasive letter that provided no clarity on what it might actually do to restore the $400 million in federal grants and contracts that the Department of Education yanked for its "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."

Less than an hour after The Wall Street Journal reported Columbia was "close to yielding" to the Trump administration's nine demands as a "precondition for formal negotiations" to keep all federal funding ahead of a Thursday deadline, Katrina Johnson assured the community that "we will never compromise our values of pedagogical independence, our commitment to academic freedom, or our obligation to follow the law."

Her next paragraph: "We will also continue — as is our responsibility and as we have done throughout our history — to engage in constructive dialogue with our federal regulators, including on the work we are doing to address antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination, the tangible progress we are making, and the intensity of our commitment to this ongoing work."

While Johnson noted that some observers "have examined each pre-condition on its own, weighing the acceptable versus the intolerable" to keep its federal funding, she didn't say which preconditions it had accepted and which it might be fighting. 

In a potentially unprecedented March 13 joint letter from the departments of Education, Health and Human Services and General Services Administration, officials told Columbia it must mete out "expulsion or multi-year suspension" for the most disruptive protests, ban masks that are "intended to conceal identity or intimidate others," and put its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under "academic receivership," among other demands.

"As we move forward, we will always be guided by our principles of free expression, academic freedom and the pursuit of excellence, and we will never waver in our abiding commitment to Columbia’s mission of teaching, creating, and advancing knowledge," Johnson wrote.