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On June 4, the United States Department of Education notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) accrediting agency that its member institution Columbia University deserves to have its accreditation pulled. It accused the university of ostensibly being “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” for supposedly failing “to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment”.

This claim is, of course, wrong. It is a blatant mischaracterisation of the events that have taken place on campus over the last 19 months.

Yet, it is also true that during that time Columbia violated the terms of its accreditation: by violently abrogating the academic freedom and viewpoint diversity of antigenocide protesters via institutional sanction and the deployment of police on campus. In this sense, Columbia does deserve to lose its accreditation.

MSCHE’s accreditation policy, which is standard across the industry, states that an “accredited institution” must possess and demonstrate both “a commitment to academic freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom of expression” and “a climate that fosters respect among students, faculty, staff, and administration from a range of diverse backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives”.

It is stunningly evident that since October 7, 2023, Columbia University has egregiously and repeatedly failed to satisfy the MSCHE’s fundamental requirements due to its response to antigenocide protests on campus concerning Gaza and Palestine. The violent removal, suspension, and arrest of peaceful student protesters and faculty critics should be understood to constitute a violation of the institution’s obligation to protect freedom of expression and academic freedom.

On November 10, 2023, Columbia suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) after they organised a peaceful protest for Palestinian rights. The administration justified the suspension by claiming the groups used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.

However, media reports, witnesses and university insiders revealed that the suspension was based on an incident involving an unaffiliated individual whose actions were condemned by the organisers and that no formal disciplinary process or appeals process was allowed by the university.

It was later uncovered that Columbia administrators had unilaterally altered language in its official policies on student groups just before suspending the SJP and JVP.

In January, Katherine Franke, a tenured law professor, retired and said she was “effectively terminated” by Columbia after facing public and congressional criticism for a media interview criticising students who formerly served in the Israeli army.

Similarly, the university has recently acknowledged doling out “multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocation and expulsions” to dozens of students who participated in 2024 antigenocide protests. One of those expelled, Jewish PhD student Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia, noted that all of the students censured by the university “had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing”.

Perhaps worst of all, Columbia has, on repeated occasions, invited the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus to intervene against student expression. On April 30, 2024, according to the university’s own report, the NYPD arrested 44 students and individuals with apparent associations with the university.

Likewise, in early May this year, about 70 students were arrested after participating in an “occupation” of the university’s library. The NYPD explicitly acknowledged that the presence of its officers on campus was “at the direct request of Columbia University”.

There is little question each of these incidents constitutes blatant stifling of academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. The disproportionate targeting of Arab, Muslim, Palestinian and Jewish students and allies can be viewed as discriminatory, undermining the institution’s commitment to equitable treatment and inclusive learning environments, in clear violation of MSCHE’s guiding principles on equity, diversity and inclusion.

These decisions to suppress protests were made unilaterally by senior administration at Columbia – without input from faculty, students or shared governance bodies – clearly signalling a lack of adherence to MSCHE’s accreditation policy standard on governance, leadership and administration. By failing to show “a commitment to shared governance” with “administrative decision-making that reflects fairness and transparency”, Columbia has failed to meet the standards of accreditation outlined by the MSCHE.

But Columbia University is not alone in failing to abide by guiding principles of its accreditation. At Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, Jewish Associate Professor Maura Finkelstein was summarily fired for engaging in social media critiques of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Similarly, at Northwestern University, Assistant Professor Steven Thrasher was subjected to multiple investigations in relation to his support of the student antigenocide encampment on campus and was ultimately denied tenure in a decision he characterised as an effort designed to not just silence him but also to bully him so that “students, journalists, faculty, staff and activists across campus and throughout the country [may be intimidated] into silencing themselves”.

Students too have faced repression across the United States. Indeed, it has been estimated that by July 2024, at least 3,100 students had been arrested for participation in campus antigenocide protests. On November 6, 2023, Brandeis University became the first private university in the US to ban its student chapter of the SJP, for “conduct that supports Hamas”. In April 2024, Cornell University suspended several students involved in pro-Palestinian encampment protests, citing violations of campus policies.

Then in May, police brutalised students with pepper spray at George Washington University while arresting 33 people in the violent clearing-out of its student encampment. At Vanderbilt University, students were arrested and expelled for occupying an administration building.

In the most recent news, it has become clear that the University of Michigan has spent at least $800,000 hiring dozens of private investigators to surveil antigenocide student protesters on and off campus in Ann Arbor.

These examples are merely a small sample of what has occurred across the US, Canada and Europe since long before October 7, 2023. This is a broader existential crisis in higher education in which the free expression of students is being suppressed at the cost of the values these universities purport to espouse.

Despite appearances, this crisis has very little to do with the heavy-handed Trump administration. It is, rather, the self-inflicted consequence of the decisions of university administrators whose allegiances are now first and foremost to donors and corporate stakeholders rather than to their educational missions.

If universities are to exist in any plausible and practical sense as institutions devoted to genuine knowledge production and pedagogical development, it is essential that they robustly fulfil accreditation requirements for academic and intellectual freedom, diversity, and fair and transparent administration and governance.

There can be no Palestine exception to that.

The World Bank has slashed its 2025 global growth forecast, citing trade tensions and policy uncertainty as the United States imposed wide-ranging tariffs that weigh on global economic forecasts.

On Tuesday, the bank lowered its projection for global gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 2.3 percent in its latest economic prospects report, down from the 2.7 percent that it expected in January. This is the most recent in a series of downgrades by international organisations.

In its twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report, the bank lowered its forecasts for nearly 70 percent of all economies, including the US, China and Europe, as well as six emerging market regions, from the levels it projected just six months ago before US President Donald Trump took office.

“That’s the weakest performance in 17 years, outside of outright global recessions,” said World Bank Group chief economist Indermit Gill.

Global growth and inflation prospects for this year and next have worsened because of “high levels of policy uncertainty and this growing fragmentation of trade relations”, Gill added.

“Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep,” he warned.

By 2027, the World Bank expects global GDP growth to average 2.5 percent in the 2020s, which would be the slowest rate in any decade since the 1960s.

The Trump effect 

The gloomier projections come as Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on imports from almost all US trading partners in April as well as higher rates on imports of steel and aluminium. He had initially also announced radically higher rates on dozens of these economies, which he has since suspended until early July.

Trump’s on-again off-again tariff hikes have upended global trade, increased the effective US tariff rate from below 3 percent to the mid-teens, its highest level in almost a century, and triggered retaliation by China and other countries.

He also engaged in tit-for-tat escalation with China, although both countries have hit pause on their trade war and temporarily lowered these staggering duties as well. But a lasting truce remains uncertain.

While the World Bank’s growth downgrade was proportionately larger for advanced economies, the bank cautioned that less wealthy countries have tricky conditions to contend with.

Commodity prices are expected to remain suppressed in 2025 and 2026, Gill said.

This means that some 60 percent of emerging markets and developing economies – which are commodity exporters – have to deal with a “very nasty combination of lower commodity prices and more volatile commodity markets”.

GDP downturn 

By 2027, while the per capita GDP of high-income economies will be approximately where it was in pre-pandemic forecasts, corresponding levels for developing economies would be 6 percent lower.

“Except for China, it could take these economies about two decades to recoup the economic losses of the 2020s,” Gill cautioned.

Even as GDP growth expectations have been revised downwards, inflation rates have been revised up, he said, urging policymakers to contain inflation risks.

Despite trade policy challenges, however, Gill argued that “If the right policy actions are taken, this problem can be made to go away with limited long-term damage.”

He urged for the “differential in tariff and non-tariff measures with respect to the US” to be quickly reduced by other countries, starting with the Group of 20, which brings together the world’s biggest economies.

“Every country should extend the same treatment to other countries,” Gill stressed. “It’s not enough to just liberalise with respect to the US. It’s also important to liberalise with respect to the others.”

The World Bank said developing economies could lower tariffs on all trading partners and convert preferential trade deals into pacts spanning the “full range of cross-border regulatory policies” to boost GDP growth.

Generally, wealthier countries have lower tariffs than developing countries, which could be seeking to protect budding industries or have fewer sources of government revenue.

This month, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also slashed its 2025 global growth forecast from 3.1 percent to 2.9 percent, warning that Trump’s tariffs would stifle the world economy.

Tehran, Iran – Iran has warned against Western-led escalation by the global nuclear watchdog and any attack by Israel amid preparations for a sixth round of talks with the United States.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the country will have a “proportionate” response to any action against it by Western countries, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“If we wanted to reduce our cooperation, the agency would not be able to carry out its duties. We have cooperated beyond our duties, and if the agency does not appreciate that, we will degrade cooperation to its normal levels,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television late Monday.

His comments come as the IAEA Board of Governors is holding a five-day meeting in Vienna, with Iran’s nuclear programme once again in the spotlight as Tehran is accused of “non-compliance” with nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Backed by the United States, the three European powers still party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal – France, Germany and the United Kingdom – are pushing for yet another censure resolution against Iran for insufficient cooperation. The latest resolution, however, could prove the most serious in two decades and signal a shift toward escalated confrontation.

The 2015 deal lifted United Nations sanctions in exchange for strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme, including a 3.67 percent limit on its enrichment of uranium. US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the landmark nuclear accord in 2018 and imposed harsh sanctions.

But the European signatories to the nuclear deal could still activate a “snapback” mechanism baked into the 2015 deal that would reinstate all United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran lifted as part of the agreement. A strongly worded IAEA resolution could pave the way for that to happen.

Iran claims ‘sabotage’ behind IAEA cases

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi again warned this week that such a move would signal “another major strategic mistake” on the part of France, Germany and the UK.

Araghchi said the European powers appear poised to ratchet up tensions again by reviving an investigation into Iran’s developing nuclear weapons, despite Tehran’s insistence that its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful.

Iranian authorities have for long emphasised that the country could abandon the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons – and cut off access to IAEA inspectors if the UN sanctions are reimposed.

The IAEA scrutiny also involves traces of nuclear particles found in several undeclared Iranian sites, mainly based on intelligence from Israel – which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted were obtained as part of a major 2018 raid on a warehouse holding documents in Tehran.

Iran’s deputy nuclear chief Kamalvandi told state television this week that the country has provided evidence to the IAEA that the cases are a result of “sabotage” and that the nuclear materials were planted.

He said Iranian officials were surprised when in Turquzabad, one of the sites in question near Tehran, agency inspectors knew exactly which points to test for suspected materials.

“It is natural that whoever contaminated the site, has given the exact coordinates for the inspectors to look,” Kamalvandi said.

Israeli documents

The wrangling over Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to be affected by Tehran’s major announcement this week that a “treasure trove” of thousands of documents has been obtained from inside Israel.

The documents, which are allegedly related to Israel’s clandestine nuclear programme, will be unveiled soon, according to Iranian authorities.

No details have been published yet, but the fact that the Iranian Army, Supreme National Security Council, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Ministry of Intelligence have all separately hailed the announcement shows Iran is doubling down on the significance of the documents.

Specifically, Iran says the documents could increase deterrence against long-threatened Israeli aggression against Iranian nuclear sites, and reverse the perception that Iran has been weakened amid the regional fallout of the war on Gaza that saw ally Bashar al-Assad fall in Syria and Hezbollah take heavy blows in Lebanon.

The Supreme National Security Council said the information will allow Iran to “immediately retaliate against any potential Zionist regime [Israeli] aggression on the country’s nuclear facilities by attacking its hidden nuclear sites, and to respond proportionately to any hostile acts against economic and military infrastructure”.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said this week that he believes Israeli air strikes would push Iran to seek nuclear weapons.

Grossi himself has come under fire from Iran, with Iran’s nuclear head Mohammad Eslami saying that he had proven “that the IAEA is merely a tool in the hands of a few nations”.

“They issue the commands, and he obediently follows, executing their directives,” Eslami said on Tuesday.

Iranian authorities have claimed Grossi is looking to become the next secretary-general of the UN, and is therefore sacrificing the nuclear watchdog’s integrity by adopting pro-Western rhetoric to gain personal favour. Grossi says the agency is merely doing its job.

Iran-US talks

Trump said the sixth round of talks with Iran will take place on Thursday, but Iran’s Foreign Ministry said planning is under way to hold a meeting next Sunday.

After five rounds of negotiations mediated by Oman, Iran and the US have yet to see eye-to-eye on the most fundamental issue: enrichment.

Trump, who initially emphasised his only demand was that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, has in recent weeks shifted his rhetoric to push for zero nuclear enrichment taking place on Iranian soil.

Tehran maintains this is a non-starter since it has a legitimate right to use nuclear energy for civilian use such as power generation and making radiopharmaceuticals, but said on Monday it will offer a counterproposal to Washington soon to advance the talks.

Mossad chief David Barnea and other Israeli officials are slated to meet with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy leading the talks, before the sixth round.