HOW TRUMP DEFEATED COLUMBIA

The inside story of an unconditional surrender.

- By NICK SUMMERS

On the morning of April 1, Katrina Armstrong entered a crowded conference room in Washington, D.C., sat down at a long table, and prepared to be deposed by the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, a panel President Trump had formed to investigate and punish America’s universities. Armstrong had just resigned under pressure as the acting president of Columbia University—the administration's No. 1 target and the first to yield to its demands. Those in the room understood she was in Washington to take a beating, but what transpired was still painful to behold.

As the deposition got underway, Armstrong seemed unable to answer the government's increasingly hostile questions, as if the experience of running Columbia had shattered her. “The last weeks, if not the last months, or a year—it’s just incredibly challenging for me to remember anything in specificity,” Armstrong said in one of many evasions. “It has been the most challenging time of my life.”

Her questioner, Sean Keveney, a member of the task force and the acting general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services, was unmoved. “I appreciate that, ma’am,” he said. “You've said that a couple of times.”