Columbia University professors offer to lower test scores and cancel classes to accommodate student slumps following Trump’s victory

Professors at Columbia University are reportedly offering to drop upcoming midterm exam scores and cancel classes to support students concerned about the results of the presidential election.

Emails from several Columbia and Barnard faculty members were posted online by a disgruntled student, Eliana Goldin, who took issue with what she felt was the school’s coddling of far-left students as the school faces continued accusations that little support is provided to Jewish students. Students face widespread anti-Semitism.

“Reports of @Columbia professors canceling classes for the day or relaxing course requirements due to Trump’s victory,” Ms. Goldin wrote on X on Wednesday morning. “Jews have endured calls for their genocide day and night this past semester, and Columbia did nothing. Half the country votes for a candidate and Columbia elites can’t handle that.”

The emails with screenshots show that the Ivy League professors pass on sympathetic messages to their students, telling them to “take care of yourselves and each other,” “be good to yourself, check in on your friends,” and “I hope you all care.”

A professor who wanted to hold a midterm exam on Thursday offered to trade their students’ grades if they scored higher on their final exams “in recognition of the increased stress (sic) some of you may be feeling due to the election results.” Announcing their decision to end class early Wednesday, another professor lamented that “processing the results of a national election can be tough” and that “it is critical to have room to breathe and what to slow down.”

Another professor who decided to cancel the class altogether estimated that “current events would make it difficult to focus on factorial ANOVA” and that “it makes it feel a little tone deaf” to deliver their prepared lecture.

“Their blatant double standard could not be more insulting to Columbia’s Jewish community,” Ms. Goldin wrote. Just last week, a House committee designated the Morningside Heights school as “the site of some of the most disturbing and extreme anti-Semitic conduct violations in the country” in the wake of the protests that exploded on campus following the attack on Hamas on October 7. The committee also reprimands the school for imposing “shockingly few” disciplinary consequences for violent anti-Israel student agitators.

Other elite universities have come under fire after Tuesday’s election results for over-indulging their students. Students at Georgetown’s School of Public Policy were given the day off from classes and encouraged to relax in a school-organized “Self-Care Suite” after the election, according to an email obtained by the Free Press.

The letter, sent by the school’s director of student engagement, Jaclyn Clevenger, to all students, advises community members to “come together” for a “much-needed break” and participate in “mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day .”

Ms. Clevenger added a daily agenda that began at 10 a.m. with “Tea, Cocoa and Self-Care” and ended at 5 p.m. with “Snacks and Self-Guided Mediation.” Other activities offered include “Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises” and “Lego and Coloring.”

The report spread like wildfire on social media, with many criticizing the school’s exaggerated efforts to comfort students during something as routine as the presidential election.

An education reform expert at AEI, Robert Pondiscio, denounced the school’s programming in a post on It is disturbing to treat adults as vulnerable children.”

Director of the Defense of Freedom Institute Ginny Gentles, an organization that advocates for educational freedoms, expressed similar disapproval. “Maybe we should encourage future diplomats and policymakers to be a little tougher,” she wrote on X.

Columbia University has not yet responded to The Sun’s request for comment.