I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say.

When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts.

His response worried me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

“They! The university. The government. Gotta go!” He was off.

My friend has never shown signs of paranoia.

I relay this to you because the Donald Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each other. It is beginning to deter open dissent, which is exactly what the US president intends.

The chill affects all five major pillars of civil society – universities, science, the media, the law and the arts.

In Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump, it agreed to require demonstrators to identify themselves when asked and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership”, lest it lose $400m in government funding.

The agreement is already chilling dissent there, as my conversation with my friend revealed.

The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who participated in protests at the school. The administration’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and targeted two other

© The Guardian