Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., capitulated to President Donald Trump and the GOP over the budget this week, sacrificing one of Democrats’ last pieces of leverage as Trump bulldozes the federal government and jails activists. Schumer defended voting yes on the GOP budget that would neuter the legislative branch, arguing that he had no choice but to give in or face a government shutdown. He’s not the first to make that kind of decision.

Leaders of businesses, universities, and nations across the globe face the same question: Should they fight Trump, or hope that by giving him what he wants he’ll somehow do less harm?

Far too often, these leaders have chosen appeasement over resistance — and, in return, gotten nothing.

At Columbia University, leadership has remained largely silent over the Trump administration’s arrest of recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist with legal permanent residency in the United States. The Trump administration has not charged Khalil with a crime, arguing instead that his pro-Palestinian campus activism made him a national security threat. Rather than publicly defending its students, Columbia on Thursday expelled, suspended, or revoked degrees of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, sending a clear signal of where the university stands in regard to academic........

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