Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended his decision to accept an appointment on Columbia University’s troubled campus — even as an anti-Israel protest raged blocks away Wednesday at Barnard College, ending in the arrest of students from the Ivy League school he admitted has “shortcomings” when it comes to keeping “order.”
Pompeo, who was CIA director in President Trump’s first term before becoming top cabinet secretary (the only person who’s held both posts), started a yearlong stint March 1 as a School of International and Public Affairs’ Institute of Global Politics fellow.
“We’re still working on precisely what the role is going to be and how we’re going to shape it,” he told The Post in a Wednesday sit-down at his Columbia office. He’ll “lend my practitioner’s view” in “guest appearances in other professors’ classrooms” and in the school’s lecture series.
“I may end up with a class in the fall, but more likely I’ll come to events, as I did today,” he said following meetings with faculty and then a group of 25 to 30 students, who peppered him with questions. “It’s always, for me, energizing to be with young people who are curious and ambitious and smart and trying desperately to figure out truth from fiction.”
Differing viewpoints
Pompeo’s a busy guy — he remains a businessman and “I’m still traveling the world a good amount” — but he expects to be a regular presence in Morningside Heights.
“I’m in New York almost every week, but will likely be on campus two or three times a month for a handful of days,” he said.
Protesters have also been a regular presence there since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. The school’s handling — or lack thereof — of sometimes violent demonstrations led President Minouche Shafik to resign last year, months after she moved classes online and canceled commencement.
Deborah Lipstadt, former President Joe Biden’s antisemitism envoy, declared in the Free Press last week that she won’t teach at Columbia, after considering a visiting professorship.
Pompeo read her piece.
“She said there were three things,” he began. “She didn’t want to serve as a prop or fig leaf. She didn’t think that security would be adequate. And then she didn’t think she could make a difference. And I just disagree with all three of those.
“It’s not that I don’t see the shortcomings of Columbia the institution and how it was unsuccessful with maintaining appropriate order over the last year-and-a-half or two. I see that, and to think I’m going to show up and change it all is not my mission set. My mission set is to make sure that a set of voices that are different from large segments of the faculty here are actually on campus and the students get a chance to hear them and to form their own judgments and to ask their own hard questions of me and then of the other faculty members.”
As for security, Pompeo said the university assured him it will uphold a “civil discourse here on campus.”
“Her last one was she can’t make a difference. Boy, that seems defeatist to me. I’ve seen small changes over time in lots of institutions, and to the extent we can help push the rock up the hill, I’m ready to do that here and be a small part of what I hope will make this institution a better place for learning,” he continued.
“When I was young, I played basketball. I wasn’t great, but I got Most Improved Player. I’m hoping Columbia becomes Most Improved. And it makes progress towards the step of letting all these voices be heard and do so in a way that is decent and safe, and every student on campus can feel that they had a chance to hear a variety of ideas and do so in a safe environment.”
Bullied into silence
Columbia’s problems were certainly in the spotlight last week.
The Education Department announced Friday “the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” with more cuts “expected.”
Team Trump had told the school it’s reviewing $5 billion in federal funding.
“I think Columbia should” address campus antisemitism, Pompeo said, “whether they’ve been told they must do that to protect their federal funding or not. This seems like a baseline requirement for any institution, to provide security, especially for the young people who are coming here to learn. Second, the fact the Trump administration is using US taxpayer dollars to leverage Columbia to do what it ought to do seems completely appropriate to me.”
Trump signed orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs his first week back in office. Columbia, meanwhile, lives in a world of woke.
“I think most Americans can see this got out of hand. And when I say ‘out of hand,’ it’s not the ideas. Let a thousand flowers bloom, right?” Pompeo said. “What got out of hand was those with different views weren’t protected. They were threatened, they were bullied, they were cajoled” — including online.
“I see those who are for more voices and for tolerance of different ideas and securing the freedom for these ideas to be exchanged in a safe environment. I see that growing dramatically.”
Pompeo also has some personal insights: Trump in January pulled his security detail, which even Biden had continued as Pompeo remains an Iranian target. The murderous regime is particularly piqued about America’s January 2020 killing of terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani.
“The theory had been that security would be provided so long as the threat remained, and that threat hasn’t changed. So yeah, I was surprised,” Pompeo said, adding protection should go to anyone “threatened by a foreign adversary because of action that they took while in government service, whether I agree with them as a political matter or not.”
He pays for “expensive” private security, “and I get help from the local law enforcement here in New York City, which I deeply appreciate,” he said. “It’s not about me, right? If there’s an incident or something, it impacts anybody who’s with me, meeting with me, or in an audience, in a group with me.”
MAGA values
Yet Pompeo still has plenty of praise for his old boss. Trump announced the arrest Wednesday of a terrorist who helped plan the August 2021 attack at the Kabul, Afghanistan, airport’s Abbey Gate. which killed 13 service members.
“I would be unsurprised if the Pakistani government that apparently are the ones who detained and turned him over was much more prepared to do that with President Trump in office than with President Biden because they were worried about the ramifications of not actually delivering this person to US custody for prosecution under US law. And so I credit the Trump administration with actually getting this done,” Pompeo said.
He also expressed optimism about Ukraine’s freedom fighters.
“They’re engaged in a struggle at the front lines between good and evil, and it is a hard fight against a very capable adversary with Vladimir Putin and the Russian military. So yeah, I worry for them, and I worry that the whole world is watching to see if Putin’s aggression will be rewarded, and if it is, what the second- and third-order implications of that are. What will the leadership in Iran think? What will the leadership in North Korea think? I saw some very bellicose remarks from Chairman Kim’s sister,” he said.
“Kim Yo Jong, who’s a very nasty woman. And she’s watching to see if the West is prepared to stand up for the things that it says it is. And if we allow Putin to be successful in achieving an outcome that he wanted, even if it’s not the ultimate outcome that he wanted, the whole world will take note.”
To those concerned about Trump’s rhetoric on Russia, Pompeo said, “Wait for the action. Because if you look at the rhetoric versus the action in the first four years, there was more predictive value in the action. . . . President Trump is pretty, pretty clever, and he knows too what the right outcome is, which may end up being different than the best outcome that can be achieved.”
And he argues supporting Ukraine is a Make America Great Again action.
“People who voted for President Trump understand this most deeply,” Pompeo said. They “have an idea that the American Constitution matters, that America is an amazing, unique civilization. I think providing resources to allow the Ukrainians to fight themselves is consistent with that.”
And they’re “rule-of-law people who believe in sovereignty, sovereign borders” and “the right for people to fight for things that they care about, and the fact that you can’t let lawless actors prevail. That’s MAGA, right? That is an America First policy for sure,” he declared.
“What President Biden did, unfortunately, was he told the Ukrainians, ‘You can fight and die, but you can’t win.’ And that’s not MAGA, right? That’s not putting America first.” The “right outcome” is “not just a stalemate, not just not losing but actually achieving victory.”
It’s clearly an issue close to his heart; he asked about Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city close to the Russian border, after his interviewer mentioned her time there in 2023. But he’s looking forward to spending more time in the Big Apple, a city he visited frequently when his son lived here for a decade.
“There’s nothing like New York. I’ve been to many, many big cities in the world, many capitals all across the world, and certainly the US big cities,” he said. “Everybody talks about it being the greatest city in the world. I don’t know about that, but it is unique and fun.”
In between rubbing shoulders with his colleagues — he hasn’t had a chance to meet with fellow former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yet — and sharing stories with students, he hopes to spend some time with his wife enjoying the arts here.
