A letter signed by three federal agencies on Thursday gave Columbia University one week to make sweeping changes in its handling of student discipline, policing, and admissions.
The demands — which included expelling students who protested the war in Gaza and centralizing disciplinary investigations under the president’s office — need to be met before further negotiations over the planned withdrawal of $400 million in federal funds to the university could take place, the Trump administration’s letter stated.
The same day, a few hours earlier, Columbia officials announced that some protesters had been expelled.
The students had been involved in pro-Palestinian encampments and the occupation of a classroom building last year, part of a wave of activism demanding that Columbia divest from Israel. They included the president of the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers Local 2710.
Others were suspended or had their degrees temporarily revoked, the university said.
The measures outlined in the letter, officials from the Education Department, Health and Human-Services Department, and the General Services Administration wrote, were intended to correct a culture of antisemitism and lawlessness on the Ivy League campus, which has been embroiled in conflict over the war in Israel and Gaza since October 7, 2023.
The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Columbia this month, announcing on March 6 that it would immediately cancel $400 million in federal commitments to the university because of the institution’s failure to crack down on antisemitic harassment. The announcement came only a few days after the administration announced that an antisemitism task force would review more than $5 billion Columbia receives in federal grants and consider stop-work orders on $51.4 million the university holds in federal contracts.
In addition to the demands for expulsions, Thursday’s letter called on Columbia to shore up time, place, and manner rules that set constraints on protests; ban masks not used for religious or health purposes; and adopt a definition of antisemitism that accounts for criticism of Israel.
The letter also directed Columbia to place its department of Middle East, South Asian, and African studies under “academic receivership” for at least five years and to alter its admissions practices. The university was told to submit a plan in each case, but it’s not clear what reforms those plans must include. The agencies did not immediately respond to requests for clarity on Friday.
Once it becomes commonplace for governments to start managing what universities are allowed to do and say about academic subjects, then we really are on the road to authoritarianism.
The letter represents just the latest event in a head-spinning week for Columbia. On Saturday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist of Syrian nationality, at a university-owned apartment. Khalil and a handful of other activists have since sued the university to try to block it from releasing their disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is seeking the documents as part of a long-running investigation into claims from Republican lawmakers that Columbia failed to root out antisemitism by not punishing pro-Palestinian protesters.
Also on Thursday, the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, told the campus community that agents from the Department of Homeland Security had searched two on-campus residences, leaving without any arrests.
On Friday, the DHS announced updates for two other Columbia protesters. One, a Ph.D. student, was described as having been “involved in activities supporting Hamas,” but no evidence was provided to support that claim. She had her visa revoked on March 5 and “self-deported” on Tuesday. The other, a former student whose visa expired in 2022, was detained by ICE agents.
A Columbia spokeswoman said it was reviewing the agencies’ letter and remained committed to rooting out discrimination on campus.
Columbia faculty members reached by The Chronicle on Friday expressed concern about how the measures called for would impinge on academic freedom and students’ rights. They believed the Trump administration had no legal basis for forcing these changes.
“It’s an assault on academic freedom and the governance structures of the university,” said Marcel Agüeros, an astronomy professor and secretary of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “Part of this is telling us how we need to organize ourselves and across a range of domains. And part of it is also very clearly aimed at what is acceptable to teach and learn.”
Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor, told The Chronicle that changes to admissions and academic receivership wouldn’t be “fatal” to the operations of Columbia but would suggest a dark turn.
“Once it becomes commonplace for governments to start managing what universities are allowed to do and say about academic subjects, then we really are on the road to authoritarianism,” Thaddeus said.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, called the letter an “overreach” in an interview with The Chronicle and said the actions required would not make Jewish students safer.
“There’s no world in which it’s appropriate for the federal government to demand specific action on the part of the university, especially when the specific action that’s being required doesn’t necessarily seem to be related to the issue that they’re investigating,” Mitchell said.
One legal expert, though, said the Trump administration’s latest move is a sign of due process.
Kenneth L. Marcus, founder of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said that it shows that the federal government is willing to negotiate with Columbia.
“When the task force first made the announcement, the impression was that the loss of funds was a fait accompli, but we’re now seeing that it was the beginning and not the end of the process,” Marcus said.
