When Columbia University announced last month as part of its deal with the Trump administration that it would establish a $21-million fund to compensate employees who have been victims of campus antisemitism, Bruce Robbins, a Columbia English professor, said his first reaction was shock. His second reaction, he said, was, “If that’s really what they’re doing, then what about me?”
Robbins, who is Jewish and critical of the Israeli government, says he feels he has experienced antisemitism from supporters of Israel since October 2023. He recalled being labeled a traitor to his race for supporting pro-Palestinian students and told he was not a real Jew because his father changed the family’s surname.
“If that’s really their rule — Jews who have been victims of antisemitism — sign me up. I want my share of the money,” Robbins said. Several of his colleagues have echoed that sentiment.
Columbia’s settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the commission’s largest religious-discrimination settlement on record — will resolve charges that Columbia violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination, without admission of liability. Unlike the university’s $200-million settlement for alleged Title VI violations going directly to the U.S. government, the money from its deal with the EEOC will go back to university employees who “may have experienced antisemitism” on campus since Oct. 7, 2023.
Columbia is the first of the universities negotiating with the Trump administration to acquiesce to such a provision, but it probably won’t be the last. A draft of the administration’s proposed deal with the University of California at Los Angeles shared with reporters last week requires the university to establish a $172-million claims fund to compensate victims of Title VII violations as well. Such funds may become a recurring part of deals brokered with the administration as other universities attempt to restore millions of dollars in federal research funding blocked for alleged violations of civil-rights law.
Obtaining financial remedies for victims of employment discrimination is common practice. But the scale of the Columbia settlement raises a host of questions, including what role the EEOC will continue to play in higher ed’s battle with the Trump administration; how the commission reached its $21-million sticker price; and how the government will determine who is eligible for a slice of the money.
“Typically, in an EEOC investigation, there’s a lot of work done to talk to the individuals harmed to value the case,” Jenny R. Yang, an employment and civil-rights lawyer who served as chair of the EEOC from 2014 to 2018, wrote in a statement. “To have such a large payment without disclosing more information about the number of individuals harmed and the kinds of harms experienced is unusual. This raises concerns about the EEOC potentially using the federal government’s power to intimidate.”
Fallout From Payouts
The EEOC will evaluate each claim of antisemitism individually to determine potential compensation, according to an EEOC spokesperson, though the money itself will be distributed by a third-party administrator. The commission typically gives the administrator guidelines for how to rank different claims, said Leslie E. Silverman, an expert in workplace-discrimination law who formerly served as a commissioner and vice chair of the EEOC from 2002 to 2008.
According to the EEOC, the third-party claims administrator will eventually contact all Columbia employees to tell them how to respond to a “confidential questionnaire” that will be used to determine eligibility for settlement money. Several Columbia faculty members told The Chronicle they’ve yet to receive that information, though Columbia’s FAQ page on the settlement promised employees more information within 30 days of the July 23 deal.
“I think everyone (especially students and their families taking out loans to pay Columbia tuitions, not to mention potentially jealous colleagues who might feel a bit left out of the discrimination lottery takings) would love to know what those criteria are,” wrote James Schamus, a film professor, in a published letter to Columbia’s president, Claire Shipman, last month.
Many other details of the settlement are kept private by law. The public will not learn, for example, how many of Columbia’s employees filed discrimination claims against the university with the EEOC or who those complainants were. These employees, called charging parties, usually receive more of the settlement fund than other claimants, according to Silverman, who has been appointed as an independent monitor for past EEOC settlements.
The size of an organization also imposes limits on how much individuals can recover. At Columbia, that cap is $300,000, although it’s likely the third-party administrator will determine some claimants don’t merit any compensation at all, Silverman said.
It’s also possible that a settlement amount can be overestimated, leaving excess funds unclaimed. That’s more likely when the EEOC doesn’t have a clear idea of exactly how many people were affected by discrimination, said Yang, the former EEOC chair.
What Counts?
Questions about exactly how the EEOC and third-party administrators will evaluate claims of antisemitism have left Jewish critics of Israel like Robbins wondering whether they will be denied any settlement because of their political beliefs.
“They want to make the Trump administration happy,” Robbins said of the EEOC. “And in order to make the Trump administration happy, they are going to try as best they can, legally or illegally, to aim this money at groups that the Trump administration would approve of.” When asked to comment, the EEOC did not respond to that allegation.
Although the claims process is supposed to be confidential, Jack Halberstam, a gender studies and English professor, said he wouldn’t be surprised if word spreads among faculty members as employees eventually begin to claim payouts. On a campus where 180 people were laid off this spring because of federal funding cuts (an additional 77 were laid off at Barnard College as part of the college’s “restructuring”), some faculty members said sizable windfalls paid to some — but not all — Jewish employees could build already existing resentment of the administration and within the faculty.
“It is so unthinkable to me that Zionists who have potentially been the source of so much hate speech on campus … might walk away with large payouts, and that anyone would believe that this equates to justice,” Halberstam, who is Jewish and anti-Zionist, said of the claims process. Halberstam recounted being targeted by what he described as antisemitism from Zionist protesters, including being called a “self-hating Jew” and a terrorist.
Others say the $21-million claims fund divided among employees is chump change for the university, and won’t do much to change the extent of the existing tension. Last fall, Columbia paid an Israeli student $395,000 in a settlement after the university suspended the student for spraying pro-Palestinian student protesters with a chemical substance — $95,000 more than the maximum amount victims of Title VII violations can claim from the settlement.
“I cannot actually imagine how this is going to go down,” Halberstam said.
