Columbia University reached a deal with the federal government on Wednesday, completing higher education’s first settlement over the Trump administration’s claims of antisemitism on campus. Columbia will pay $200 million to settle a spate of federal civil-rights investigations, and an additional $21 million to resolve Equal Employment Opportunity Commission probes. As part of the deal, the institution also reaffirmed a slate of changes it announced in March to its campus-safety and disciplinary procedures. In return, the government will restore most of the $400 million in research funding it terminated earlier this year.
Columbia and the Trump Administration
The deal ties off one major strand of the federal government’s many-threaded efforts to overhaul American higher education, particularly the country’s most prestigious colleges.
Columbia was rocked by protests after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and was the site of the first pro-Palestinian encampment on a college campus. It was also the first university whose federal funding Trump had threatened over allegations that administrators hadn’t protected Jewish students during those protests. In March, various agencies announced they canceled about $400 million in federal research and other grants to Columbia. Government officials later set forth a series of changes Columbia had to make “as a precondition for formal negotiations” to restore the funding, including placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department under academic receivership.
In a Wednesday statement, Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said the deal “marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty” and that it “safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration.” Columbia, the statement noted, will retain control of faculty hiring, admissions, and curricular decisions.
In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the deal “a seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.” She added: “Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate. I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
The agreement will be overseen by a third-party monitor, agreed on by the university and government, who will provide reports every six months. That monitor is Bart M. Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the investigations firm Guidepost Solutions. Columbia will pay the $200 million in three installments over three years.
The deal will also see Columbia’s grants with the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services restored, along with the institution’s eligibility to apply for new funding. That accounts for the “vast majority” of terminated funds, the university said in its statement; the remainder “reflects broader reductions by the government in certain research areas and is not related to the conduct addressed in this agreement.”
One outside expert thought the agreement was as good as Columbia could expect. “Columbia couldn’t tolerate the administration holding up billions of dollars in current and future grants, so they paid what is essentially ransom,” said Michael C. Dorf, a professor of law at Cornell University. “The ransom that they ended up paying strikes me as a pretty good value if you decide you’re going to pay ransom. But the problem with paying ransom is that it incentivizes the taking of more hostages.”
Columbia community members had mixed reactions to the deal.
Brian Cohen, the executive director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, praised the deal as “an important recognition” that “antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights.”
At no point has anyone demonstrated that Columbia has not followed the law.
Despite Shipman’s framing of the deal as protecting Columbia’s academic independence, at least some faculty members feared it wouldn’t, in practice. “Columbia’s insistence that it will not allow the government to interfere in appointments, admissions, or curriculum is welcome. Yet the creation of a monitor, charged with scrutinizing our admissions data and our Middle Eastern studies department, opens the door to just such interference,” Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics and acting president of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an email.
Plus, he added: “If Columbia has to pay $221 million to recover $400 million in canceled grants, that does not seem like a clear win for the university in financial terms, given that the government has found many ways to avoid disbursing funds — even from grants that are not canceled.”
Marcel Agüeros, a professor of astronomy and secretary of Columbia’s AAUP chapter, noted that though he understands the university is trying to protect itself against an “existential threat,” paying the federal government is “also absurd, because what Columbia is pledging to do is to follow the law. And at no point has anyone demonstrated that Columbia has not followed the law.”
The settlement includes provisions prohibiting Columbia from using race-conscious admissions, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision barring the practice, and requiring the university to make available single-sex housing for women on request, as well as “all-female sports, locker rooms, and showering facilities.” The university also agreed that it will hand over to the government information on request about disciplinary actions taken against student-visa holders.
Agüeros cautioned against viewing the settlement as a win for research, given the remaining sweeping cuts and overall uncertainty at federal agencies. “What’s happening at Columbia is really small potatoes relative to an all-out assault on research in this country and higher education more broadly.”
On the social-media site X, the account for Columbia University Divest Apartheid, a student group that Shipman had previously said Columbia would not recognize or meet with, characterized the settlement as “selling your students out.”
A Long Four Months
Over the last several months, the funding freeze and government attention have upended Columbia’s operations. Soon after the grant-cancellation announcement and Columbia’s initial concessions, Katrina A. Armstrong, already an interim president, stepped down. Shipman, previously a co-chair of the Board of Trustees, replaced her, becoming acting president. In May, Columbia laid off almost 180 researchers, or nearly 20 percent of researchers funded by canceled grants. At a July University Senate meeting, Shipman named research funding as her top priority, saying that the university’s research mission is “on the precipice of a dire situation.”
In the meantime, even before the announcement of the deal, Columbia made several changes favored by the Trump administration. The university appointed a senior vice provost to oversee the university’s regional studies departments. It’s also continued to pursue discipline against students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, most recently by reportedly suspending and expelling almost 80 students who had occupied the main library in May. Last week, Shipman announced more measures to combat antisemitism: The university would work with several Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, to offer antisemitism training. In addition, the university office that investigates discrimination on campus would “formally incorporate” the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism into its work.
It’s very bad news for American higher education because we know that the Trump administration does not have the best interest of the sector in mind.
Although Columbia is the first university to reach a settlement with the government over allegations of antisemitism on campus, other campuses have made concessions. After the Department of Education opened an investigation into the University of Pennsylvania for allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports, university leaders apologized and agreed to change their records to remove the wins of a transgender swimmer from the 2021-22 academic year.
Negotiations between officials from the government and Harvard University — over allegations of unchecked antisemitism — appear to be ongoing and it’s possible the university will also reach a settlement. But Harvard has also taken its battle to court, filing a lawsuit after the Trump administration canceled federal funds following the university president’s refusal to comply with a list of stringent demands. At a Monday hearing, a federal judge in Boston appeared doubtful of the federal government’s claims and actions against the elite institution, though no decision was released.
Columbia’s agreement is sure to put the negotiating parties at Harvard on notice, said Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago. “I’m sure the Columbia news is going to encourage them to lean more heavily into the talks because they can see, ‘Oh, if you just give in to the bully, they will stop harassing you.’
“On the whole,” she added, “it’s very bad news for American higher education because we know that the Trump administration does not have the best interest of the sector in mind, and wants to control and dominate universities.”
Megan Zahneis contributed reporting.
