The Trump administration has sent its first notice to a college that it may take away federal funding.
A new federal task force on antisemitism will review more than $5 billion that Columbia University receives from the government, and will immediately consider imposing stop-work orders on $51.4 million in federal contracts that Columbia holds.
The funding review — announced by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration — comes as the Ivy League institution is facing federal scrutiny for alleged violations of civil-rights law. Both the Biden and Trump administrations opened investigations into Columbia over complaints that it had failed to take antisemitism seriously amid a surge in antiwar protests.
President Trump weighed in on Tuesday, writing on Truth Social that his administration would cut federal funding from any institution that allowed “illegal protests” to persist. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” Trump said. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on … the crime, arrested.”
The Columbia announcement constitutes the greatest escalation in threats from Washington since the start of the war in Gaza, which has sparked 17 months of regular campus protests demanding divestment from Israel. Jewish students, meanwhile, have appealed to the federal government to combat what they see as hostile campus environments.
“Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination,” said Linda McMahon, the newly confirmed secretary of education, in a statement. “Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
Columbia officials said in a statement that the university is reviewing the federal government’s memo and looks forward to working alongside the administration to combat antisemitism.
Columbia emerged as an epicenter of the Gaza protests last academic year. In April, the university’s then-president, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, faced a barrage of questions from congressional Republicans about what they saw as inadequate responses to disruptive activism and potentially antisemitic comments from students and staff. Columbia students then set up encampments to try to force the university to cut financial ties with Israel, inspiring a wave of similar activism across the country. Shafik resigned amid the fallout.
In October, a U.S. House committee report called out Columbia and other highly selective institutions for failing to expel protesters involved in encampments and building occupations.
Protests at the New York institution have quieted recently. But in January, a group of demonstrators disrupted a Columbia class about Israel and passed out antisemitic fliers. Barnard College, the women’s institution affiliated with Columbia, quickly expelled two students who were involved, leading protesters to stage a sit-in last week. Barnard’s president, Laura Ann Rosenbury, defended her handling of the matter in The Chronicle on Monday, writing that the activists’ tactics posed “an ongoing threat to our community.”
Kenneth L. Marcus, who served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights at the Department of Education during Trump’s first term, said other colleges should look at whether they have adopted every policy they can to protect all students, including Jewish students.
“They need to make sure that if their peer institutions are doing things that are notable and highly publicized, that they’re at least considering doing them as well,” said Marcus, now the founder and chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Experts said they expect the Trump administration to use this approach with other institutions that have drawn flak for their handling of antisemitism.
“I was surprised to see that the administration did this, but I guess I wasn’t surprised at the institution that they picked,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “Other institutions similarly situated probably have reason to be concerned.”
By reviewing funding and threatening stop-work orders, Fansmith said it seemed as though the administration had already moved on to the punishment phase, without going through an established investigatory process.
“The reason there is a process in place,” Fansmith said, “is because the sanction is so significant and because the allegations are so serious that you should have a process that is deliberate, that is evidence-driven, that is based on facts and a clear understanding of what happened.”
The federal government has never stripped a higher-education institution of its funding for violations of Title VI.
Michael Thaddeus, a math professor at Columbia and vice president of its chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told The Chronicle that the Trump administration pulling federal grants and contracts from Columbia would be “calamitous.”
“That would be a catastrophe of the first order,” Thaddeus said. “Many units of the university would just more or less have to board up the windows and go out of business.”
