NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration said Friday that it’s pulling $400 million from Columbia University, canceling grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the Ivy League school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.
The notice came five days after federal agencies announced they were considering orders to stop work on $51 million in contracts with the New York City university and reviewing its eligibility for over $5 billion in federal grants going forward. And it came after Columbia set up a new disciplinary committee and ramped up its own investigations into students critical of Israel, alarming free speech advocates.
Student protesters camp on the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
But Columbia’s efforts evidently didn’t go far enough for the federal government.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Friday.
She later posted on X that she’d had “a productive meeting” with the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, and anticipated “working together to protect all students.”
Columbia vowed to work with the government to try to get the money back.
“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff,” the university said in a statement.
It is not clear which research, projects or activities will be affected at Columbia, which operates a medical center among many other functions. The university said it was reviewing the announcement. An inquiry was sent to the federal Education Department, which issued Friday’s announcement along with the Health and Justice departments and the General Services Administration.
While the details aren’t yet certain, the announcement comes as research project leaders at Columbia are figuring out their budgets for the next academic year, and they’re “very worried about what this means,” said oceanographer Robert Newton, a retired senior research scientist who continues to teach at the university.
Newton, who is Jewish, sees the government’s complaints as based on “a complete falsehood” about Columbia being awash in antisemitism and indifferent to some Jewish students’ reports of facing hostility.
But the $400 million cutoff was welcome news to Columbia/Barnard Hillel, a Jewish student group. Executive Director Brian Cohen said he hoped it would be “a wake-up call to Columbia’s administration and trustees to take antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish students and faculty seriously.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union’s executive director, Donna Lieberman, called the move an unconstitutional government effort “to coerce colleges and universities into censoring student speech and advocacy that isn’t MAGA-approved, like criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinian rights.” A message seeking comment was sent to a coalition group of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Columbia has become the first target in President Donald Trump’s campaign to cut federal money to colleges accused of tolerating antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
The university was at the forefront of U.S. campus protests over the war last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment in April and inspired a wave of similar protests. Protesters at Columbia went on to seize a campus building, resulting in dozens of arrests when police cleared the building.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans grilled Columbia then-President Minouche Shafik about the university’s response to antisemitism. Shafik said she was “personally committed to doing everything I can to confront it directly.” She resigned four months later.
A few weeks after that, a university task force said that Jews and Israelis at the school were ostracized from student groups, humiliated in classrooms and subjected to verbal abuse amid the spring demonstrations.
In recent days, a much smaller contingent of demonstrators have staged brief occupations of buildings at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College to protest the expulsion of two students accused of disrupting an Israeli history class. Several students were arrested following an hourslong takeover of a building Wednesday.
Many people involved in the protests have said there’s nothing antisemitic about criticizing Israel over its actions in Gaza or expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
Some students, and an attorney advising them, see the university’s new disciplinary crackdown as an effort to mollify the government by suppressing pro-Palestinian speech.
Columbia is among a handful of colleges that have come under new federal antisemitism investigations. Others include the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; Northwestern University; and Portland State University.