NEW YORK — The Trump administration announced on Friday that it is taking $400 million away from Columbia University and canceling funds and contracts. This is because the government says the Ivy League school has not done enough to stop antisemitism on campus.
The notice came five days after federal agencies said they were thinking about stopping work on $51 million worth of contracts with the university in New York City and making changes to its future eligibility for over $5 billion in federal funds. It happened after Columbia created a new disciplinary body and stepped up its own investigations into students who spoke out against Israel, which worried people who support free speech.
It was clear that Columbia’s work wasn’t enough for the federal government, though.
“If universities want to get federal money, they have to follow all federal antidiscrimination laws.” “For too long, Columbia has not kept that promise to Jewish students who study there,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Friday.
Later, she wrote on X that she and Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president, had had “a productive meeting” and that they planned to “work together to protect all students.”
They said they would work with the government to get the money back.
The university said in a statement, “We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is. We are committed to fighting antisemitism and making sure the safety and well-being of our students, faculty, and staff.”
Columbia, which runs a medical center among many other things, has not said which research, projects, or activities will be impacted. The school said it would look over the statement. The federal Education Department, along with the Health and Justice departments and the General Services Administration, made the statement on Friday after being asked about it.
The announcement comes at a time when Columbia research project leaders are making plans for the next academic year’s budgets. They are “very worried about what this means,” said oceanographer Robert Newton, a retired senior research scientist who still teaches at the university.
Newton, who is Jewish, thinks that the government’s complaints are based on “a complete lie” that Columbia is full of antisemitism and doesn’t care that some Jewish students say they are being harassed.
But the $400 million cut was good news for a Jewish student group at Columbia/Barnard Hillel. 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.”
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the move was an unconstitutional attempt by the government “to force colleges and universities to censor student speech and advocacy that isn’t MAGA-approved, like criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinian rights.” A group of pro-Palestinian protesters was sent a message asking them to react.
As the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023, President Trump has chosen Columbia as the first college he wants to cut government money to because he says they tolerate antisemitism.
Last spring, the university was one of the first in the U.S. to hold a war protest. In April, protesters who wanted to support the Palestinians set up a camp, which led to more protests in the same way. Protesters at Columbia then took over a school building. When police cleared the building, they arrested dozens of people.
At the same time, Republicans in Congress questioned Columbia’s President at the time, Minouche Shafik, about how the school dealt with racism. Shafik said, “I am personally committed to doing everything I can to deal with it head-on.” After four months, she quit.
A few weeks later, a university task force said that during the spring protests, Jews and Israelis at the school were shunned by student groups, made fun of in class, and verbally abused.
Recently, a much smaller group of protesters have briefly taken over buildings at Barnard College, which is connected with Columbia, to demand that two students who were accused of disrupting an Israeli history class not be kicked out. Several students were arrested after taking over a building for several hours on Wednesday.
Many people who took part in the protests said it’s not antisemitic to speak out against Israel’s acts in Gaza or to support the Palestinians.
Some students and the lawyer who helps them think that the university’s new discipline crackdown is an attempt to appease the government by limiting speech that supports the Palestinian cause.
One of the schools being looked into by the federal government for antisemitism is Columbia. The University of Minnesota, the University of California, Berkeley, Northwestern University, and Portland State University are some others.
