Columbia University to pay $200m in settlement with Trump administration

Columbia was the first school targeted by the administration for its alleged failures to curb antisemitism amid last year’s Israel-Gaza war protests on its New York City campus. It had already agreed to a set of demands from the White House in March.

In exchange, the government has agreed to return some of the $400m in federal grants it froze or terminated in March.

The settlement, which will be paid to the federal government over three years, was announced in a statement by the university and confirmed by the president on social media.

Columbia University has agreed to pay $200m (£147m) to President Donald Trump’s administration over accusations it failed to protect its Jewish students.

The deal with Columbia University is “a seismic shift in our nation’s fight” to hold universities accountable, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.

Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in a statement: “This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty.”

Columbia is among a list of universities that have been pursued by the Trump administration over protests against Israel’s war campaign in Gaza and other issues, including transgender athletes and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.

The government has targeted over 4,000 grants for termination at over 600 universities and colleges across the US, totalling roughly $8bn, according to a tracker by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Trump posted on Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “Columbia has also committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.

“Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming.”

One month after Trump was sworn into office, his administration stripped Columbia of $400m in federal funding over allegations of antisemitism.

The frozen funds posed an immediate threat to the university’s research, leading Ms Shipman to say in June that things had reached a “tipping point”.

The White House’s decision led Columbia to enact campus rule changes demanded by the administration, including the re-organisation of its Middle Eastern studies department, and hiring a team of “special officers” empowered to remove students from campus and make arrests.

Columbia said as part of its monetary settlement, a vast majority of the cancelled or paused grants would be reinstated.

The agreement codifies many changes the college has already announced and includes that a jointly selected independent monitor will be appointed to assess implementation of the agreement.

Some of those adjustments include disciplining students who were part of the encampment on the university’s campus as part of the Gaza protests, requiring protesters to show campus ID, not allowing face masks during demonstrations, providing greater oversight of student groups, and an expansion of officers on campus.

The university said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Shipman said.

“The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”

She added that the terms of the agreement would safeguard the school’s independence.

Columbia’s willingness to comply with the university in March was met with intense criticism from some who felt the Ivy League college had conceded its independence.

Harvard has taken the opposite approach.

Although the government has suspended billions in funding from the university and moved to end its ability to enrol international students, Harvard is suing the administration.

Hearings in the case between Harvard, the richest university in the country, and the White House, the nation’s highest branch of government, began on Monday.

The Trump administration has signalled it is hoping schools go more in the direction of Columbia.

In her statement, McMahon called Columbia’s reforms “a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public”.

“I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come,” she said.