Columbia University agreed to pay a $200 million fine to the Trump administration Wednesday to settle allegations that the university failed to protect its Jewish students against harassment amid campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
The university will receive receive hundreds of millions in funding for research grants in exchange for agreeing to President Donald Trump’s equality demands. Columbia pledged to adhere to the president’s laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring and his suggestions for how to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to back in March.
“While Columbia does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement, the institution’s leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed,” the university said in a statement Wednesday.
The deal will settle several open civil rights investigations into the university in exchange for the university agreeing to an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia must pay an additional $21 million to individuals to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The university will pay off the $200 million in three installments over three years.
“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in the release. “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.”
Columbia is the first university to settle with the Trump administration over antisemitism claims. Harvard University has sued the administration over their funding cuts and negotiated for a restoration of their federal backing. The two Ivy League schools were among 10 universities Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism targeted as campuses experiencing increased antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7 2023.
Columbia; Harvard; George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern California are currently under investigation by the task force. Other Ivy League schools that have since been targeted include Brown, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
On March 7 the Trump administration announced it was canceling $400 million in grants to Columbia. His monumental funding cuts extended to other schools, including Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern, shortly thereafter.
In May, Columbia University announced it was cutting nearly 180 staffers after Trump pulled federal funding to the Ivy League school over its handling of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protestors.
Though the university will be under an independent monitor for the next three years according to the deal, Columbia will maintain its academic independence, and it still has “the authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions or the content of academic speech.”
