Columbia University agrees to Trump administration demands for federal funding restoration

Columbia University has agreed to changes demanded by the Trump administration as a precondition for restoring $400 million in federal funding the government pulled this month over allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.

The New York-based university, acquiescing to the demands in a memo released on Friday, laid out plans to ban face masks on campus, empower security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and place a new official in charge of the department that offers courses on the Middle East.

What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.

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Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over. It is unheard of for the U.S. government to make such a demand.

While Columbia, in its memo, stopped short of referring to a receivership, its move appeared to meet that demand. The school said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review curriculum and faculty to make sure they are balanced, and provide fresh leadership at the department.

Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.

“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”

Zimmerman said the White House actions have apparently already had a chilling effect on higher education because officials at other universities failed to band together and speak out.

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The White House had yet to respond to Columbia’s memo as of Friday evening, and the status of the funding remained unclear.

The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has targeted as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.

Private companies, law firms and other organizations have also faced the prospect of cuts in government funding and business unless they agree to adhere more closely to President Donald Trump’s priorities. Powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss came under heavy criticism on Friday over a deal it struck with the White House to escape an executive order imperiling its business.

The administration has warned at least 60 other universities of possible action over alleged failure to comply with federal civil rights laws related to antisemitism.

But Columbia has come under particular scrutiny, following the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled its campus last year, when its lawns filled with tent encampments and noisy rallies against the U.S. government’s support of Israel.

Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

ARREST POWERS

Among its the outlined changes, the school has hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said.

Face masks to conceal identities are no longer allowed, and any protesters must now identify themselves when asked, the memo said.

The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to “ensure intellectual diversity.” Columbia plans to fill joint positions in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the international affairs school in an effort to ensure “excellence and fairness in Middle East studies,” the memo said.

The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia University this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said.

Scientists and doctors who were awarded grants by the National Institutes of Health after months or years of work described receiving unusual notices by email last week saying their projects were terminated because of “unsafe antisemitic actions.”

Canceled projects included the development of an AI-based tool that helps nurses detect the deterioration of a patient’s health in hospital two days earlier than other early warning systems.

The administration also canceled funding for a study designed to improve the safety of blood transfusion therapies for adults, children and newborns, and research on uterine fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.