Published by the The Washington Post on 03/07/2025 The Trump administration said Friday it was cutting off about $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University, saying the school has failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus. The administration took action just four days after announcing that several federal agencies were investigating Columbia. The school has been in the spotlight since last academic year when pro-Palestinian protesters erected tents on lawns at the center of the university’s Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan, and refused to take them down, in protest of the Israel-Gaza war. The full list of canceled grants and contracts was not available Friday, nor was it clear what legal process the administration used to make its decisions. Cutting off funding is rare, and when it happens, it typically follows a lengthy investigation and judicial review. Campuses have generally been quieter this academic year, but this semester protests have cropped up at Columbia and Barnard College, an independent but affiliated school, including some this week. In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that Jewish students have faced “relentless violence, intimidation and anti-Semitic harassment.” “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” she said. “Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.” Samantha Slater, a spokeswoman for Columbia, said university officials were reviewing the announcement and pledged to work with the federal government to restore funding. “We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff,” she said in a statement. Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said Friday that taking serious action toward combating antisemitism on campus was the school’s number-one priority. She said she had clarified rules and strengthened disciplinary procedures and acknowledged that cancellation of the funds would immediately impact research, faculty, staff and patient care. “Antisemitism, violence, discrimination, harassment, and other behaviors that violate our values or disrupt teaching, learning, or research are antithetical to our mission,” she said. “We must continue to work to address any instances of these unacceptable behaviors on our campus. We must work every day to do better.” On Friday, Columbia announced that four of its students had been arrested as part of Tuesday’s disruption at Barnard, and that those students had been suspended and restricted from campus while the university works through the disciplinary process. Under federal civil rights law, universities that allow discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry — such as Jewish heritage — are not eligible for federal funding. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made clear he will target higher education, which Republicans have long seen as overly liberal and too focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. In what many university leaders consider an all-out attack on higher education, the administration has also cut funding associated with research grants, and Republicans are considering increasing the federal tax on endowments. Trump also has repeatedly criticized universities for what he has characterized as a failure to respond to antisemitism. In January, he signed an executive order aimed at combating it. Friday’s action was a warning shot to other schools, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which has worked to spotlight antisemitic incidents on campuses. Schools, he said, had better “think twice rather than letting these protests continue to go unchecked.” A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the White House is not currently working to pull federal funding from any other universities over the issue. The official described Columbia as a “test case.” Also Friday, the acting director of the Education Department’s office for civil rights wrote tohis staff that antisemitism investigations would be prioritized and that the office would no longer allow schools to “avoid accountability” by negotiating “toothless” reforms or reciting “empty platitudes.” Going forward, he wrote, the office would insist on meaningful policy changes with a “strong emphasis on compliance.” Friday’s announcement about Columbia came from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments and the General Services Administration, in addition to the Education Department; the agencies announced Monday that they were forming a task force toinvestigate Columbia. The task force was working to identify other grant cancellations “that could be made swiftly,” the administration said Friday. Columbia holds “more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments,” it said. The government’s statement Friday suggested that the penalty was being imposed so quickly because pro-Palestinian protests have persisted on campus since the investigation launched. “Chaos and anti-Semitic harassment have continued on and near campus,” the statement said. Last week Barnard officials said protesters caused $30,000 in damage to an academic building and injured an employee. And this week, New York police officers detained several protesters during a sit-in at Barnard. Typically, investigations into complaints of wrongdoing at schools and colleges are drawn-out affairs that end with the government negotiating with school leaders to come into compliance with federal law. It is rare for the government to pull funding and unprecedented for it to do so after a days-long investigation. Kenneth Marcus, who headed the Education Department’s office for civil rights under the first Trump administration, said he has never seen the federal government take action against a school so quickly. Normally, he said, investigations of campus bias incidents take months or years. “This is the toughest stance we’ve seen from the federal government toward campus antisemitism ever,” said Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which focuses on fighting antisemitism. “The fact that the Trump administration has been able to respond this quickly is simply unbelievable.” Marcus said this process did not follow the approach normally used at the Education Department for investigating colleges, and details of how this investigation was conducted and its legal justification were not clear. Administration officials did not respond toquestions about the legal basis. Jonathan Fansmith, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education, said, “I cannot imagine a court would look at this set of factors and not find wholly on Columbia‘s behalf.” One cancellation notice sent to a researcher Friday, and reviewed by The Washington Post, did not specify the legal reasoning for terminating the grant. It did not mention antisemitism or the university’s response to protests. It said the agency was working to ensure that grants “do not support programs or organizations” that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of a range of factors. The notice included a long list of possible wrongdoing ranging from discrimination to fraud to a failure to serve the nation’s best interests, but did not say which one applied to the grant in question. It gave the researcher 30 days to appeal the decision. Last year, 20 percent of Columbia’s $6.6 billion operating revenue came from government grants, including from the National Institutes of Health, according to a university breakdown. That $1.3 billion total was the third-largest source of revenue; only patient care and tuition brought in larger shares. While the scope of the canceled contracts was not clear, some of the canceled grants funded research or programs tied to higher education. Thomas Wayne Brock, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, which is independent but affiliated with Columbia, was shocked to learn Friday that four grants had been abruptly canceled. One grant paid for the first-ever rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of the $1 billion annual federal work-study program. This is the fifth year of the study, so Brock fears the cancellation will obviate the previous years’ work. His other grants deal with pandemic recovery at community colleges and supporting graduate students. He said he hopes an appeal will make clear that his research center has done nothing wrong and that the money from the federal government isn’t in any way connected to the protests or the Columbia administration’s response. “It does feel like we’re being singled out in a way that is very unfair,” Brock said. It will mean layoffs, he said, and students are likely to lose financial support. “It’s very painful.”Columbiain the spotlight Last academic year, intense protests broke out over the Israel-Gaza war, and Columbia came under congressional scrutiny, accused of failing to do more to prevent antisemitism on campus. As at many colleges that year, some protesters used language in chants and on signs that some Jewish students found threatening, sparking a national debate over free speech and campus safety. Response on campus to Friday’s action sharply differed based on views of the conflict. Radhika Sainath, senior staff attorney with Palestine Legal, whose office represents some Columbia students, said that the administration’s action is an unlawful attempt by government to suppress constitutionally protected speech and that time would show that students speaking out against violence are on the right side of history. “Basically, Trump is withholding funds to coerce Columbia into preventing students from exercising their First Amendment-protected right to criticize Israel’s genocide, and threatening more financial sanctions if such criticism continues,” she said. “This is something the government itself does not have the right to do.” Brian Cohen, the Lavine family executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, said Columbia has had an “antisemitism crisis.” “I hope this federal action is a wake-up call to Columbia’s administration and trustees totake antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish students and faculty seriously so that these grants can be restored, the vital work of the University can continue, and that Columbia can become, once again, a place where the Jewish community thrives,” he said in a statement.