Columbia University has a $400-million question: Deal with the loss of canceled federal contracts and grants over alleged antisemitism on campus or cave to Trump demands that have been criticized as placing the university’s academic independence in jeopardy.
Federal agencies have set a deadline by the close of business Thursday for Columbia to make a series of changes that the feds say would protect Jewish students from harassment — and could resume the flow of funding from the U.S. government. That included steps to increase discipline, ban masks with few exceptions, as well placing the Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership.
The missive has enraged members of Columbia’s faculty, who regardless of their politics say the external pressure amounts to government interference in campus matters.
“The letter is of dubious legality, but its demands are sweeping,” the Columbia chapter of American Association of University Professors said in a statement. “They constitute unacceptable overreach, attempting to dictate university policies and undermine the university’s procedures, statutes, and guiding principles.”
On March 7, the U.S. Education Department alongside other agencies that send funding to research universities announced Columbia’s grants and contracts had been called off, including at its medical center. Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong warned the cuts would affect “nearly every corner of the university,” while civil liberties groups condemned the move as “unconstitutional and unprecedented.”
“But it is entirely consistent with Trump’s long-held desire to silence views with which he disagrees and clamp down on protest,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union in a statement.
The stop-work orders had an immediate effect on medical research and other programs that receive federal funding. A larger part of the hundreds of millions in canceled awards was more than 400 grants from the National Institutes of Health.
A neuroscience PhD student told the Daily News she learned last week the training grant that had been supporting her tuition and research was clawed back. The student said it took her three months to put together a 60-page grant application to study how adolescent social isolation impacts cognition later in life. Her lab employs transgenic mice — “not transgender,” she said, referring to Trump’s targeting of gender research.
“You’re maybe erasing a generation of scientists if this continues,” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while her award was in flux. “At this point, my goal is to finish as soon as possible, because maybe there’s not going to be money for me to continue.”
Barry Williams for New York Daily News
People are pictured outside an occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York City on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, after pro-Palestinian protesters took over the building the night before. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News)
Nearly a week after the cancellations were first announced, the federal agencies penned the follow-up letter to Columbia, obtained by The News, which outlined “immediate next steps that we regard as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.” University officials were directed to document compliance no later than the Thursday deadline.
The missive did not guarantee that federal funding will be restored if Columbia follows all the prerequisites. The same day the letter was sent, Columbia moved to expel and suspend for multiple years any students involved in the takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring.
Columbia was also ordered to overhaul its admissions process and recruitment of international students, and imbue campus security with the power of arrest.
“The government’s demands read like a ransom letter, dictating to the university what principles it must sacrifice and what ideological positions it must adopt to restore research funding,” the AAUP statement continued. “We urge the Columbia administration in the strongest possible terms to reject these demands and the premises on which they rest.”
Senior university officials were continuing to discuss the changes on Wednesday, while making progress on most, if not all, of the federal government’s demands. Columbia is reportedly in negotiations with the presidential administration to refer to the receivership of the Middle Eastern studies department as something more palatable, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Columbia spokespeople declined to comment on their plans to address the specific conditions.
“Responsible stewardship means we must consider every appropriate action,” Armstrong wrote in an email Wednesday to students and faculty. “But we will never compromise our values of pedagogical independence, our commitment to academic freedom, or our obligation to follow the law.”
“We will also continue — as is our responsibility and as we have done throughout our history — to engage in constructive dialogue with our federal regulators.”
Many students and faculty still have questions about the federal government’s motives. Over the last week and a half, the Trump administration has used its immigration enforcement powers to crack down on pro-Palestinian campus protests, the most high profile of which has been the attempted deportation of international studies graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.
“This isn’t about antisemitism at this point,” said Reinhold Martin, a Columbia architecture professor and the AAUP chapter president, when federal funding was revoked. “This is about defunding the university.”
