(The Center Square) — Columbia University will pay $221 million in fines to settle the Trump administration’s claims that the Ivy League school failed to protect its Jewish students on campus.
The settlement will require the college to pay $200 million to the federal government over a three-year period and $21 million to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to resolve the allegations. In exchange, the Trump administration will restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants it terminated or froze earlier this year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the agreement is “a seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”
“For decades, the American public has watched in horror as our elite campuses have been overrun by anti-western teachings and a leftist groupthink that restricts speech and debate to push a one-sided view of our nation and the world,” she said in a statement.
In a letter to faculty, students and staff late Wednesday, Columbia’s Acting President Claire Shipman said the agreement restores access to billions of dollars in federal research funding and previously terminated grants will be reinstated.
“Not only will this resolution restore Columbia’s ability to fully participate in its longstanding federal research partnerships, but it also will ensure critical continuity for faculty, students, and staff across every discipline — many of whom have seen years, even decades, of progress toward medical and scientific discoveries placed at risk,” she wrote.
The college has also agreed to a monitor who will ensure compliance with admissions and hiring practices and share details about international students with federal immigration authorities.
The Trump administration launched an investigation of Columbia and other schools in February and froze $400 million in federal grants over the university’s “failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.”
Before the settlement, Columbia had already agreed to make reforms to prevent the federal government from pulling back the funds, including overhauling its policies regarding protests and campus security and setting a campus-wide definition of antisemitism.
Shipman said under the agreement with the Trump administration, the university admits no wrongdoing and does not agree with the government’s conclusion that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“We are not, however, denying the very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism,” she wrote. “For these reasons, we took several important corrective steps in March, many of which are in this agreement, including a new provision for a liaison to the Jewish community, situated in University Life.”
Trump posted on social media late Wednesday that 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,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
