Columbia University Agrees To Pay More Than $220 Million In Deal With Trump | EUROtoday

NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University introduced Wednesday it has reached a cope with the Trump administration to pay greater than $220 million to the federal authorities to revive federal analysis cash that was canceled within the identify of combating antisemitism on campus.

Under the settlement, the Ivy League college pays a $200 million settlement over three years, the college stated. It may also pay $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations towards Jewish staff that occurred following the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel, the White House stated.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” appearing University President Claire Shipman stated.

The college had been threatened with the potential lack of billions of {dollars} in authorities help, together with greater than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this 12 months. The administration pulled the funding due to what it described because the college’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus in the course of the Israel-Hamas battle.

Columbia has since agreed to a sequence of calls for laid out by the Republican administration, together with overhauling the college’s scholar disciplinary course of and making use of a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not solely to educating however to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating college students important of Israel.

Wednesday’s settlement — which doesn’t embrace an admission of wrongdoing — codifies these reforms whereas preserving the college’s autonomy, Shipman stated.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon known as the deal “a seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”

“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon stated in an announcement.

As a part of the settlement, Columbia agreed to a sequence of modifications beforehand introduced in March, together with reviewing its Middle East curriculum to ensure it was “comprehensive and balanced” and appointing new school to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It additionally promised to finish packages “that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.”

The college may also must problem a report back to a monitor assuring that its packages “do not promote unlawful DEI goals.”

In a submit Wednesday evening on his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump stated Columbia had “committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.”

He additionally warned, with out being particular, “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.”

The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations on the greater than 270-year-old college. It was among the many first targets of Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on faculties that he asserts have allowed Jewish college students be threatened and harassed.

Columbia’s personal antisemitism activity drive discovered final summer season that Jewish college students had confronted verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation in the course of the spring 2024 demonstrations.

Other Jewish college students took half within the protests, nevertheless, and protest leaders keep they aren’t concentrating on Jews however quite criticizing the Israeli authorities and its battle in Gaza.

Columbia’s management — a revolving door of three interim presidents within the final 12 months — has declared that the campus local weather wants to vary.

Also within the settlement is an settlement to ask potential worldwide college students “questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,” and establishes processes to ensure all college students are dedicated to “civil discourse.”

In a transfer that may probably make it simpler for the Trump administration to deport college students who take part in protests, Columbia promised to offer the federal government with info, upon request, of disciplinary actions involving student-visa holders leading to expulsions or suspensions.

Columbia on Tuesday introduced it could droop, expel or revoke levels from greater than 70 college students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the principle library in May and an encampment throughout alumni weekend final 12 months.

The stress on Columbia started with a sequence of funding cuts. Then Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate scholar who had been a visual determine within the protests, grew to become the primary individual detained within the Trump administration’s push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who aren’t U.S. residents.

Next got here searches of some college residences amid a federal Justice Department investigation into whether or not Columbia hid “illegal aliens” on campus. The interim president on the time responded that the college was dedicated to upholding the regulation.

Columbia was an early check case for the Trump administration because it sought nearer oversight of universities that the Republican president views as bastions of liberalism. Yet it quickly was overshadowed by Harvard University, which grew to become the primary larger schooling establishment to defy Trump’s calls for and combat again in court docket.

The Trump administration has used federal analysis funding as its major lever in its marketing campaign to reshape larger schooling. More than $2 billion in whole has additionally been frozen at Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and Princeton universities.

Administration officers pulled $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania in March over a dispute round ladies’s sports activities. They restored it when college officers agreed to replace information set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and alter their insurance policies.

The administration is also trying past non-public universities. University of Virginia President James Ryan agreed to resign in June underneath stress from a U.S. Justice Department investigation into variety, fairness and inclusion practices. An analogous investigation was opened this month at George Mason University.