Columbia University agrees to $200 million fine to settle fight with Trump

New York: Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached Wednesday to restore the university's federal research funding, according to a statement from the university.

In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring, and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March.

The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty," Claire Shipman, Columbia's acting president, said in the release. "The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track."

The deal is a significant milestone in the Trump administration's quest to bring elite universities to heel. Columbia is the first university to reach a negotiated settlement over antisemitism claims. Harvard, which has sued the administration over funding cuts, is also negotiating for restoration of its federal money. The expectation is that the Columbia settlement will provide a template for future deals.

The federal government is agreeing to restore the vast majority of the more than $400 million in grants terminated or frozen by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services in March. Columbia can also compete on equal footing for new grants. The university will pay the $200 million in three installments over three years.

Columbia receives about $1.3 billion in federal research grants annually, and the university said it would have all been at risk if it had remained on the White House's blacklist.

The loss of funding for scientific research had become an urgent matter for Columbia, imperiling decades of work and bringing Columbia to the "tipping point" of preserving its research excellence, the university said.

But making a deal with the White House brings its own risks for Columbia, challenging the limits of the private university's independence and lending legitimacy to the Trump administration's strategy of weaponizing research funding to accomplish an unrelated aim of reining in campus unrest.

The federal government announced March 7 that it was canceling $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, an extraordinary step that made the university the first to be punished by the Trump administration with a freeze on research funding for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. Other schools, including Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern, soon followed.

As weeks passed, it became evident that the damage to Columbia's research enterprise went further than the original $400 million cut. The National Institutes of Health, the government's key medical research funder, froze nearly all research funding flowing to Columbia, including for reimbursement of research grants that were still active.

Grant Watch, a project run by research scientists who compiled information on the grants pulled by the Trump administration, estimated that about $1.2 billion in unspent funding from the NIH to Columbia had been terminated or frozen. Other federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, also pulled grants.

About a week after the administration pulled the $400 million, a Trump antisemitism task force sent Columbia a list of nine demands that the university had to satisfy to begin talks to get the money back. Columbia largely complied with the demands, many of which are reflected in Thursday's agreement.

The deal, which will be in effect for three years, is between Columbia and several federal agencies, including the Justice and Education Departments. Like many legal settlements, it states that it is being entered into to avoid the burdens of litigation, not as an admission of wrongdoing.

It includes a statement affirming that Columbia will maintain its academic independence, stating that none of its provisions give the federal government "the authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions or the content of academic speech."

The independent monitor who will enforce the terms of the agreement will be appointed and paid for by Columbia.

Some of the terms simply codify what was pledged by Columbia in March. Those commitments include the appointment of a senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern studies department and other departments; the maintenance of restrictions on protests; and the appointment of three dozen public safety officers with arrest powers.

There are also new commitments to existing laws and executive orders that align with the Trump administration's priorities. Columbia will follow the law and not "maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts" on diversity, equity and inclusion. The university will abide by court rulings prohibiting the use of affirmative action in admissions, and it will provide the independent monitor with admissions data to affirm that it is complying.

Columbia, like all schools, already had to inform the Department of Homeland Security when international students were suspended or expelled. It will now also notify the department when they are arrested. The university will also follow laws on transparency regarding foreign funding.

The deal is designed to bring to rest months of difficulty at Columbia, which chose to negotiate with the Trump administration rather than sue.

The university came under fire for capitulating. But over the months, as it became clear how much was at stake, some of the pushback on campus over the decision to negotiate lessened.

Shipman, a former television journalist who led the negotiations for Columbia, stepped into the role of acting president in late March after serving as the co-chair of its board of trustees. She defended the university's decision to deal with the White House rather than litigate, the road Harvard had taken.

During several months of intense negotiations, Shipman worked with the board, lawyers and a small academic leadership team to mold the White House demands into something that they felt the university could live with, she said in an interview this week.

She said she felt the university had managed to maintain its core principles of academic independence, the power to decide whom to hire, whom to admit and what to teach, even though the deal is tough.

"Ultimately, we had to make the decision that was the right decision for Columbia," she said. "And I think we have made that decision. We weren't reckless. In my view, it was important to slow things down and be extraordinarily deliberate, and that was actually quite hard to do."