NEW YORK: Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, the university announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,\u201d acting University President Claire Shipman said.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration pulled the funding, because of what it described as the university\u2019s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.<\/p>\n
Columbia then agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university\u2019s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s agreement \u2014 which does not include an admission of wrongdoing \u2014 codifies those reforms while preserving the university\u2019s autonomy, Shipman said.<\/p>\n
The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d Shipman said. \u201cImportantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was \u201ccomprehensive and balanced\u201d and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It also promised to end programs \u201cthat promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs \u201cdo not promote unlawful DEI goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the more than 270-year-old university. It was among the first targets of President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students be threatened and harassed.<\/p>\n
Columbia\u2019s own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they aren\u2019t targeting Jews but rather criticizing the Israeli government and its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Columbia\u2019s leadership \u2014 a revolving door of three interim presidents in the last year \u2014 has declared that the campus climate needs to change.<\/p>\n
Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students \u201cquestions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,\u201d and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to \u201ccivil discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK: Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, the university announced Wednesday. Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84206,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84193\/revisions\/84206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}