Columbia University signaled on Wednesday that it would comply with the Trump administration’s demands in return for restoring $400 million in federal funding, saying it would “engage in constructive dialogue with our federal regulators.”
The Trump administration canceled the university’s federal grants this month, accusing the university of “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” And last week, the administration sent a letter to the university, laying out nine demands Columbia must commit to by the end of business hours on Wednesday “as a precondition” to restore federal funding.
The university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, responded to the requests Wednesday, saying Columbia will “not waver from our principles and the values of academic freedom.” She also appeared to suggest that the university will comply with the administration’s demands.
“Legitimate questions about our practices and progress can be asked, and we will answer them,” Armstrong wrote in a letter posted on the university’s website. “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, including on the work we are doing to address antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination, the tangible progress we are making, and the intensity of our commitment to this ongoing work,” she added.
She did not elaborate on the specifics of how the university plans to do both.
The administration’s nine demands include that Columbia ban masks, “complete disciplinary proceedings” for some student protestors, formalize a definition for antisemitism, reform its admissions process and place its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under “academic receivership,” among other priorities, according to the letter the administration sent to Columbia last week.
The administration is also calling for “long-term structural” changes to the university that it wants to it to address in the near future.
Columbia has already compiled with at least one of the administration’s demands. On Thursday, it suspended or expelled some of the students who participated in the takeover of Hamilton Hall and temporarily revoked the diplomas of some graduates, nearly a year after the takeover took place.
Some Jewish students expressed fear about the protests at Columbia and at other colleges across the country. Others have reported being assaulted within the last year as protests have, at times, taken over college campuses.
In her letter, Armstrong acknowledged that antisemitism remained an issue on campus.
“I hope we can agree that the last two years have both highlighted real cracks in our existing structures and have created new problems that this campus community needs to address,” she wrote. “Antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination of any kind are unacceptable and imperil both our sense of community as well as our very academic mission.”
Within an hour before the letter was published, The Wall Street Journal reported that the university was nearing an agreement with the Trump administration. The university declined to comment on the Journal’s report.
The Trump administration’s requests and pause on federal funding represent a broader, unprecedented attempt by the federal government to sway the affairs of higher education institutions in the U.S.
In February, the Justice Department announced that it launched a task force to “root out” what it calls “anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”
In addition to going after the university itself, the Department of Homeland Security has apprehended at least two Columbia students who participated in student-led protests against the war in Gaza this month. The arrest of one of those students, 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil, has re-energized student activists and prompted fresh protests.
And on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement on X that the administration was also pausing $175 million in federal grants to the University of Pennsylvania for allowing transgender women to compete on the university’s women’s sports teams. A spokesperson for Penn said in a statement that it had “not yet received any official notification or any details” regarding the White House’s statement.
