Settlement marks victory in US President Donald Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over third-level education.
Columbia University, one of the top educational institutions in the United States, has agreed to pay $221m to settle claims by US President Donald Trump’s administration that it failed to police anti-Semitism on campus.
Under the agreement announced on Wednesday, Columbia will see the “vast majority” of $400m in federal grants frozen by the Trump administration reinstated, the New York-based university said.
Columbia will also regain access to billions of dollars in current and future grants under the deal, the university added.
The university said the agreement formalised reforms announced in March to address harassment against Jews, including the hiring of more public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary processes, and efforts to foster “an inclusive and respectful learning environment”.
The agreement also commits Columbia to maintaining merit-based admissions and ending programs that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas [and] diversity targets”.
Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said that while the settlement was “substantial”, the university could not continue with a situation that would “jeopardize our status as a world-leading research institution”.
“Furthermore, as I have discussed on many occasions with our community, we carefully explored all options open to us,” Shipman said in a statement.
“We might have achieved short-term litigation victories, but not without incurring deeper long-term damage – the likely loss of future federal funding, the possibility of losing accreditation, and the potential revocation of visa status of thousands of international students.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Columbia will pay the federal government $200m over three years, in addition to a $21m payment to settle claims by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Shipman said Columbia did not accept the Trump administration’s findings that it had violated civil rights law by turning a blind eye to the harassment of Jews, but acknowledged the “very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism”.
“We know there is still more to do,” she said.
The settlement marks a victory in Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over third-level education, including campus activism in support of Palestine and other causes.
Trump hailed the settlement as “historic” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“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 wrote.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student activist group, slammed the settlement as an effective bribe.
“Imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide,” the group said on X.
Columbia was among dozens of US universities that were roiled by protests against Israel’s war in Gaza throughout the spring and summer of 2024.
Many Jewish students and faculty complained that the campus demonstrations veered into anti-Semitism, while pro-Palestinian advocates have accused critics of often wrongly conflating opposition to Israel with the hatred of Jews.
On Tuesday, Columbia University’s Judicial Board announced that it had finalised disciplinary proceedings against students who took part in protests at the university’s main library in May and the “Revolt for Rafah” encampment last year.
CUAD said that nearly 80 students had been expelled or suspended for between one and three years for joining the protests, sanctions which it said “hugely exceed” the precedent for non-Palestine-related demonstrations.