Columbia caves to Trump’s policy demands in fear of losing $400M in federal funds after anti-Israel protests

Columbia University has agreed to meet Donald Trump’s demands for several policy changes after he threatened to take away $400 million in government grants from the Ivy League institution. 

The Trump administration pulled the grants and other federal funding and had threatened to cut more, over the university’s handling of rampant protests against Israel. 

Those protests led to the detaining of activist Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil by ICE, 30, a legal resident in the US, for his role in the demonstrations. 

The changes, detailed in a letter sent by the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, came one week after the Trump administration ordered the Ivy League school to enact reforms or lose all federal funding.

In her letter, Armstrong said the university would immediately appoint a senior vice provost to conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of its regional studies programs, ‘starting immediately with the Middle East.’

Columbia will also revamp its long-standing disciplinary process and bar protests inside academic buildings. Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus ‘for the purposes of concealing one´s identity.’ 

An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons.

In an effort to expand ‘intellectual diversity’ within the university, Columbia will also appoint new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department. 

It will also adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand programming in its Tel Aviv Center, a research hub based in Israel.

The White House has labeled the protests antisemitic, a label rejected by those who participated in the student-led demonstrations.

A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the Education Department.

As a ‘precondition’ for restoring funding, federal officials demanded that the university to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under ‘academic receivership for a minimum of five years.’

They also told the university to ban masks on campus, adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ‘reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.’

Historians had described the order as an unprecedented intrusion on university rights long treated by the Supreme Court as an extension of the First Amendment.

On Friday, freedom of speech advocates immediately decried Columbia’s decision to acquiesce.

‘A sad day for Columbia and for our democracy,’ Jameel Jaffer, the director of Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a social media post.

The president launched the dramatic move ‘due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,’ his administration said.

It represents only a first round of canceled funds and additional cuts are expected. 

Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon said: ‘Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses – only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them.

‘Universities must comply with all federal anti-discrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding.’

The announcement coincided with recent anti-Israel campus protests at Barnard College, which Trump aggressively condemned. 

‘Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!’ he stated on social media.

Trump officials said the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism will continue to review and coordinate with other federal agencies to move swiftly. 

That group is made up of officials at the Justice Department, Education Department, Department of Heath and Human Services and U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

Columbia, located in New York City, ‘abandoned (their) obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,’ officials said. 

Since the horrific attack, anti-Israel protests have sprung up across the nation, including most recently at Columbia University and Barnard College in Manhattan—a university hotbed of pro-Gaza activism. 

State Department officials also shared that they will soon review foreign student visa holders who were arrested though allowed to stay in the country. 

This AI-enabled review will also look for clues in news articles about the protests which have been on and off for the past year and a half.

Already officials have reviewed 100,000 individuals in the Student Exchange Visitor System.