Liberals have howled for months over President Trump’s targeting of Ivy League universities. I doubt they’ll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole. But it is.
Columbia University will pay $200 million in deal with Trump admin
Columbia University came to an agreement with the Trump administration to restore its federal funding.
- Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to the federal government for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.
- The university also agreed to an independent monitor to oversee compliance with civil rights laws and an additional $21 million fine to the EEOC.
- The agreement follows Trump’s criticism of universities for antisemitism and his withholding of federal funding from Columbia.
In an agreement ripped from the pages of President Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” Columbia University has agreed to pay $200 million fine to the federal government to settle accusations that the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus.
The move is a capitulation to Trump’s harsh rebuke of elite universities because of the rampant antisemitism unleashed on campuses after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
This is a win for Trump, a scathing reprimand of higher education and a message of hope for American Jews.
Jewish students were told to flee campus
Columbia agreed to pay the $200 million fine to resolve multiple civil rights investigations centering on its failure to stop antisemitic protests on campus. The threats were so severe that a rabbi warned Jewish students to flee campus a day before the start of Passover in April 2024.
Columbia also has agreed to appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with civil rights laws and to pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
These are mind-boggling agreements by one of the country’s most elite universities.
In March, Trump cut off $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and launched investigations into 59 other colleges and universities because of their admissions policies and the antisemitic protests on their campuses.
If you had told me then that Columbia would bow the knee to Trump just four months later, I’d have laughed.
Trump is reshaping higher education
Columbia’s agreement to pay a $200 million fine is a strong indication that Trump was right about widespread antisemitism on campus.
Even so, liberals have howled for months over Trump’s targeting of Ivy League universities, and I doubt they’ll view the Columbia agreement as a win for students and for our nation as whole.
It is, though, and they should.
Trump also froze Harvard University’s funding over hiring policies that elevated diversity, equity and inclusion ideology over merit-based appointments.
Progressives called Trump a “despot in the making” and an enemy of free speech. But Trump was in reality standing against a culture on university campuses that promoted progressive values to the exclusion of dissenting opinions. Conservative students were shunned. And Jewish students were targeted because of Israel’s defense of its citizens.
Columbia is now paying the price for that intolerance.
I hope the Columbia settlement helps reshape higher education in the Ivy League and beyond. Institutions that accept taxpayer dollars must be held accountable for antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.
Because Trump took a stand − and took the heat from progressives and the news media − things may finally change for the better at Columbia.
Ball to you, Harvard. You next?
Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
