From the perspective of one longtime professor, a storied 270-year-old institution had capitulated to a bad-faith pressure campaign. Another faculty member saw a measured and mature decision from a university under fire.

And among Jewish leaders, sharp disagreement emerged over whether Washington was truly concerned about campus antisemitism — or using it as a cover to crack down on one of the nation’s most distinguished universities.

One day after Columbia University reached a comprehensive deal with the Trump administration to settle allegations that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, reactions on the university’s Upper Manhattan campus and beyond ranged from fierce criticism to celebration. The university agreed on Wednesday to pay a $200 million fine and meet other demands in exchange for federal research funding being restored.

The deal represented a major juncture in the Trump administration’s monthslong battle with the nation’s elite universities. As part of the agreement, Columbia made several pledges, including to follow through on commitments from March to address antisemitism and to provide admissions data to an independent monitor to ensure compliance with court rulings prohibiting race-conscious admissions.

Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, cast the agreement as a high-stakes balancing act. She said the university had sought to safeguard its academic independence and core values while remaining cleareyed that the threats to research and accreditation were unsustainable.

The university’s decision had been publicly portrayed “as a test of principle — a binary fight between courage and capitulation,” Ms. Shipman said.