Columbia University announced it will pay over $220 million in total to the Trump administration on Wednesday as part of an agreement that restores federal funding to the Ivy League school, which has been accused of failing to discipline antisemitism on campus adequately.
The university is expected to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government and an additional $21 million to settle investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The deal also results in the closure of more than half a dozen civil rights investigations.
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“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a statement. “The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”
“Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest,” she added.
The university maintained it retains control over its faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making, although it can’t factor race in those processes under federal anti-discrimination laws.
In March, the Trump administration pulled about $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia over the school’s alleged failure to combat antisemitism. The university enabled pro-Palestinian protests on campus since Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023 and failed to protect Jewish students against discrimination, the administration argued.
Columbia entered into negotiations with the Trump administration to restore its withdrawn funding, agreeing to a list of demands that overhauled various university policies — one of the demands concerned a new definition of antisemitism that the university adopted last week.
Wednesday’s resolution codifies those policy changes, the university said.
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“While Columbia does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement, the institution’s leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed,” the statement reads.
Ahead of the announced deal, Columbia disciplined at least 70 students who took part in anti-Israel protests on campus. The disciplinary action applied to those who engaged in two protests, the first in May and the second from last year.