The Trump administration announced Friday that it’s cutting $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University as a result of what Republican officials say is “continued inaction” and failure to protect Jewish students at the Ivy League institution.
The accusations were made in a joint news release from the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and the General Services Administration, all of which are members of an antisemitism task force the president assembled just one month ago through an executive order. Earlier in the week, the task force said it was reviewing Columbia’s $5 billion in federal grants and hinted that it could halt some of the university’s contracts. That notice was the task force’s first major action, and other universities could face similar reviews, experts said Friday.
“For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the release. “Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”
It remains uncertain exactly what grants and contracts will be affected, and the Department of Education did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for clarity.
Columbia officials said the university is “reviewing the announcement” and pledged to “work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”
“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously … and are committed to combating antisemitism,” a spokesperson said in an email to Inside Higher Ed.
Columbia has been a frequent target for Republicans who have taken issue with how colleges responded to a spate of demonstrations protesting Israel’s war in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. That criticism ratcheted up last spring after pro-Palestinian student protesters erected an encampment of tents and later took over a campus building in hopes of persuading the university to divest from companies affiliated with Israel. Those protests, and Columbia’s decision to call in city police in response, not only sparked a national movement but also attracted strong opposition from critics who declared the demonstrations antisemitic and accused the colleges of failing to defend Jewish students.
Trump officials have pledged to crack down on campus antisemitism, and this action against Columbia could serve as an early test case of how exactly the new administration could follow through on campaign trail promises.
But canceling a university’s grants and contracts would be unprecedented. Higher education policy experts say that even if it’s just a threat, the concept of pulling funds without proper investigation from the Office for Civil Rights is deeply alarming.
“You don’t get to punish people just because you don’t like what they’re doing,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education. “The fact that the administration is choosing to simply ignore not just precedent, not just norms, but the actual law covering this should be concerning to a lot of people, not just people at Columbia.”
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is tasked with enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and national origin, including antisemitic and Islamophobic discrimination. The department’s rules and regulations, which Fansmith said are mandated by Title VI, outline how OCR conducts investigations and what to do if the office finds a violation. OCR is required to attempt to reach a resolution with the institution. In the rare case that a college refuses to comply with the law, the case can be referred to the Department of Justice.
“So while the law doesn’t specifically dictate the process, it dictates the necessity of the process,” Fansmith said. “Nowhere in federal law is the government given the authority to arbitrarily select different types of federal funding and withhold them from an institution absent any prior finding or decision.”
Republicans from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, on the other hand, praised the decision.
“Americans do not want their money sent to institutions that serve as breeding grounds for hatred and support for terrorism,” Representative Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement. “I applaud the Trump administration for listening to the American people and holding institutions accountable when they fail to combat antisemitic, anti-American values.”
Walberg and then–committee chair Representative Virginia Foxx were key figures in a scathing interrogation of then–Columbia president Minouche Shafik last spring. They also subpoenaed the university for records in August and published a deep-dive campus antisemitism report in November.
But these congressional actions, as well as the department’s civil rights investigations, are separate from the actions of the task force.
“The entire House report would be—what I’m sure many people would consider—a great piece of evidence in an OCR investigation,” Fansmith said. “The Trump administration is just missing the step where OCR does an investigation … which they’re required to in statute.”
The statement said that Columbia should expect more cancellations.
‘Weaponizing’ Funding Cuts
Similarly to Fansmith, First Amendment advocates see the Trump administration’s move as an overreach designed to intimidate institutions and chill campus free speech rather than address civil rights violations and hate speech.
Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at PEN America, said in a statement that while universities must urgently respond to concerns about antisemitism and ensure that students can participate fully and equally in campus life, they also need to be given “space, time and resources” to do so. The task force has not allowed that, and as a result federal research funding hangs in the balance.
The Trump administration is “weaponizing nearly every instrument it has to suppress ideas it disfavors and pressure institutions into enforcing ideological alignment,” Shahverdian said. “The threat is sure to reverberate across the higher education sector, just as it seems intended to do.”
Tyler Coward, lead counsel of government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told Inside Higher Ed that though the loss of funds is a potential consequence for institutions that violate antidiscrimination law, they may only face liability if they fail to address the unlawful conduct.
“If the administration is cutting funding to Columbia for violating Title VI, it must be clear and transparent about how it arrived at that decision and follow all relevant procedural requirements before doing so,” Coward said. And First Amendment–protected speech cannot be punished with the retraction of federal funds, he added. (The release offered no specifics on how the task force made its decision.)
This “immediate cancellation” violates the law. If the Admin thinks Columbia has violated Title VI by being deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment, it has to give Columbia a chance for a hearing first, make findings on the record, & wait 30 days.
www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03…
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— Sam Bagenstos (@sbagen.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Fansmith said he was “not in a position to say” whether Columbia’s response to the student protests, building raids and encampments of 2024 would qualify for punishment under a proper OCR investigation. But the Trump administration “clearly thinks so,” he added.
“If they are so certain of what the outcome will be, then there’s no harm from conducting an investigation,” he said. But “there’s plenty of harm from not doing it.”
Trump ‘Walking the Talk’
But right-leaning advocates for the protection of Jewish students and faculty members say the move was justified and necessary.
Kenneth Marcus, a prominent civil rights lawyer who ran OCR during Trump’s first term, described Trump’s latest actions as “incredible.”
“If anyone wasn’t paying attention before, this will get their attention,” said Marcus, who also founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. “There can now be no doubt that the Trump administration has prioritized campus antisemitism far higher than any prior administration has done. They have Columbia University in their scopes today, but no one should doubt that they will be coming after other universities as well.”
McMahon affirmed Marcus’s take on the situation in an interview with Fox News shortly after the funding cuts were announced.
“The president has said he’s absolutely not going to allow federal funds to be going to these universities that continue to allow antisemitism,” she said. “Kids ought to go to college and parents ought to feel good about their kids going to college, knowing they’re in a safe environment.”
Marcus also applauded the Trump administration for utilizing multiple agencies to tackle the problem at once. The Department of Justice was minimally involved in responding to campus antisemitism during Trump’s first term, he said, but this time “the DOJ is leading the charge” and “the difference is palpable.” This weekend, all university administrators should be meeting with their general counsels and ensuring they are doing everything they can to protect all students, Marcus advised.
“The last administration spoke of a whole-of-government approach. This administration is walking the talk,” he said.
Liam Knox contributed to this report.
