Tag: Trump

Trump administration silent on Muslim students’ civil rights

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Millions in cuts to federal funding. Letters from the highest education official in the country expressing disappointment. Enforcement directives to immediately address a “backlog” of antisemitism complaints.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has taken sudden and unprecedented actions in the past month highlighting its desire to protect Jewish students from discrimination. At the same time, no such imperative has been evident in investigations into or statements on Islamophobia on school or campus grounds.

“This administration appears to be focused solely on responses to antisemitic incidents on campus,” said Jackie Gharapour Wernz, an education civil rights attorney who worked at OCR under the Obama and the first Trump administrations. “But schools need to be focused on both.”

‘Lip service’ to protecting all as Muslim students are targeted

The same civil rights law that protects Jewish students from antisemitism — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — also protects Muslim students from Islamophobia.

Under the Biden administration, and especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war protests after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department repeatedly expressed to schools that they must protect Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli students equally.

“Jewish students, Israeli students, Muslim students, Arab students, Palestinian students, and all other students who reside within our school communities have the right to learn in our nation’s schools free from discrimination,” Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights for the Education Department under the Biden administration, warned in a Dear Colleague letter in November 2023.

The Biden administration issued the letter amid what it called an “alarming rise” in both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at schools.

Conversely, the Trump Education Department has made at least five announcements related to ending antisemitism in schools — none of which also expressed protections for students of Muslim, Arab or Palestinian backgrounds.

“They are centering Jewish students or others who are experiencing antisemitic behaviors, and they’re very clearly going after Palestinian and or Muslim students, as in the example at Columbia [University],” said Brett Sokolow, a Title VI and Title IX education civil rights expert who often works with school district administrators seeking to comply with federal regulations. “So while there’s some lip service to protecting all, I think the [Title VI] enforcement tool is going to be used primarily to the benefit of those who are experiencing antisemitism.”

Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in funding to Columbia University over what it called “inaction” in harassment of Jewish students, and warned of more cancellations to follow. Referring to anti-Israel protests that erupted on campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, the Education Department said “any college or university that allows illegal protests and repeatedly fails to protect students from anti-Semitic harassment on campus will be subject to the loss of federal funding.”

“This is only the beginning,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and head of the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, in a joint March 7 statement with the Education Department.

Just a few days later, Trump vehemently supported Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of prominent Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, saying the move was the first of “many to come.” Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and recent Columbia graduate, helped lead campus protests opposing the war in Gaza.

Addressing a ‘backlog’ of antisemitism complaints

Israel-Hamas war protests erupted on higher education and K-12 campuses under the Biden administration.

As part of its broader effort to crack down on Title VI after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department’s OCR opened civil rights investigations into complaints of both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Its caseload had gotten so unwieldy that Lhamon and then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pleaded at the time with Congress for more funding to support investigative staff and address the high number of complaints.

In one high-profile example in 2023, the department opened an investigation into New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school system, for allegedly failing to protect students from a hostile environment resulting from both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Toward the tail end of Biden’s presidency, the administration had begun resolving the influx of Title VI complaints raised after the latest Israel-Hamas war.

But the Trump administration, in a March 7 statement, has referred to this OCR’s Title VI caseload as a “backlog of Biden Administration-era complaints alleging antisemitism” and said the resolution agreements under Biden were “toothless” and continue to provide “little to no remedy for Jewish students.”

While curtailing awareness around Islamophobia and Muslim students’ protections, the new administration has also reopened Title VI investigations into many of the same institutions that had already reached settlement agreements over alleged antisemitism with OCR under Biden, said Harold Jordan, nationwide education equity coordinator at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

However, quantifying the Education Department’s efforts to resolve both Islamophobia and antisemitism cases under the Trump administration is difficult. Although the administration has been publicly lighting a fire under schools for their handling of alleged antisemitism incidents, it has not updated its website to reflect any pending civil rights investigations since Jan. 14, 2025 — the Tuesday before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Prior to the inauguration, OCR updated its pending and settled investigations every Tuesday for the sake of public transparency.

“The Office for Civil Rights should not be picking and choosing whose rights are important,” said Lhamon, who cracked down on Title VI violations following Oct. 7 while at OCR. “So you know, it’s very disturbing to me to hear only about some kinds of harm in the press releases and the public announcements of the department now.”

The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive’s multiple requests for comment on whether it intends to protect Muslim students and students from Muslim-majority countries as it is protecting Jewish and Israeli students, or on the status of complaints involving alleged Islamophobia especially in light of increased incidents following Oct. 7.

Backdrop of rising Islamophobia

As the Trump administration is seemingly sidelining Muslim and Arab students, incidents of Islamophobia on school grounds rise.

In 2024, education discrimination was among the most common types of complaints filed with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy organization, according to the group’s annual report released March 11. That’s in addition to complaints of bullying of Muslim students, the CAIR report said.

CAIR is expecting Muslim students’ Title VI civil rights complaints to only increase under the current administration and is urging the Trump administration to oppose both antisemitism and Islamophobia, along with all forms of bigotry.

The ACLU agrees. “We want every allegation of discrimination that falls within the purview of that department — you know, race, gender, national origin, etc. — to be taken seriously,” said Jordan.

“That includes students who have complained that they are being mistreated because they are Muslim. And that does not appear to be happening in the current administration at this moment.”

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify Harold Jordan’s affiliation.

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March 13, 2025
Half of OCR eliminated after Trump Education Department layoffs

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The U.S. Department of Education has let go of hundreds of its employees charged with protecting the civil rights of students and educators. The agency also shuttered seven of its 12 civil rights enforcement offices, according to former department employees.

Offices in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston and Cleveland have been closed. Those in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City and Seattle remain open, as well as the OCR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In total, the seven closed offices of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights oversaw half of the nation’s states, impacting nearly 60,000 public schools and over 30 million K-12 students.

Those fired include scores of civil rights attorneys, according to an internal memo from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. The union represents nearly 1,000 of the roughly 1,300 Education Department employees laid off Tuesday evening as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to gut the department, including at least 240 OCR staff.

More than 6,000 investigations impacted

“The Department of Education has turned its back on civil rights in schools,” said Catherine Lhamon, who led OCR under the Biden administration. “It’s not possible to resolve cases… effectively with fewer than half the investigative staff that the office had had two days ago”

The agency’s civil rights enforcement arm is responsible for implementing protections for all students, including underserved students. It is tasked with ensuring that, among others, students with disabilities, students from all racial backgrounds, and sexual assault survivors have equal access to education.

Doing so requires investigations of alleged civil rights violations and compliance reviews of school systems that sometimes take years — even with all 12 offices operating and fully staffed. The offices that were closed were in charge of many of those cases.

“You’re talking about cases being in the middle of mediation right now,” said Victoria DeLano, who worked for the Atlanta office as an equal opportunity specialist prior to her termination.

The cases OCR settles with schools and universities often set the tone for civil rights policies and practices in schools nationwide. The seven offices shuttered had over 6,000 open investigations as of Jan. 14, according to OCR’s website that was last updated under the Biden administration.

With the abrupt closures and layoffs, however, much of that is up in the air.

“I can’t even comprehend it — the fallout that this is going to have,” said DeLano.

Offices close as complaints climb

In the past few years, the office’s caseload had been steadily climbing. In fiscal year 2023, the office received 19,201 complaints, representing a 2% increase from 2022 and nearly triple the number of complaints in 2009.

Prior to the new administration and its sweeping layoffs, each OCR investigative staff was juggling a caseload of about 50 complaints, which Lhamon already considered “untenable.” In fact, the high number of cases and slim number of investigators at the time had prompted former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to request more funding from Congress, which would have helped hire additional OCR staff.

In contrast, the Trump administration has cited a desire to reduce the Education Department’s budget as part of the reason driving the sweeping layoffs.

Some of those cut as part of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s effort to “end bureaucratic bloat” were onboarded just months before being fired without notice, according to DeLano, who was hired in December under the former administration and then terminated in February.

DeLano realized she was out of a job after being locked out of her government laptop, and she only received a formal notice of termination after six days of being denied access.

“It was done just completely heartless,” DeLano said. “I cannot believe that 50% of OCR is gone.”

The massive cuts come after the administration told OCR staff to hit pause on its open investigations, and — instead of addressing public complaints — directed its resources to addressing the president’s priorities, like scaling back Title IX to exclude LGBTQ+ rights. Following a Feb. 5 executive order barring transgender women from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identities, the Education Department launched multiple investigations into athletic associations, colleges and schools over their sports policies.

Now, the slashing of over half of OCR’s civil rights offices leaves many questions unanswered: What happens to the thousands of cases under the jurisdiction of the impacted offices? Who, if anyone, will monitor school compliance in those regions? Where do students or educators in the regions overseen by those offices file their civil rights complaints? If schools in those areas have questions, how will they access resources like civil rights trainings that were previously offered by the OCR?

The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive’s multiple requests for comment.

“Frankly, we are in uncharted territory now,” said Lhamon. “Because the department has done something that I believe to be unlawful — to close these offices and to ensure that there are insufficient staff to meet the quantum of need that we have about civil rights.”

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March 13, 2025
Education Department to cut nearly 1,300 employees as Trump vows to eliminate agency (PBS News Hour)

Higher Education Inquirer : Education Department to cut nearly 1,300 employees as Trump vows to eliminate agency (PBS News Hour)

Education Department to cut nearly 1,300 employees as Trump vows to eliminate agency (PBS News Hour)

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March 12, 2025
Trump administration’s reasons for detaining Mahmoud Khalil threaten free speech

It’s been three days since the government arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. This afternoon, the administration finally stated the basis for its actions. Its explanation threatens the free speech of millions of people.

Yesterday, an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law.” This was confirmed today by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who announced Khalil is being targeted under a law that she characterized as allowing the secretary of state to personally deem individuals “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

Leavitt said Khalil “sid[ed] with terrorists,” “organized group protests” that “disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe,” and distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda.” She also said the Department of Homeland Security is trying to track down “other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity” at Columbia University.

The law Leavitt appears to be citing requires the secretary of state to have “reasonable ground to believe” the person’s “presence or activities in the United States . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The administration is wielding this standard — deportation for people whose activities could cause “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” — to arrest and detain an individual graduate student. In explaining how he met this standard, the administration did not allege Khalil committed a crime. But it did explicitly cite the content of his speech, characterizing it as “anti-American” and “pro-Hamas.” Protesting government policy is protected by the First Amendment, as is rhetorical support for a terrorist group (if not directly coordinated with it, which the government has not alleged here).

Disrupting college classes and harassing students is not protected expression, to be sure, and Leavitt stated that Khalil organized protests that may have done so. But the administration has not detailed Khalil’s specific actions with respect to those protests, so it remains unclear whether Khalil himself violated any campus rules against discriminatory harassment. Whether any such violation justifies detention and deportation is a separate question. In either adjudication, Khalil must be afforded due process.

There are millions of people lawfully present in the United States without citizenship. The administration’s actions will cause them to self-censor rather than risk government retaliation. Lawful permanent residents and students on visas will fear a knock on the door simply for speaking their minds.

If constitutionally protected speech may render someone deportable by the secretary of state, the administration has free rein to arrest and detain any non-citizen whose speech the government dislikes. The inherent vagueness of the “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” standard does not provide notice as to what speech is or is not prohibited. The administration’s use of it will foster a culture of self-censorship and fear.

This is America. We don’t throw people in detention centers because of their politics. Doing so betrays our national commitment to freedom of speech.

FIRE social media post about the government’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil, March 10, 2025.

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March 11, 2025
Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)

Higher Education Inquirer : Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)

Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)

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March 11, 2025
FIRE demands answers from Trump admin officials on arrest of Mahmoud Khalil
FIRE Letter to Trump Administration Officials on Detention of Mahmoud Khalil

March 10, 2025

The Honorable Marco Rubio
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C St., NW
Washington, DC 20520

The Honorable Kristi Noem
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Office of the Executive Secretary
Mail Stop 0525
Washington, DC 20528

The Honorable Pamela Bondi
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20530

Mr. Todd Lyons
Acting Director, ICE Leadership
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
500 12th St., SW
Washington, DC 20536

Dear Secretary Rubio, Attorney General Bondi, Secretary Noem, and Acting Director Lyons:

On March 8, agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who has been involved in activism related to the current conflict in Gaza.^[1] According to Mr. Khalil’s attorney, the agents who arrested him initially said his visa had been revoked.^[2] Upon being informed that Mr. Khalil is a lawful permanent resident, whose status therefore cannot be revoked by unilateral DHS action, the agents arrested him anyway. When Mr. Khalil’s attorney asked to see a warrant for his arrest, DHS declined to produce one.^[3] As of this writing, Mr. Khalil remains in DHS detention.

Mr. Khalil recently received a graduate degree from Columbia University, where he has participated in student protests intended to express opposition to policies of the U.S. and Israeli governments. On March 9, DHS stated that Mr. Khalil’s arrest was made “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” and that “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”^[4] Secretary Rubio, alluding to Mr. Khalil’s arrest, stated, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”^[5] On March 10, President Trump remarked on Mr. Khalil’s arrest, noting that the government intends to seek removal of any foreign students who engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”^[6]

Demonstrations occurring on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7, 2023, have included both constitutionally protected speech and unlawful conduct, but the government has not made clear the factual or legal basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest. The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech. This lack of clarity is chilling protected expression, as other permanent residents cannot know whether their lawful speech could be deemed to “align to” a terrorist organization and jeopardize their immigration status.

The federal government must not use immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the administration. It must also afford due process to anyone facing arrest and detention, and must be clear and transparent about the basis for its actions, to avoid chilling protected speech. To that end, we request answers to the following questions:
- What was the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest on March 8?
- What is the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s detention?
- What is the specific legal and factual basis on which you are seeking revocation of Mr. Khalil’s green card?
- Will Mr. Khalil be afforded the due process protections required by U.S. law?
- Is it your intention to seek the revocation of lawful immigration status on the basis of speech protected by the First Amendment?^[7]
We request a substantive response to this letter no later than close of business on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Any delay in resolving these questions risks further chilling protected speech.

Sincerely,

Carolyn Iodice
Legislative and Policy Director
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Notes

[1] Ginger Adams Otis, ICE Arrests Columbia Student Who Helped Lead Pro-Palestinian Protests, Wall St. J. (March 9, 2025, 10:07 pm), https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/dhs-detains-columbia-student-who-helped-lead-pro-palestinian-protests-fbbd8196.

[2] Eliza Shapiro, Immigration Authorities Arrest Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia, N.Y. Times (March 9, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/nyregion/ice-arrests-palestinian-activist-columbia-protests.html.

[3] Canada’s New Leader, ICE Arrest Columbia Student, Congress and The Budget, NPR (March 10, 2025, 6:05 AM), https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1237260282.

[4] Homeland Security (@DHSgov), X (March 9, 2025, 9:29PM), https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1898908955675357314.

[5] Marco Rubio (@marcorubio), X (March 9, 6:10PM), https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1898858967532441945.

[6] Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Social (March 10, 2025, 1:05PM), https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114139222625284782.

[7] Note there is no categorical exception to the First Amendment for speech that “aligns to” or even expresses explicit support for a foreign terrorist organization.
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March 10, 2025
Trump Budget Will Reveal How Extensive ED is Dismantled in 2025

Some time this March, President Trump’s US Budget proposal will be submitted. It would not be out of the realm of possibility that budget cuts to the US Department of Education exceed 70 percent if the $1.7 Trillion Student Loan Portfolio is transferred to the US Treasury. President Biden’s 2024 Budget for the US Department of Education was published March 11, 2024. This is what the proposal typically looks like.

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March 10, 2025
Trump order restricts PSLF eligibility for certain nonprofits

Despite a public push to cancel student debt among civil servants, only a small number of Public Service Loan Forgiveness applications were approved by the first Trump administration.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In his latest executive action, President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to limit eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

The order, issued late Friday evening, would require the Education Department to go through a complex and lengthy process known as negotiated rule making, so the directive doesn’t change anything immediately. And Education Secretary Linda McMahon pledged at her confirmation hearing that PSLF will not be eliminated completely, as “that’s the law.” However, the changes could lead to the denial of student loan forgiveness for thousands of nonprofit employees.

The administration argued the order was a necessary step to “restore the program” and end the subsidization of “illegal activities” such as “illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order.”

But Democrats and debt relief and consumer protection advocates say it’s another attempt to weaponize the federal government and block funds from reaching public servants in fields the president disagrees with.

“Don’t be fooled, today’s executive order is blatantly illegal,” Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement Friday. “It is an attack on working families everywhere and will have a chilling effect on our public service workforce doing the work every day to support our local communities.”

Like Trump’s other executive orders, this directive is likely to face legal challenges.

Congress created the PSLF program in 2007 with bipartisan support under former president George W. Bush. It was designed to incentivize Americans to work in public service, by promising student loan forgiveness to federal, state, local or tribal government staff members; civilians working in the military; and the employees of certain nonprofit organizations after they make 10 years of qualifying payments on an approved federal loan repayment plan.

Historically, recognized nonprofits have included emergency management and crime-reduction services, public interest and civil rights legal groups, and institutions of public health and education. More than two million borrowers are eligible for the program, according to December data from the Education Department, the Associated Press reported.

But gaining access to the program’s benefits hasn’t always been easy. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the American Federation of Teachers sued then–education secretary Betsy DeVos, alleging “gross mismanagement” of the program. Data showed that of the roughly 76,000 applications submitted between 2017 and the filing of the lawsuit, only about 1 percent had been approved.

Although the department reached a settlement in fall 2021 and committed to reconsider every application it denied, when the first Trump administration exited office, only 7,000 Americans had received forgiveness. Comparatively, the Biden administration prioritized making the program easier to access and provided more than $74 billion in relief to more than one million borrowers over the course of four years.

Now, under the new stipulations, fewer borrowers could see relief, advocates said.

“The PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means,” the order says. “The Secretary of Education shall propose revisions … that ensure the definition of ‘public service’ excludes organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose.”

According to the order, activities that would disqualify a nonprofit include: aiding or abetting violations of federal immigration laws, supporting terrorism, engaging in violence for the purpose of obstructing federal policy, the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children “or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents,” and aiding and abetting illegal discrimination.

Although the president didn’t say so directly, experts interpret the order as yet another attempt to discourage activism and chill efforts Trump disagrees with, such as diversity, equity and inclusion; LGBTQ+ advocacy; pro bono defense for undocumented immigrants; and Palestinian statehood.

Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan and chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, praised the president’s intentions in a statement, saying President Trump is protecting Jewish students from “the hatred they’ve been enduring” on college campuses.

“Federal dollars shouldn’t fund antisemitism,” he said. “President Trump is stepping up by preventing these activists from receiving windfalls in forgiveness benefits footed by taxpayers.”

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and former chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, says Trump is “holding resources owed to hardworking Americans hostage.”

“President Trump is once again trying to use his office to force his extreme political views on the American people by choking off promised relief for people who’ve served our country in ways he disagrees with,” she said. “It is as outrageous as it is un-American.”

But the Trump administration says the order is about more than just preventing “subsidized wrongdoing.” In his view, it’s also a matter of limiting “perverse incentives” for higher education institutions.

Rather than alleviating worker shortages, the president said, PSLF encourages colleges and universities to increase the cost of tuition and load students in “low-need majors” with “unsustainable” debt.

To that, debt-relief advocates like the Student Debt Crisis Center say, “Public service workers are the backbone of this country.”

“This executive order is both illegal and deeply troubling for all nonprofit workers,” SDCC president Natalia Abrams said in a statement. “Relentless political attacks on education and existing programs are not just policy decisions—they disrupt the lives and financial stability of Americans with student debt and their families. This must stop.”

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March 8, 2025
Trump admin cancels $400M in grants at Columbia U

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.

Had a productive meeting with Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong today. Look forward to working together to protect all students on their campus.

The Trump Administration will not allow the continued harassment and threats of violence against students. https://t.co/FL3YqiQWcD

— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) March 7, 2025

‘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…

[image or embed]

— 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.

No student should feel unsafe on their college campus. @POTUS has been clear: any college or university that allows blatant antisemitism to continue on its campus will risk losing federal funding. pic.twitter.com/gnSFYBD3LR

— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) March 7, 2025

“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.

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March 7, 2025
Trump administration cancels $400M of Columbia’s grants and contracts amid antisemitism probe

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Four federal agencies announced Friday they are immediately canceling $400 million of grants and contracts to Columbia University over what they described as the Ivy League institution’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

The cancellation of the grants and contracts comes just four days after the Trump administration’s newly created Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced a probe into Columbia.

The four agencies — the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Education and U.S. General Services Administration — said more cancellations will follow. The university has over $5 billion in federal grant commitments, according to the announcement.

“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a Friday statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

A Columbia spokesperson said Friday that officials are reviewing the announcement and plan to work with the federal government to restore the funding.

“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the spokesperson said.

The four agencies threatened to take similar actions against other colleges.

“The decisive action by the DOJ, HHS, ED, and GSA to cancel Columbia’s grants and contracts serves as a notice to every school and university that receives federal dollars that this Administration will use all the tools at its disposal to protect Jewish students and end anti-Semitism on college campuses,” they said in Friday’s announcement.

The antisemitism task force is already poised to review several other high-profile colleges. Last week, the Justice Department said the group would visit 10 college campuses, including Columbia, where antisemitic incidents have been reported since October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.

The other campuses are George Washington University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Berkeley, University of Minnesota and University of Southern California.

Even more recently, the task force on Wednesday announced a probe into the University of California over allegations that it discriminated against employees by not doing enough to prevent an antisemitic and hostile work environment.

Groups raise concerns over free speech

Columbia has drawn Republican policymakers’ ire for months over the way university administrators have responded to pro-Palestinian protests on its campus. Protesters erected an encampment on the university’s lawn in April, sparking similar demonstrations nationwide that led to hundreds of student arrests.

This past fall, many colleges tightened their protest rules to deter encampments. Since then, Columbia and other high-profile institutions largely haven’t seen the same long-running encampments that rocked their campuses last spring, though protesters have held sit-ins and other demonstrations.

Columbia itself has made several policy changes — including some that have attracted criticism from free speech scholars.

The university’s Office of Institutional Equity — a newly created committee — has recently been bringing disciplinary cases against students who have criticized Israel, the Associated Press reported earlier this week.

“Based on how these cases have proceeded, the university now appears to be responding to governmental pressure to suppress and chill protected speech,” Amy Greer, an attorney advising the students under review, told AP.

According to Columbia’s website, the university has also hired more public safety officers, increased campus patrols, restricted access to the main campus, and streamlined the process for filing complaints about discrimination and harassment.

The canceled grants, meanwhile, follow through on President Donald Trump’s promises to crack down on universities for the way they’ve handled student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Trump supercharged those threats this week in a Truth Social post, saying his administration would pull funding from “any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” He also threatened to deport or imprison students involved in demonstrations.

Free speech and civil liberties groups have slammed the post.

In an open letter, the American Civil Liberties Union this week urged college leaders not to bow to pressure from policymakers to curtail free speech at their campuses.

“Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities,” Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU and the letter’s co-author, said in a statement.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression also took issue with Trump’s post, arguing that the president couldn’t revoke federal funding over civil rights violations without the government taking colleges to federal court or holding administrative hearings.

“As FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech,” the group said in a web post Tuesday. “Schools will censor first and ask questions later.”

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March 7, 2025