Columbia Agrees to Pay $200M to Settle Trump Fight

The Trump administration has won unprecedented concessions from Columbia University in a sweeping settlement — with the Ivy League university paying more than $220 million and pledging to reverse racially discriminatory practices and resolve civil rights violations against Jewish students, The Post can exclusively reveal.

The settlement, under which Columbia will agree to submit to independent monitoring to ensure it is complying with merit-based hiring and admissions requirements, is likely to put pressure on other schools — like Harvard — that have crossed the White House over tolerance of extreme Jew-hatred on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas against Israel.

The resolution comes after just four months of negotiations between Columbia and Trump, striking a stark contrast with Harvard, which decided to drag the administration into court for stripping the school of $2.6 billion in grants and other funding.

A source familiar with the negotiations noted that $400 million yanked from Columbia in March when talks began would have snowballed to affect billions of dollars of university research grants and other funding.

In addition to paying the feds $200 million to settle their discrimination claims, Columbia will also fork over more than $20 million to Jewish employees who were discriminated against amid fierce antisemitic demonstrations that followed the Hamas attack.

The Trump administration is touting the employees’ sum as the largest public settlement of its kind in nearly 20 years and the highest for any victim who’s lodged a Title VI complaint.

The Ivy League school has also agreed to end all programming that discriminated against faculty or students — bringing it into full compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-based affirmative action — and create some yet-to-be-announced faculty positions in the name of broadening intellectual diversity.

The settlement further calls for Columbia to maintain a trained security force blocking demonstrations in academic spaces and coordinate with the NYPD to prevent a repeat of the takeover of Hamilton Hall by anti-Israel rioters in the spring of 2024 — while the university will impose a complete ban on masked protests. Facial coverings will still be allowed for medical or religious reasons.

Disciplinary rules will no longer be governed by the faculty senate but, rather, by the Office of the Provost. On Tuesday, Columbia announced that dozens of students were going to be suspended or penalized — and a handful expelled — for a recent disruptive library demonstration and anti-Israel tent encampment that engulfed the campus last year.

The university’s admissions office will step up vetting for foreign applicants, quiz potential students about their reasons for wanting to study in the US and share that data with the feds, while Columbia’s reliance on international enrollment will be cut back.

As part of its participation in the federal Student and Exchange Visitor (SEVIS) Program, the school will now be expected to report any disciplinary actions for those holding visas — including suspensions, expulsions or arrests.

Experts are also supposed to consult with administrators to prevent the threat of terrorist financing or other illicit funds flowing to the school.

Additionally, the Morningside Heights school will comply with Title IX and no longer force women to compete with biological men in sports or use their locker rooms, housing or other facilities.

Regional programs — specifically the Center for Palestine Studies; the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies; Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies; the Middle East Institute; and learning hubs in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Amman, Jordan — have been under strict review by the senior vice provost to ensure they are “comprehensive and balanced” since spring, the university said.

Finally, most of the $400 million in research grant money and the more than $1.2 billion of frozen federal funding yanked from the prestigious school — representing roughly 8% of its taxpayer funding — will be returned.

Grant eligibility will be fully reinstated once the school implements all terms of the agreement. The Trump-Columbia deal will sunset in three years, and a Resolution Monitor will provide “semi-annual” reports on the university’s compliance.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” said Columbia acting president Claire Shipman.

“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.”

Leaked terms of the negotiations in recent weeks have revealed that Columbia was willing to release its admissions and hiring data to the Trump administration and pay the $200 million fine after concerns were raised about its failure to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling.

In March, the administration issued a series of nine demands as a “precondition” for Columbia receiving more federal funding, requiring the elite university to commit to wide-ranging policy changes and accept additional oversight.

These included promoting academic diversity and “institutional neutrality” among faculty and stepped-up enforcement of existing disciplinary policies.

The final agreement declared: “Columbia may not use personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination.”

Columbia was also supposed to ban masks on campus protesters, hold accountable those who violate the school’s code of conduct, and punish students who participated in the Hamilton Hall storming.

One of the most sweeping demands was that the school’s Middle East, South Asian and African Studies departments be placed under “academic receivership” for at least five years, which would put decision-making authority in the hands of someone outside of the departments.

A new senior vice provost role will carry out that function for the life of Wednesday’s agreement.

Days later, Columbia gave into many of the demands, agreeing to numerous policy reforms.

The school has been through several leadership shakeups in the last year over repeated failures to bring a stop to antisemitic protests and incidents on campus.

In the spring of 2024, its campus was the site of an anti-Israel tent encampment in the weeks leading up to graduation. When the makeshift tent city was finally dismantled, the demonstration escalated into the Hamilton Hall takeover.

That August, then-Columbia University president Minouche Shafik suddenly resigned, citing a “period of turmoil” for her shocking departure.

Her interim successor, Katrina Armstrong, was ousted just seven months later by Columbia’s board of trustees after publicly agreeing with Trump officials to uphold a ban on masks worn to conceal identities — but pledging to faculty in private that she would not.

She was replaced by Shipman, co-chair of the Columbia board of trustees, who was exposed earlier this month for trying to oust the only Jewish member of that board, and urging the school to install an “Arab” board member “quickly.”

Shipman’s incendiary personal messages from 2023 and 2024 — in which she also appeared to downplay fears of campus antisemitism as irrational — sparked a probe by the House Education Committee.

Republican lawmakers say they are working to decide if new legislation is needed to hold university leaders more accountable amid a troubling uptick of anti-Israel sentiment on campuses nationwide.