White House touts Columbia deal, critics see dangerous precedent

Columbia University's agreement to pay more than US$220 million (S$280 million) to the US government to resolve federal probes was not capitulation but a means to restore vital public funding, the university's acting president said on Thursday (July 24).

But critics expressed concern about a harmful precedent in what they see as President Donald Trump's push for greater control over elite US colleges.

Trump has targeted Columbia and other universities over the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled college campuses last year.

Harvard University is fighting the Trump administration in court and critics have likened the Columbia deal to extortion.

Columbia faced the loss of billions of dollars in future federal funds and the potential revocation of the visa status of thousands of international students, said Acting President Claire Shipman.

"This was not capitulation," Shipman told CNN, adding that the deal protected the university's "academic integrity".

[[nid:719812]]

Under the settlement, Columbia will pay US$200 million to the US Treasury and a further US$21 million to a fund to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees following the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, senior administration officials said.

In return, the university regained access to some US$1.7 billion in federal funding and grants, Shipman said.

The deal comes after the Trump administration in March penalised Columbia over how it handled last year's protests by canceling US$400 million in federal funding. It contended that Columbia's response to alleged antisemitism and harassment of Jewish and Israeli members of the university community was insufficient.

The school later acquiesced to a series of demands that included scrutiny of departments offering courses on the Middle East and other concessions that were widely condemned by US academics.

Wednesday's deal formalised many of those concessions in what Education Secretary Linda McMahon called an "incredible win" for the government.

[[nid:720061]]

"It is our hope this is going to be a template for other universities around the country," McMahon told cable network NewsNation. "We're already seeing other universities taking these measures before investigation."

McMahon said Columbia agreed to discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations, bring viewpoint diversity to their Middle Eastern studies programs, eliminate race preferences from their hiring and admissions practices, and end DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

Columbia law professor David Pozen called the agreement a "shakedown" and said it set a precedent for "pay-to-play" deals the Trump administration is seeking with other schools.

"The agreement gives legal form to an extortion scheme," Pozen said in a blog post, calling it the first time antisemitism and DEI have been invoked as the basis for a government-enforced restructuring of a private university.

Shipman said the agreement contained no provisions that "shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech."

[[nid:720454]]