Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands

Acquiescing to demands from the Trump administration to address alleged antisemitism on campus, Columbia University has agreed to overhaul disciplinary processes, ban masks at protests, add 36 officers with the authority to make arrests and appoint a new senior vice provost to oversee academic programs focused on the Middle East, among other changes.

The decision, announced Friday afternoon, is the latest move in Columbia’s ongoing face-off with the federal government over last year’s pro-Palestinian protests, which spawned the nationwide encampment movement. Columbia yielded despite concerns about the legality of the demands, as well as of an associated effort by the Trump administration to strip the university of $400 million in research funding.

“We have worked hard to address the legitimate concerns raised both from within and without our Columbia community, including by our regulators, with respect to the discrimination, harassment, and antisemitic acts our Jewish community has faced in the wake of October 7, 2023,” university officials said in a Friday statement.

The acknowledgment is a rare admission of antisemitism on campus, despite the fact that a Title VI investigation by the Department of Education has not yet been completed.

Legal scholars at Columbia and in conservative circles have noted that the Trump administration’s demands were likely unlawful. However, it seemed the university had no desire for a protracted legal fight.

The Agreement

Columbia announced additional efforts that the Trump administration didn’t request, including advancing the university’s Tel Aviv Center (though initial details are sparse) and creating a free K-12 curriculum “focused on topics such as how to have difficult conversations, create classrooms that foster open inquiry, dialogue across difference and topics related to antisemitism.”

Columbia did not place the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies Department into “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years, as the Trump administration demanded, but the parties appeared to reach a compromise. A new senior vice provost will review a broader range of programs, expanding beyond the department Trump targeted to include “the Center for Palestine Studies; the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies; Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies; the Middle East Institute; the Tel Aviv and Amman global hubs; [and] the School of International and Public Affairs Middle East Policy major,” according to the university.

The new senior provost, who has not yet been named, will review programs “to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced” and evaluate “all aspects of leadership and curriculum” among other changes, which may include academic restructuring.

The full list of changes can be found here.

Interim president Katrina Armstrong announced the move in a statement titled “Sharing Progress on Our Priorities,” calling it “a privilege to share our progress and plans” after a difficult year of protests and scrutiny.

“At all times, we are guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make,” Armstrong wrote in the message posted Friday afternoon, which she signed, “Standing together for Columbia.”

Critics, however, have argued that yielding to the Trump administration undermines academic freedom and urged Columbia to fight the demands.

‘Hardly Business as Usual’

After the news broke—first reported by The Wall Street Journal—many critics panned the move.

In a Friday press call, American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson blasted Columbia for failing to stand up to Trump.

“This is not the outcome we wanted to see. We wanted to see Columbia stand up for their rights for academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campus and we did not expect for them to not only capitulate to the demands of the federal government but actually go beyond the initial demands as far as we can tell,” Wolfson said.

Free speech groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and PEN America also condemned the concessions by Columbia leadership.

“Columbia’s concessions today strike at core principles of academic freedom and self-governance in the higher education sector. This is hardly business as usual. The Trump administration’s demands go far beyond the typical requests the federal government might make to address issues of discrimination and harassment,” Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at PEN, said in a statement. “And the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia was a clear attempt to intimidate the university into complying—which it now has.”

FIRE warned about the implications for free speech and academic freedom in a statement on X.

“The federal government abandoned its existing process to brow-beat Columbia—and Columbia folded. Higher education reform shouldn’t resemble a shakedown. Colleges and universities shouldn’t be bullied into accepting speech-restrictive demands because the government dangles a $400 million check over an institution’s head,” Tyler Coward, FIRE lead counsel for government affairs, wrote. “Any changes made as a result of this flawed process are inherently suspect.”

Faculty members at Columbia have also expressed concern.

“This is an unprecedented intervention into academic freedom—never before in Columbia’s 250+ years has the federal government tried to exert control over a department before. And Trump et al. are only getting started,” Columbia history professor Karl Jacoby wrote on Bluesky.

Outside experts pointed to the likelihood that more universities will give in to Trump’s threats now that Columbia has yielded.

“Trump gets exactly what he wants from Columbia. Next up: most of the big-name institutions in American higher education. This is a turning point in the history of our industry,” Robert Kelchen, a professor of education and head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, wrote in a Bluesky post.

The Trump administration has targeted dozens of other institutions, launching Title VI investigations into institutions over alleged antisemitism and race-exclusionary practices. 

Elsewhere in the Ivy League, Trump has targeted the University of Pennsylvania, pausing $175 million in federal funding over “policies forcing women to compete with men in sports,” according to a White House social media post. The move comes after transgender athlete Lia Thomas competed for Penn in 2022 and won the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA Women’s swimming and diving championships. Penn currently has no transgender athletes on any active rosters.

The vast majority of university presidents have said little or nothing at all about the Columbia agreement with the Trump administration, continuing the silence of leaders in recent months.

But Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber argued in an op-ed in The Atlantic that Trump’s broadside against higher education poses the greatest risk to institutions “since the Red Scare of the 1950s.” Eisgruber doubled down on that argument in an interview with PBS NewsHour Friday and warned against making concessions.

“What concerns me so deeply about what’s happening at Columbia and elsewhere right now is that the government seems to be using that funding stream to force concessions that are violations of academic freedom,” Eisgruber said.