Columbia

Caleb Sanchez, a Cali boy, packed his memories of sunshine, beaches and In-N-Out burgers to get an Ivy League education and football experience at Columbia University in New York.

He became one of the most talked about freshman quarterbacks at the end of last season, passing for 241 yards and three touchdowns in a 21-12 win over Brown and passing for 201 yards in a 19-11 win over Cornell that helped Columbia win the Ivy League title.

Then came the real challenge — snow, a blizzard and freezing temperatures.

“I was very shocked,” he said. “I was warned every day the winter would be hard. I didn’t expect it to be as cold as it was.”

It wasn’t cold enough to discourage Sanchez from continuing his quest to balance athletics and academics. He began his sophomore season on Saturday as the backup quarterback in Columbia’s 38-14 loss to Lafayette. It’s another experience that he got used to at St. John Bosco, waiting until his senior year to become the starting quarterback and prove his ability,

Quarterback Caleb Sanchez of St. John Bosco.

(Craig Weston)

He’s one of 39 graduates of Southern Section schools to be playing Ivy League football this season. Harvard-Westlake and Loyola have the most with five players each.

There’s going to be standouts, such as Princeton defensive back Tahj Owens (Loyola), heading into his fourth season, and Yale receiver Nico Brown (Edison), who had five catches for 119 yards and one touchdown in his season debut against Holy Cross on Saturday.

Sanchez was able to redshirt last season as a freshman, having played only in the final three games, and the goal is to be a standout the next three seasons, earn his valuable Columbia degree and spend a fifth year at perhaps a big-time college program.

He has no regrets of seeking out an Ivy League experience after helping St. John Bosco reach the Division 1 championship game in 2023.

“I’ll leave here with one of the top degrees in the world,” he said.

That’s the attraction in a league where the eight schools don’t participate in NIL revenue sharing with students but will finally let football teams participate in the FCS playoffs this season.

The students have to be all in for academics and athletics.

“We’re 100% in school, 100% in football,” Sanchez said. “There’s no help for football players. Professors don’t care. They treat you as normal students.”

Sanchez, 20, rarely has free time. It’s classes, meetings, homework, practices, watching film, then sleep. His transition last year was challenging in that the Columbia offense was much different than that of St. John Bosco. He had to learn plays needing 20 to 30 words to call from a listening device in his helmet where just four words were used to call plays at St. John Bosco.

He’s 6 feet 3½ and 217 pounds, and could be preparing to have a season that will draw lots of attention. Certainly looking on and rooting from home will be his younger brother, Ryu, a seventh-grader with a future in football and academics.

Look for lots of good news from the Sanchez brothers in the coming years.

As for the coming weather change, Sanchez said he’s ready.

“I’m prepared now. Winter is not going to shock me.”

Can anyone deliver In-N-Out to New York?

Brown: DB Elias Archie, St. John Bosco; OL Kai Faucher, Harvard-Westlake; DL Mitch Mooney, San Marino; DL Caden Harman, Sierra Canyon.

Columbia: WR Caden Butler, Chaparral; DB Ethan Fullerton, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame; QB Caleb Sanchez, St. John Bosco; LB Patrick Sodl, Loyola; DL Will Matthew, Orange Vista; TE Santiago Hernandez, Harvard-Westlake; WR Elliot Cooper, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame; DL Shawn Lin, Loyola; DL Austin Coronado, Glendora.

Cornell: DB Rayjohn White, Bishop Amat; DB Brayon Crawford, Village Christian; WR AJ Holmes, Harvard-Westlake; QB Cameron Shannon, Riverside North; LB Darryl Davis, Culver City; LB Connor Klein, Loyola; TE Brandon Gilbert, Murrieta Valley.

Dartmouth: RB Desmin Jackson, Orange Lutheran; OL Ryan Turk, Loyola.

Harvard: K Dylan Fingersh, Capistrano Valley.

Pennsylvania: RB Julien Stokes, Grace Brethren; DB Alec Wills, Los Alamitos; LB Trevor Pajak, Mater Dei; WR Dylan Karz, Brentwood; K Josh Barnavon, Harvard-Westlake.

Princeton: DB Tahj Owens, Loyola; RB Kai Honda, Gardena Serra; DB D’Shawn Jones, Sierra Canyon; LB Jalen Jones, Santa Margarita; DB Justice Croffie, Los Alamitos.

Yale: WR Nico Brown, Edison; QB Marshall Howe, Harvard-Westlake; DL Ezekiel Larry, Sierra Canyon; DB Dillon Rickenbacker, St. John Bosco; TE Scott Truninger, Corona del Mar; WR Davis Wong, Brentwood.

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia on Thursday sued to stop President Trump’s deployment of National Guard during his law enforcement intervention in Washington.

The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the surge of troops essentially amounts to an “involuntary military occupation.” He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment, coinciding with an executive order Aug. 11, that now involves more than 1,000 troops is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

A federal judge in California recently ruled that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June was illegal.

The Republican administration is appealing that decision and Trump has said he is ready to order federal intervention in Chicago and Baltimore, despite staunch opposition in those Democrat-led cities. That court ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment to the new lawsuit.

Members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December, according to a Guard official. While that does not necessarily mean all those troops will serve that long, it is a strong indication that their role will not wind down soon.

Several GOP-led states have added National Guard troops to the ranks of those patrolling the streets and neighborhoods of the nation’s capital.

Schwalb’s filing contends the deployment also violates the Home Rule Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, because Trump acted without the mayor’s consent and is wrongly asserting federal control over units from other states.

The city’s attorney general, an elected official, is its top legal officer and is separate from Washington’s federal U.S. attorney, who is appointed by the president.

The lawsuit is the second from Schwalb against the Trump administration since the president asserted control over the city’s police department and sent in the Guard, actions that have been with protests from some residents.

Trump has said the operation is necessary to combat crime in the district, and Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has pointed to a steep drop in offenses such as carjackings since it began.

Violent crime has been an issue in the capital for years, though data showed it was on the decline at the start of Trump’s intervention.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump’s demand for a whopping $1-billion payment from UCLA sent shock waves through the UC system. For those of us on the inside, the announcement elicited a range of responses. Some faculty and staff reacted with horror, others voiced increasing fear about the ongoing assault on academic freedom, and some merely muttered in sad resignation to the new reality.

I laughed. The president has decided to poke the bear — and the Bears and the Bruins, too. Whether Trump knows it or not, targeting the University of California is very different from going after private Ivy League institutions with deep historical ties to political power.

Pressuring UC to pay a large sum has another dimension entirely: It’s going after state tax dollars paid by the people of California. This should matter to folks on the left and the right, to those who venerate higher education and those who vote in favor of states’ rights against federal overreach.

Californians across the political spectrum should repurpose one of Trump’s own slogans: “Stop the steal.”

Unlike Columbia and Brown, which have paid off the Trump administration, UC is a public institution. That means, as new UC President James Milliken said, “we are stewards of taxpayer resources.” UC must answer to the people, not just to boards of trustees or senior administrators.

Indeed, as a professor at UC Santa Barbara, I consider myself to be employed by my fellow Californians. My job is to contribute to the fundamental mission laid out in the state’s “Master Plan”: to create new knowledge and educate the people of California. I take my responsibility even more seriously because I am also a product of UC; I earned my PhD at Berkeley and remain a proud Golden Bear. I am fully aware of what a positive effect a UC education can have on students and Californians everywhere.

A $1-billion payment to the federal government would have huge consequences — not only on the people’s university but also on the general welfare of our state, the world’s fourth-largest economy. UC is the second-largest employer in the state. We generate $82 billion in economic activity every year. More than 84% of our students come from California, and their degrees are proven to increase their lifetime earning potential. UC health centers treat millions of people every year, providing essential medical care. According to one striking study, “The economic output generated by UC-related spending is $4.4 billion larger than the economic output of the entire state of Wyoming and $16.1 billion larger than that of Vermont.”

We accomplish that in large part with the people’s money. For every dollar the state invests in us, we generate $21 of economic activity for the state. All of that activity generates $12 billion in tax revenue. We’re a great engine of growth.

You’d think a self-proclaimed genius and “self-made” business tycoon would know a good deal when he sees one.

To be sure, the supposed bases for demanding the extraordinary payment — antisemitism and civil rights abuses — are very serious. College students should expect to confront new ideas they may disagree with, but no one should be targeted for their beliefs. Full stop.

But there are more effective remedies for addressing any failures, as have already been pursued at UCLA. For Trump, though, the accusations are the pretext for punishing institutions that he doesn’t like and, as the Associated Press reports, rebuking political opponents such as Gov. Gavin Newsom. They are not reflective of a genuine concern for student rights.

Many of us have already sounded the alarm about the increasing financial challenges the UC system faces. Even last year, we had reached a critical breaking point — and that was before losing federal grant money.

But we haven’t given up and neither should the people. We all must fight back against this attempted seizure of taxpayer funds. It’s not enough to leave the task to political leaders; the people themselves must send the message.

Californians can continue to resist federal incursions by making it clear to the UC Board of Regents, elected representatives and everyone else that Californians will not tolerate a federal pressure campaign to take our state’s resources.

There are many reasons to be alarmed by Trump’s broader attack on higher education. But this time, Trump has crossed the public-private boundary and set his sights on state taxpayers’ money. Because we fund it, UC and everything it produces belongs to us. That means we all — no matter where we fall on the political spectrum — must stop the steal.

Giuliana Perrone, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, is the author of “Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law.”

Stanford University’s student newspaper is suing the Trump administration, claiming the threat to deport foreign students for speaking out against Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza is chilling free speech.

That threat is hampering the paper’s ability to cover campus demonstrations and to get protesters to speak on the record, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Northern California.

Some Stanford Daily writers, who are foreigners in the country on student visas, have even turned down assignments to write about unrest in the Middle East because they’re afraid they’ll be deported. Writers have also asked the paper to remove previously published stories from its website, citing the same concerns, the lawsuit says.

“In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,” the newspaper’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.

The suit accuses Trump administration officials, specifically Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristin Noem, of placing their statutory authority to deport a foreign visa holder whose beliefs they deem un-American ahead of the constitutional right — guaranteed by the 1st Amendment— to free speech.

“When a federal statute collides with First Amendment rights,” the newspaper’s lawyers wrote, “the Constitution prevails.”

Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, scoffed at the lawsuit, calling it “baseless.”

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” she said in a statement.

The lawsuit — which was filed by the 133-year-old student newspaper, not by the university itself — is the most recent salvo in an increasingly bitter fight between Trump and many of the nation’s elite universities. The president has made clear he sees top schools as hotbeds of liberal ideology and breeding grounds for anti-American sentiment.

His weapon of choice is to threaten to withhold billions of dollars in federal research grants from institutions that refuse to adopt policies on issues such as diversity, transgender rights and Israel that fall in line with his Make America Great Again ideology.

Critics call Trump’s campaign an attack on academic freedom, but fearing massive budget cuts, several Ivy League schools — including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown — have recently cut deals with the Trump administration in an attempt to limit the damage.

Stanford announced this week that it will be forced to lay off hundreds of employees as a result of cuts to research funding and changes to federal tax laws.

The Stanford Daily’s lawsuit focuses on two unnamed students, John and Jane Doe, who the paper’s lawyers say began self-censoring out of a well-founded fear of having their visas revoked and being deported.

Rubio has claimed that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows the secretary of State to revoke a noncitizen’s legal status if it is decided the person’s actions or statements “compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”

Rubio used that interpretation to justify the March arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University who was held in a Louisiana jail before a federal judge ordered his release.

The complaint cites the cases of two other foreign students — one at Columbia and one at Tufts — who were arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.

At Stanford, the plaintiff referred to as Jane Doe was a member of the group Students for Justice in Palestine. She has published online commentary accusing Israel of committing genocide and perpetuating apartheid, according to the lawsuit. She has also used the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which has become a flash point in the Israel-Gaza debate.

Referencing the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — which includes Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — the slogan is viewed as a call for freedom and self-determination by Palestinians. To many Israelis, it sounds like a call for their total destruction.

As a result, Doe’s profile appeared on the Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website that creators say is devoted to outing “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.” Department of Homeland Security officials have acknowledged they consult the website’s profiles — most of which are of students and faculty at elite universities — for information on people worthy of investigation.

As a result, since March, Jane Doe has deleted her social media accounts and has “refrained from publishing and voicing her true opinions regarding Palestine and Israel,” the lawsuit claims.

John Doe has participated in pro-Palestine demonstrations, has accused Israel of genocide and chanted, “From the river to the sea.” But after the Trump administration started targeting campus demonstrators for deportation, he “refrained from publishing a study containing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza,” according to the lawsuit.

Unlike Jane Doe, John has since resumed public criticism of Israel despite the threat of deportation, according to the lawsuit.

NEW YORK — For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts.

Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, including applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of a $220-million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities.

While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Trump and his administration.

For Hirsch, the restrictions on drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and questioning Israel’s founding amount to “clear censorship,” which she fears will chill discussions in the classroom and open her and other faculty up to spurious lawsuits.

“We learn by making analogies,” Hirsch said. “Now the university is saying that’s off limits. How can you have a university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation?”

A spokesperson for Columbia didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

‘Weaponization’ of an educational framework

When he first drafted the IHRA definition of antisemitism two decades ago, Kenneth Stern said he “never imagined it would one day serve as a hate speech code.”

At the time, Stern was working as the lead antisemitism expert at the American Jewish Committee. The definition and its examples were meant to serve as a broad framework to help European countries track bias against Jews, he said.

In recent years, Stern has spoken forcefully against what he sees as its “weaponization” against pro-Palestinian activists, including anti-Zionist Jews.

“People who believe they’re combating hate are seduced by simple solutions to complicated issues,” he said. “But when used in this context, it’s really actually harming our ability to think about antisemitism.”

Stern said he delivered that warning to Columbia’s leaders last fall after being invited to address them by Claire Shipman, then a co-chair of the board of trustees and the university’s current interim president.

The conversation seemed productive, Stern said. But in March, shortly after the Trump administration said it would withhold $400 million in federal funding to Columbia over concerns about antisemitism, the university announced it would adopt the IHRA definition for “training and educational” purposes.

Then this month, days before announcing a deal with the Trump administration to restore that funding, Shipman said the university would extend the IHRA definition for disciplinary purposes, deploying its examples when assessing “discriminatory intent.”

“The formal incorporation of this definition will strengthen our response to and our community’s understanding of modern antisemitism,” Shipman wrote.

Stern, who now serves as director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, called the move “appalling,” predicting it would spur a new wave of litigation against the university while further curtailing pro-Palestinian speech.

Already, the university’s disciplinary body has faced backlash for investigating students who criticized Israel in op-eds and other venues, often at the behest of pro-Israel groups.

“With this new edict on IHRA, you’re going to have more outside groups looking at what professors are teaching, what’s in the syllabus, filing complaints and applying public pressure to get people fired,” he said. “That will undoubtedly harm the university.”

Calls to ‘self-terminate’

Beyond adopting the IHRA definition, Columbia has also agreed to place its Middle East studies department under new supervision, overhaul its rules for protests and coordinate antisemitism training with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week, the university suspended or expelled nearly 80 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Kenneth Marcus, chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said Columbia’s actions were an overdue step to protect Jewish students from harassment.

He dismissed faculty concerns about the IHRA definition, which he said would “provide clarity, transparency and standardization” to the university’s effort to root out antisemitism.

“There are undoubtedly some Columbia professors who will feel they cannot continue teaching under the new regime,” Marcus said. “To the extent that they self-terminate, it may be sad for them personally, but it may not be so bad for the students at Columbia University.”

But Hirsch, the Columbia professor, said she was committed to continuing her long-standing study of genocides and their aftermath.

Part of that work, she said, will involve talking to students about Israel’s “ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide” in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 60,000 Palestinians have died in 21 months of war — most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — and where experts are warning of rising famine.

“With this capitulation to Trump, it may now be impossible to do that inside Columbia,” Hirsch said. “If that’s the case, I’ll continue my work outside the university’s gates.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Columbia University will pay $221m to settle accusations by the Trump administration that it failed to police anti-Semitism on campus. Critics say the deal threatens academic freedom and sets a dangerous precedent.

New York City-based Columbia University has agreed to pay $221m to settle claims by US President Donald Trump’s administration that it failed to curb anti-Semitism on campus, in exchange for the reinstatement of billions of dollars in federal funding.

The deal, agreed on Wednesday, comes after sweeping university campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza during the spring and summer of 2024 and this year were criticised as veering into anti-Semitism.

In February, the government cut $400m in federal research funding for Columbia in a bid to force its administrators to respond to alleged harassment of Jewish students and faculty.

The unprecedented agreement marks a victory in Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over higher education, including campus activism, and could offer a framework for future deals with other universities.

What’s in the deal Trump has struck with Columbia?

Columbia has agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years, as well as making a separate $21m payment to settle claims by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In exchange, the “vast majority” of the frozen $400m in federal funding will be reinstated, the university said. Columbia will also regain access to billions of dollars’ worth of current and future grants under the deal.

Columbia is required, within 30 days, to appoint an administrator who will report to the university president and will be responsible for overseeing the deal’s compliance. This includes verifying that the institution ends programmes that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas [and] diversity targets”.

Additionally, Columbia must review its Middle East curriculum to make sure it is “comprehensive and balanced” and appoint new faculty staff to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. 

Columbia said the agreement establishes Bart Schwartz, of the compliance firm Guidepost Solutions, as an independent monitor who will report to the government on its progress every six months.

The university will be expected to compile a report for the monitor to ensure its programmes “do not promote unlawful DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] goals”.

Why have they come to this agreement?

Columbia said the agreement formalises already-announced reforms to address harassment of Jewish students and staff, including the hiring of additional public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary processes, and efforts to foster “an inclusive and respectful learning environment”.

The dispute between Columbia and the Trump administration began after Jewish students and faculty complained of harassment on campus by pro-Palestine demonstrators, while pro-Palestinian advocates accused critics of often wrongly conflating opposition to Israel with the hatred of Jews.

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

“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,” she added.

Trump hailed the settlement as “historic” in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming,” he wrote.

How have students and activists reacted?

Student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) slammed the settlement as “a bribe”. “Imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide,” the group wrote on X.

It added that Columbia’s disciplinary action against students, including suspensions and expulsions, this week was a punishment that “hugely” exceeded the precedent for non-Palestine-related demonstrations.

Non-governmental organisation Palestine Legal accused Columbia of “weaponising claims of antisemitism to punish those calling for freedom for Palestinians”.

“It is clear that Columbia’s desire to create a community ‘where all feel welcome’ doesn’t extend to students who call for an end to Israel’s genocide,” the group posted on X.

Hasan Piker, a left-wing activist, political commentator and a critic of Trump, said the US president was “underwater on everything and Columbia is still caving to Trump on everything”, adding “it seems like some of these institutions were looking for the pretext to go right”.

What steps has Columbia already taken to pacify the Trump administration?

In March, Columbia agreed to a list of demands laid down by Trump in return for negotiations to reinstate its $400m federal funding, which he had revoked a month before, citing “a failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment”.

Among other concessions, the university agreed to ban face mask coverings during protests, as well as to install 36 campus police officers with special powers to arrest students.

Earlier this month, Columbia adopted a controversial definition of anti-Semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which has been criticised for what some say is conflating criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Critics have warned that the definition could be used to stifle dissent and curb academic freedom. In a letter sent to the United Nations in 2023, 60 human and civil rights organisations said the definition should not be used.

“The IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,” they wrote.

On Tuesday, Columbia also announced it would suspend, expel or revoke degrees for nearly 80 students who participated in a Butler Library demonstration on its campus on May 7, 2025 and a “Revolt for Rafah” encampment on May 31, 2024 during the university’s annual alumni weekend.

During protests, students demanded that the university’s $14.8bn endowment stop investing in weapons makers and other companies that support Israel.

Protest organiser and former student Mahmoud Khalil, 29, was the first person to be detained during the Trump administration’s push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who are not US citizens.

The school also said it would no longer engage with pro-Palestinian group CUAD.

Which other universities has Trump set his sights on, and why?

The Trump administration is focusing attention on 10 universities that it deems noteworthy in its campaign to root out anti-Semitism. These are Columbia; George Washington University; Harvard; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California.

Columbia University was the first college to see its funding slashed, but several Ivy League schools have been subjected to or threatened with funding cuts since Trump took office in January 2024.

More than $2bn in total was frozen for Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and Princeton universities.

In April, the administration also threatened to freeze $510m in grants to Brown University over alleged violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination”.

Harvard University was the first – and has so far been the only – major higher education institution to defy Trump’s demands and fight back in federal court.

This week, it argued in federal court that the Trump administration had illegally cut $2.6bn in funding in what were politically motivated attempts to reshape the institution.

Are deals with other universities expected as well?

Some universities are also believed to be in talks with the Trump administration, so more deals could be forthcoming.

In particular, US news outlets have reported that officials from the Trump administration and Harvard are continuing negotiations, despite the court case brought by Harvard.

In June, Trump posted on social media that “if a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country”.

July 24 (UPI) — Columbia University announced on Wednesday it will pay $221 million for the New York City private school to settle its dispute with the Trump administration and restore funding.

Under terms of the deal, Columbia won’t admit to violating anti-discrimination laws and will pay $200 million to the federal government over three years and a one-time $21 million to settle investigations by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In return, “a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 — will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored,” the Ivy League school said in a news release.

This includes funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services.

In March, the federal government revoked $400 million in federal funding over campus protests by pro-Palestinian activists.

Also, the majority of the school’s future $1.3 billion in funding had been put on hold, including science research.

Policies already were implemented on March 21 regarding restrictions on demonstrations, new disciplinary procedures and a review of the Middle East curriculum. An independent monitor will oversee the agreement implementation.

The university also agreed to provide the federal government with “all relevant data and information to rigorously assess compliance with its commitment to merit-based hiring and admissions,” a senior White House official told CNN.

And Columbia will review its admission procedures and “strengthen oversight of international students,” the official said.

“While Columbia does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement, the institution’s leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed,” the university said.

University President Claire Shipman said she was pleased with the settlement.

“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,” Shipman said in a statement. “Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”

Shipman also separately addressed the Columbia community, writing “as I have discussed on many occasions with our community, we carefully explored all options open to us. We might have achieved short-term litigation victories, but not without incurring deeper long-term damage — the likely loss of future federal funding, the possibility of losing accreditation, and the potential revocation of visa status of thousands of international students.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon also touted the settlement.

“The Trump Administration’s deal with Columbia University is a seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment,” she said in a statement.

“For decades, the American public has watched in horror as our elite campuses have been overrun by anti-western teachings and a leftist groupthink that restricts speech and debate to push a one-sided view of our nation and the world. These dangerous trends fueled the outbreak of violent antisemitism that paralyzed campuses after the October 7th massacre and was previously unthinkable in the United States of America.”

The announcement came a day after Columbia said it had disciplined dozens of pro-Palestine protesters who had participated in protests in May.

Other elite schools, including Harvard, have been under pressure to adhere to the Trump administration’s policies, including cracking down on anti-Semitism and ending Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon said. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”

Harvard has implemented some changes but sued the federal government over a loss of $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts.

Trump told CNN earlier this month: “I think we’re going to probably settle with Harvard. We’re going to probably settle with Columbia. They want to settle very badly. There’s no rush.”

Shipman had been concerned about the effects on research.

“Columbia’s top scientists are facing the decimation of decades of research,” Shipman said in a letter on June 12. “Graduate students, postdocs, mid-career researchers, and established, celebrated scientists, have all had their breakthroughs lauded by the world one minute and defunded the next. We’re in danger of reaching a tipping point in terms of preserving our research excellence and the work we do for humanity.”

The university had a total enrollment of 26,272 graduate students and 9,111 undergrads in the 2024-2025 academic year. Tuition is $70,000-pus each year with about 90% getting student aid.

About 40% of the student body are international students, Politico reported.

Jewish students comprise 19% undergraduates and 15.9% graduate students, according to Hillel International.

“This announcement is an important recognition of what Jewish students and their families have expressed with increasing urgency: antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, posted on X. “Acknowledging this fact is essential, and along with the new path laid out by the President and Trustees, I am hopeful that today’s agreement marks the beginning of real, sustained change.”

Settlement marks victory in US President Donald Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over third-level education.

Columbia University, one of the top educational institutions in the United States, has agreed to pay $221m to settle claims by US President Donald Trump’s administration that it failed to police anti-Semitism on campus.

Under the agreement announced on Wednesday, Columbia will see the “vast majority” of $400m in federal grants frozen by the Trump administration reinstated, the New York-based university said.

Columbia will also regain access to billions of dollars in current and future grants under the deal, the university said.

Columbia said the agreement formalised reforms announced in March to address harassment against Jews, including the hiring of more public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary processes, and efforts to foster “an inclusive and respectful learning environment”.

The agreement also commits Columbia to maintaining merit-based admissions and ending programs that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas [and] diversity targets”.

Under the agreement, Columbia will pay the federal government $200m over three years, in addition to a $21m payment to settle claims by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said that while the settlement was “substantial”, the university could not continue with a situation that would “jeopardize our status as a world-leading research institution”.

“Furthermore, as I have discussed on many occasions with our community, we carefully explored all options open to us,” Shipman said in a statement.

“We might have achieved short-term litigation victories, but not without incurring deeper long-term damage – the likely loss of future federal funding, the possibility of losing accreditation, and the potential revocation of visa status of thousands of international students.”

Shipman said Columbia did not accept the Trump administration’s findings that it had violated civil rights law by turning a blind eye to the harassment of Jews, but acknowledged the “very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism”.

“We know there is still more to do,” she said.

The settlement marks a victory in Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over third-level education, including campus activism in support of Palestine and other causes.

Trump hailed the settlement as “historic” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming,” Trump wrote.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student activist group, slammed the settlement as an effective bribe.

“Imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide,” the group said on X.

Columbia was among dozens of US universities that were roiled by protests against Israel’s war in Gaza throughout the spring and summer of 2024.

Many Jewish students and faculty complained that the campus demonstrations veered into anti-Semitism, while pro-Palestinian advocates have accused critics of often wrongly conflating opposition to Israel with the hatred of Jews.

On Tuesday, Columbia University’s Judicial Board announced that it had finalised disciplinary proceedings against students who took part in protests at the university’s main library in May and the “Revolt for Rafah” encampment last year.

CUAD said nearly 80 students had been expelled or suspended for between one and three years for joining the protests, sanctions it argued “hugely” exceeded the precedent for non-Palestine-related demonstrations.

Washington, DC – Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader targeted for deportation by President Donald Trump, has met with lawmakers in Washington, DC.

The visit on Tuesday comes just more than a month after the 30-year-old, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was released from immigration custody in Louisiana.

“I’m here in Washington, DC, today to meet with lawmakers, with members of Congress, to demand the end of the US-funded genocide in Gaza, and also to demand accountability from Columbia University, from the Trump administration for their retaliation against my speech,” said Khalil in a video interview with the news agency Reuters.

“To be honest, I feel that this is my duty to continue advocating for Palestinians. This is what the Trump administration tried to do. They tried to silence me. But I’m here to say that we will continue to resist. We are not backing down.”

Khalil continues to face deportation under the Trump administration, which has relied on an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 in its attempts to expel international students involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Under the law, the secretary of state can expel a foreign national if their presence in the country is deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”, although the standard for making that determination remains unclear.

I met with Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, who was imprisoned for 104 days by the Trump administration for opposing Netanyahu’s illegal & horrific war in Gaza. Outrageous.

We must not allow Trump to destroy the First Amendment & freedom to dissent. pic.twitter.com/2iaIi8dUWF

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 22, 2025

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and immigration officials have repeatedly portrayed Khalil’s advocacy as anti-Jewish and supportive of Hamas, but they have failed to provide evidence backing those claims.

Lawyers for Khalil and three other students targeted for deportation by the Trump administration — Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Badar Khan Suri — have argued that their arrests trample on the constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

Several district judges have sided with that position in ordering the students’ release from custody as their cases proceed in immigration court.

Earlier this month, Khalil, who missed the birth of his son while detained, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration alleging malicious prosecution, as well as false arrest and imprisonment. He is seeking $20m in damages or an apology from the government.

US Senator Bernie Sanders was among the lawmakers who met with Khalil on Tuesday.

“We must not allow Trump to destroy the First Amendment & freedom to dissent,” Sanders said in a post on the social media platform X, accompanied by a photo with Khalil.

Mahmoud Khalil is a kind, gentle soul who cares deeply about others’ humanity, and his abduction, detention, and ongoing persecution by the Trump Admin is egregious.

I am deeply relieved that he has been reunited with his wife and his infant son. Our meeting today was fortifying… pic.twitter.com/HgWWkTafPw

— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) July 22, 2025

Khalil also met with Congress members Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Troy Carter and Summer Lee.

“Mahmoud Khalil is a kind, gentle soul who cares deeply about others’ humanity, and his abduction, detention, and ongoing persecution by the Trump Admin is egregious,” Pressley wrote in a post on X.

“Our meeting today was fortifying and productive.”

In its own social media message on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security once again called Khalil a “terrorist sympathiser”, accusing him of anti-Jewish “hateful behavior and rhetoric”.

However, ahead of his release in June, federal Judge Michael Farbiarz said he had given the administration lawyers ample time to support the public statements made against Khalil. He said they failed to do so.

“The petitioner’s career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled,” Farbiarz wrote at the time. “This adds up to irreparable harm.”

July 11 (UPI) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 104 days has filed a complaint against the administration of President Donald Trump for $20 million.

“It was a very, very dehumanizing experience, for someone who was not accused of any crime, whatsoever,” Khalil told CNN. He is a green card holder who had no formal criminal or civil charges against him.

His administrative complaint, which is a precursor to a federal lawsuit, alleges that he was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an anti-Semite. The U.S. government tried to deport him because of his leadership of campus protests at Columbia University.

His arrest felt like a kidnapping, he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. He was on his way home from dinner with his wife Noor Abdalla, who was pregnant at the time. Agents followed him into the lobby of his apartment building, and they threatened his wife with arrest if she didn’t separate from him, he said. The ICE agents did not have a warrant for the arrest.

The government held Khalil, 30, in an ICE facility in Louisiana, alleging he supports Hamas. The administration hasn’t shown any evidence of this, and Khalil’s legal team has rejected it.

“(The complaint) is just the first step of accountability, that this administration has to pay for what it’s doing against me or against anyone who opposes their fascist agenda,” Khalil told NBC News Thursday.

Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia, has said he either wants $20 million or an apology from the administration.

“My goal is not self-enrichment. I don’t want this money just because I need money. What I want is actual accountability. Real, real accountability against the injustices that happened against me with the malicious prosecutions that I was targeted for all this.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said it acted properly.

“The Trump Administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property,” DHS posted on X before his release in June. “An immigration judge has already vindicated this position. We expect a higher court to do the same.”

The complaint names the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department. He filed it under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The immigration case against him continues in the courts.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is representing Khalil. It said he would use the money to “help others similarly targeted by the Trump administration and Columbia University.”

Khalil was held by ICE under two charges

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. government to free former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the immigration detention center where he has been held since early March while the Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

Ruling from the bench in New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue to detain a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.

In reaching his decision, he said Khalil is likely not a flight risk and “is not a danger to the community. Period, full stop.”

He ordered Khalil released from a detention center in rural Louisiana later Friday.

The government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention, he said later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone.

Khalil was the first arrest under President Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.

Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn’t deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Khalil disputes the accusations that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.

Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from a Louisiana jail to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both U.S. citizens.

The judge noted Khalil is now clearly a public figure given his prominence during the campus protests and since his detainment.

He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech.

Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists. He wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.

The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.

The judge noted Khalil has no criminal record and the government has put forward no evidence to suggest he’s been involved in violence or property destruction.

Marcelo writes for the Associated Press.

June 13 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration can continue to detain Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, two days after he said foreign policy grounds for his detention are insufficient and likely unconstitutional.

Michael Farbiarz of the U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Newark made the decision after government lawyers presented a new filing. Farbiaz on Wednesday had stayed the preliminary injunction until Friday, giving the government time to appeal.

The government said continuing to detain Khalil does not violate the injunction because he is now being detained based on “other grounds,” such as being undocumented when he entered the United States.

Also, they said Khalil could be held for failing to disclose all required information on his legal permanent resident application.

The administration said that “an alien like Khalil may be detained during the pendency of removal proceedings regardless of the charge of removability. Khalil may seek release through the appropriate administrative processes, first before an officer of the Department of Homeland Security, and secondly through a custody redetermination hearing before an immigration judge.”

The judge, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said Khalil can seek his release through a “bail application to the immigration judge.

“To the extent the Petitioner requests relief from this Court, the request is denied,” the judge ruled.

In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a memo, citing an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The secretary of state can deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

On Wednesday, the judge said that while the Department of Homeland Security might have a stronger and enforceable claim to detain and deport Khalil, Rubio’s determination is not enough to warrant his continued detention and eventual deportation.

Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News: “The government practically never holds people in detention on a charge like this, and it’s clear that the government is doing anything they can to punish Mahmoud for his speech about Palestine. We will not stop until he’s home with his family.”

Khalil, who was born in 1995, grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and was granted permanent U.S. resident status. He led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year.

In March, he was arrested outside his student housing on campus and detained before the Trump administration accused him of leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

He has not been charged with any crime.

On June 4, the United States Department of Education notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) accrediting agency that its member institution Columbia University deserves to have its accreditation pulled. It accused the university of ostensibly being “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” for supposedly failing “to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment”.

This claim is, of course, wrong. It is a blatant mischaracterisation of the events that have taken place on campus over the last 19 months.

Yet, it is also true that during that time Columbia violated the terms of its accreditation: by violently abrogating the academic freedom and viewpoint diversity of antigenocide protesters via institutional sanction and the deployment of police on campus. In this sense, Columbia does deserve to lose its accreditation.

MSCHE’s accreditation policy, which is standard across the industry, states that an “accredited institution” must possess and demonstrate both “a commitment to academic freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom of expression” and “a climate that fosters respect among students, faculty, staff, and administration from a range of diverse backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives”.

It is stunningly evident that since October 7, 2023, Columbia University has egregiously and repeatedly failed to satisfy the MSCHE’s fundamental requirements due to its response to antigenocide protests on campus concerning Gaza and Palestine. The violent removal, suspension, and arrest of peaceful student protesters and faculty critics should be understood to constitute a violation of the institution’s obligation to protect freedom of expression and academic freedom.

On November 10, 2023, Columbia suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) after they organised a peaceful protest for Palestinian rights. The administration justified the suspension by claiming the groups used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.

However, media reports, witnesses and university insiders revealed that the suspension was based on an incident involving an unaffiliated individual whose actions were condemned by the organisers and that no formal disciplinary process or appeals process was allowed by the university.

It was later uncovered that Columbia administrators had unilaterally altered language in its official policies on student groups just before suspending the SJP and JVP.

In January, Katherine Franke, a tenured law professor, retired and said she was “effectively terminated” by Columbia after facing public and congressional criticism for a media interview criticising students who formerly served in the Israeli army.

Similarly, the university has recently acknowledged doling out “multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocation and expulsions” to dozens of students who participated in 2024 antigenocide protests. One of those expelled, Jewish PhD student Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia, noted that all of the students censured by the university “had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing”.

Perhaps worst of all, Columbia has, on repeated occasions, invited the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus to intervene against student expression. On April 30, 2024, according to the university’s own report, the NYPD arrested 44 students and individuals with apparent associations with the university.

Likewise, in early May this year, about 70 students were arrested after participating in an “occupation” of the university’s library. The NYPD explicitly acknowledged that the presence of its officers on campus was “at the direct request of Columbia University”.

There is little question each of these incidents constitutes blatant stifling of academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. The disproportionate targeting of Arab, Muslim, Palestinian and Jewish students and allies can be viewed as discriminatory, undermining the institution’s commitment to equitable treatment and inclusive learning environments, in clear violation of MSCHE’s guiding principles on equity, diversity and inclusion.

These decisions to suppress protests were made unilaterally by senior administration at Columbia – without input from faculty, students or shared governance bodies – clearly signalling a lack of adherence to MSCHE’s accreditation policy standard on governance, leadership and administration. By failing to show “a commitment to shared governance” with “administrative decision-making that reflects fairness and transparency”, Columbia has failed to meet the standards of accreditation outlined by the MSCHE.

But Columbia University is not alone in failing to abide by guiding principles of its accreditation. At Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, Jewish Associate Professor Maura Finkelstein was summarily fired for engaging in social media critiques of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Similarly, at Northwestern University, Assistant Professor Steven Thrasher was subjected to multiple investigations in relation to his support of the student antigenocide encampment on campus and was ultimately denied tenure in a decision he characterised as an effort designed to not just silence him but also to bully him so that “students, journalists, faculty, staff and activists across campus and throughout the country [may be intimidated] into silencing themselves”.

Students too have faced repression across the United States. Indeed, it has been estimated that by July 2024, at least 3,100 students had been arrested for participation in campus antigenocide protests. On November 6, 2023, Brandeis University became the first private university in the US to ban its student chapter of the SJP, for “conduct that supports Hamas”. In April 2024, Cornell University suspended several students involved in pro-Palestinian encampment protests, citing violations of campus policies.

Then in May, police brutalised students with pepper spray at George Washington University while arresting 33 people in the violent clearing-out of its student encampment. At Vanderbilt University, students were arrested and expelled for occupying an administration building.

In the most recent news, it has become clear that the University of Michigan has spent at least $800,000 hiring dozens of private investigators to surveil antigenocide student protesters on and off campus in Ann Arbor.

These examples are merely a small sample of what has occurred across the US, Canada and Europe since long before October 7, 2023. This is a broader existential crisis in higher education in which the free expression of students is being suppressed at the cost of the values these universities purport to espouse.

Despite appearances, this crisis has very little to do with the heavy-handed Trump administration. It is, rather, the self-inflicted consequence of the decisions of university administrators whose allegiances are now first and foremost to donors and corporate stakeholders rather than to their educational missions.

If universities are to exist in any plausible and practical sense as institutions devoted to genuine knowledge production and pedagogical development, it is essential that they robustly fulfil accreditation requirements for academic and intellectual freedom, diversity, and fair and transparent administration and governance.

There can be no Palestine exception to that.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The Education Department accuses the Ivy League school of violating the Civil Rights Act and calls for its accreditor to take action.

The United States Department of Education has notified Columbia University’s accreditor that the Ivy League school allegedly broke federal anti-discrimination laws.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) claimed that Columbia University had “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students”.

As a result, they said that Columbia violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, colour or national origin.

“Specifically, OCR and HHS OCR found that Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law,” the statement said.

It quoted Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who accused Columbia University of ignoring the ongoing harassment of Jewish students on its campus since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

“This is not only immoral, but also unlawful,” McMahon said

She added that the accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, has “an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards”.

The commission is one of seven regional bodies that reviews colleges, universities and other institutions of higher education to ensure they meet the standards needed to grant degrees.

McMahon described accreditation institutions as the “gatekeepers of federal student aid” and explained that they decide which schools are eligible for student loans.

“We look forward to the Commission keeping the Department fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws,” McMahon said.

The statement specified that the Education Department and HHS had come to their determination about Columbia University’s civil rights compliance on May 22.

The Ivy League school had been an epicentre for pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movements, with some of the first student encampments cropping up on its lawn in April 2024.

The university has remained in the news with arrests of high-profile student activists like Mahmoud Khalil in March and Mohsen Mahdawi in April.

Mahdawi has since been released, though he, like Khalil, continues to face deportation proceedings.

The administration of President Donald Trump has accused the demonstrators of creating unsafe conditions for Jewish students on campus, something the protest leaders have denied.

It reiterated that allegation in Wednesday’s statement, where it summed up the “noncompliance findings” that allegedly show Columbia at odds with civil rights law.

“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” said Anthony Archeval, acting director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, in the statement.

“We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.”

The university did not immediately respond to a request by the Reuters news agency for comment.

The Trump administration and Columbia University were in negotiations over $400m in federal funding for the New York-based Ivy League school. Columbia agreed to a series of demands from the administration in a bid to keep the funds flowing, but the US government has not confirmed whether it will restore the contracts and grants that it paused.

In March, McMahon had said Columbia University was “on the right track” toward recovering its federal funding.

NEW YORK — The Trump administration is accusing Columbia University of violating the civil rights of Jewish students by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward what it describes as rampant antisemitism on campus.

The finding was announced late Thursday by the Health and Human Services Department, marking the latest blow for an Ivy League school already shaken by federal cutbacks and sustained government pressure to crack down on student speech.

It comes hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, a major escalation in the administration’s monthslong attack on higher education.

The civil rights division of HHS said it had found Columbia in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which blocks federal funding recipients from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. That final category, the press release notes, includes “discrimination against individuals that is based on their actual or perceived Israeli or Jewish identity or ancestry.”

The announcement did not include new sanctions against Columbia, which is already facing $400 million in federal cuts by the Trump administration over its response to pro-Palestinian campus protests.

A spokesperson for Columbia said the university is currently in negotiations with the government about resolving its claims of antisemitism.

“We understand this finding is part of our ongoing discussions with the government,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Columbia is deeply committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on our campus.”

The civil rights investigation into Columbia was based on witness interviews, media reports and other sources, according to HHS. The findings were not made public. A spokesperson did not response to a request for further information.

“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” Anthony Archeval, acting director of the HHS civil rights office, said in a statement.

Last spring, Columbia became the epicenter of protests against the war in Gaza, spurring a national movement of campus demonstrations that demanded universities cut ties with Israel.

At the time, some Jewish students and faculty complained about being harassed during the demonstrations or ostracized because of their faith or their support of Israel.

Those who participated in Columbia’s protests, including some Jewish students, have said they are protesting Israel’s actions against Palestinians and have forcefully denied allegations of antisemitism.

Many have also accused the university of capitulating to the Trump administration’s demands — including placing its Middle East studies department under new leadership — at the expense of academic freedom and protecting foreign students.

At a commencement ceremony earlier this week, a speech by Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, was met with loud boos by graduates and chants of “free Palestine.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Students at a Columbia University graduation ceremony booed the school’s acting president, Claire Shipman, for her role in cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests. Earlier this month she allowed New York City police to arrest 78 protesters in the school’s library.