Columbia University Settles Antisemitism Claims for $200 Million, Pledges Reforms

Columbia University has agreed to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.

“With the agreement, our access to billions of dollars in federal research funding will resume. Terminated grants will be reinstated and our faculty will become eligible again for future grants, as well as continuations of existing grants will be reinstated,” acting Columbia president Claire Shipman said in a statement issued on Wednesday, noting that the university will also pay $21 million to “settle investigations involving the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon commented on the agreement as well, saying it is a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”

Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practicers, and [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI] programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race” — which, if true, could mark the opening of a new era in American higher education.

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

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in funding for Columbia University in March.

At the time, it remained one of the most hostile campuses for Jewish and pro-Israel students in the US. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.

Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain a group which calls itself Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which in late January committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, ADP reportedly distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.

Just days before announcing Wednesday’s agreement, Columbia University imposed severe disciplinary sanctions — including degree revocation — on upwards of 70 students who perpetrated an illegal seizure of campus property during the final weeks of the 2024-2025 academic year and refused to surrender it unless school officials acceded to a list of five demands which, among other things, called for a boycott of Israel and divestment from armaments manufacturers.

As reported by the New York Post on Tuesday, a school official told the paper that Columbia on Monday expelled a “handful” of students and suspended “dozens” of others who stormed and occupied Butler Library on May 7, an action which resulted in two Columbia private security officers being assaulted when a crush of students attempted to breach a human barrier they had formed to prevent additional protesters from joining, and thereby strengthening, the demonstration.

Without stating the number of punishments meted out to the students, Columbia confirmed the main contention of the Post’s reporting — while announcing one disciplinary measure, degree revocation, to which it was not privy — on Tuesday in an unsigned statement.

“The sanctions issued on July 21 by the University Judicial Board were determined by a UJB panel of professors and administrators who worked diligently over the summer to offer an outcome for each individual based on the findings of their case and prior disciplinary outcomes,” the university said, stressing that the punishments resulted from a consensus reached by officials representing every level of the university. “While the university does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”

On Thursday, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner that Columbia, and higher education as a whole, has more to do to reform its campus culture.

“Columbia University finally took some action that may look a bit like justice. However, the real issue is changes to hiring and tenure procedures, and shared governance which give faculty terror supporters a voice, and without that this is mostly optics,” Romirowsky said. “Most fundamentally, the US desperately needs to reevaluate what a university is and what it is for. Five decades of universities striving for relevance has had the effect of politicizing the humanities and social sciences. But as faculties have become politically monolithic, students interested in exploring traditions and themselves have been alienated, causing a feedback loop of shrinking disciplines and intensifying politics.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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