Columbia Nears Deal With Trump To Dodge Govt Shakeup

Columbia University is nearing a deal with the Trump administration that would require the school to compensate the victims of unlawful discrimination and increase the transparency of its hiring and admissions process, according to six people familiar with the negotiations.

The deal, which the university’s board of trustees met to discuss on Sunday, does not include some of the more onerous provisions initially demanded by the White House, such as a consent decree and reforms to Columbia’s governance structure.

The draft agreement would see the university recoup most of the $400 million in grants and contracts that were frozen by the White House’s task force on anti-Semitism in March. In exchange, Columbia would adopt a number of measures designed to combat race discrimination and anti-Semitism.

A senior White House official told the Washington Free Beacon that the deal would “solidify reporting obligations related to foreign gifts”—such as the millions in undisclosed funding that Columbia has received from Qatar, whose patronage of universities has been linked to anti-Semitic incidents on campus—and that the “victims of civil rights abuses will be compensated” by the university. The amount of compensation and the identities of the recipients are not known.

The deal will also force Columbia to publicly disclose hiring and admissions data to ensure that the school is complying with the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, other sources briefed on the negotiations said. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, will be involved in supervising compliance.