EXCLUSIVE: Columbia To Meet With Trump Administration To Finalize Deal as Left-Leaning Committee Searches for New University President

Columbia University leaders are set to meet with a senior Trump administration official on Thursday to finalize the terms of a deal that would restore the vast majority of the school’s federal funding and resolve the civil rights complaints against the school.

The draft deal, which sources stressed is subject to change until President Donald Trump signs off on it, will see Columbia pay a $200 million fine and commit to releasing admissions and hiring data that federal officials say will ensure the university is complying with the Supreme Court’s prohibition on affirmative action. And as of Wednesday evening, the situation remained fluid, with people on both sides lobbying for changes in the final agreement.

At the same time, the current deal is a far cry from a set of more burdensome demands the administration itself made in early April, when it sent Columbia administrators a letter outlining a dozen demands it said the school needed to meet in order for the federal government to restore the $400 million in grants and contracts that had been slashed the previous month.

The demands, reported here for the first time, included major changes to the governance of the university: the appointment of three new trustees to a five-member executive committee to oversee reforms to the school; changes to the University Senate, which has rejected proposals critics say are essential to forcing change on campus, including a ban on masked protests; and the formation of a presidential search committee capable of selecting a reform-minded president.

The university almost signed off on that agreement, sources said. Then, on April 11, the Trump administration sent a similar letter to Harvard University, though some administration officials would later tell the New York Times they did so mistakenly. Days later, Harvard’s lawyers said it would not comply with Trump’s demands and went on to file a lawsuit against the administration.

Harvard’s pugilistic response created the impression among Columbia’s leaders that they could not strike a deal with the Trump administration as another Ivy League school was manning the ramparts, sources say.

Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, went on to issue a statement the same day that Harvard indicated it was poised to fight the administration insisting that she would “reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community.”

The draft agreement that Columbia’s leaders will discuss Thursday with White House policy strategist May Mailman makes no demands about the school’s search to replace Shipman, a former ABC News journalist who was until recently married to former Obama press secretary Jay Carney. In fact, that search is already underway, according to two sources familiar with the process. It is being led by a committee currently composed of ten university trustees and five faculty members.

Among the trustees on the committee, seven, including Hyatt Hotel heir Adam Pritzker, are donors to Democratic politicians. Three have supported Republican candidates. The faculty members on the committee are social psychologist Valerie Purdie Greenaway, geneticist and biochemist Stavros Lomvardas, astronomer Kathryn Johnston, playwright James Shapiro, and biomedical engineer Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic.

Purdie Greenaway is a “thought leader on how to enhance DEI in organizations” who “organizes and makes sense of scientific evidence related to diversity, equity and inclusion,” according to a biography posted to a Columbia website. Lomvardas is an ally of former Columbia University president Katrina Armstrong, who told federal officials in April that she could not recall a single instance of anti-Semitism on campus. “I have often said she is playing chess when we are playing checkers,” Lomvardas told the Wall Street Journal. Johnston taught a seminar on diversity in STEM that includes a “workshop-style discussion of issues of diversity and inclusion” and “addresses the interplay between discomfort and diversity.”

The draft agreement also does not include proposed changes to the University Senate, which sets rules on protests, governs disciplinary proceedings, and oversees “all matters relating to the terms and conditions of academic employment.”

While the president is reportedly eager to trumpet a $200 million settlement, the administration’s retreat from demands for substantive changes to university operations has generated blowback from allies.

Neither a White House spokesman nor a spokesman for Columbia responded to requests for comment prior to publication.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, who spoke at the Republican National Convention and has been an outspoken Trump supporter, wrote in a post on X that “Columbia’s proposed deal with the Trump Administration would barely be a slap on the wrist for its blatant violations of Civil Rights law” and would “set a dangerous precedent as the White House continues to negotiate with Harvard and other colleges, as well as undermine President Trump’s strong track record of prioritizing American students over elitist institutions.” The chairman of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, Leo Terrell, retweeted the message.

Columbia leaders, starting with one of its short-lived presidents, Armstrong, have been in discussions with Trump administration officials about the restoration of federal funding since March, when the government announced it was eliminating over $400 million in federal grants and contracts.

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