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.
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Author: Dillon B
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