Columbia’s $200 Million ‘Deal’ with Trump Administration

WaPo (“Columbia to pay more than $200 million in deal with Trump administration“):

Columbia University and the Trump administration have reached an agreement to resolve a months-long dispute over federal research funding that made the Ivy League university a symbol of White House efforts to force cultural changes in higher education nationally.

The deal, announced Wednesday evening, requires Columbia to pay the federal government $200 million to settle claims related to discriminatory practices and an additional $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and adds some external oversight to the university.

It also reinstates most of the $400 million in research grants that were frozen by the government, restores the school’s ability to receive federal funding in the future and closes investigations into the school.

The negotiations have been closely watched as the Trump administration has brought the full force of the federal government in a high-stakes effort to enact change at colleges across the country.

Columbia’s agreement comes as Harvard University continues its legal challenges against the administration.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the agreement a road map for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public, and a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable.”

Claire Shipman, Columbia University’s acting president, said the agreement restores the vast majority of the $400 million in federal research funding paused by the administration this spring, and revives the school’s partnership with the federal government. “Importantly, the agreement preserves Columbia’s autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making,” she said in a written statement Wednesday evening.

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

A senior White House official said the agreement ensures Columbia will not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in hiring, admissions or university programming. “Columbia will provide access to all relevant data and information to rigorously assess compliance with its commitment to merit-based hiring and admissions,” the official said.

The White House said Columbia will strengthen oversight of international students by reviewing admissions processes, “including by assessing applicants’ reasons for wishing to study in the U.S., sharing relevant data with the Federal Government, and reducing financial dependence” on international student enrollment.

NYT (“Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump“):

Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached on Wednesday to restore the university’s federal research funding, according to a statement from the university.

In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring, and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March.

The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

[…]

The loss of funding for scientific research had become an urgent matter for Columbia, imperiling decades of work and bringing Columbia to the “tipping point” of preserving its research excellence, the university said.

But making a deal with the White House brings its own risks for Columbia, challenging the limits of the private university’s independence and lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s strategy of weaponizing research funding to accomplish an unrelated aim of reining in campus unrest.

[…]

As weeks passed, it became evident that the damage to Columbia’s research enterprise went further than the original $400 million cut. The National Institutes of Health, the government’s key medical research funder, froze nearly all research funding flowing to Columbia, including reimbursement of research grants that were still active.

Grant Watch, a project run by research scientists who compiled information on the grants pulled by the Trump administration, estimated that about $1.2 billion in unspent funding from the N.I.H. to Columbia had been terminated or frozen. Other federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, also pulled grants.

Columbia law professor David Pozen (“Regulation by Deal Comes to Higher Ed“):

The agreement is already being described as “unprecedented,” “the first of its kind.” These descriptions are true but ambiguous, because the agreement breaks new ground on any number of levels.

For instance, the agreement marks the first time that antisemitism and DEI have been invoked as the basis for a government-enforced restructuring of a private university. The agreement was engineered by a novel collaboration among the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, and the White House, which pooled their resources to ratchet up the pressure on Columbia (with some help on the side from the Department of Justice). The agreement is also the first to require a university to fork over money to the government as a condition of receiving money from the government, bringing a new brand of pay-to-play into the world of scientific and medical research.

And let’s not forget that the agreement grows out of the executive branch’s first-ever cutoff of congressionally appropriated funds to a university, so as to punish that university and impel it to adopt sweeping reforms, without any pretense of following the congressionally mandated procedures. Lawyers have been debating the exact circumstances under which the executive branch may freeze particular grants and contracts to particular schools. Yet as far as I’m aware, no lawyer outside the government has even attempted to defend the legality of the initial cutoff that brought Columbia to its knees and, thereafter, to the “negotiating” table.

In short, the agreement gives legal form to an extortion scheme—the first of its kind!—that defies the relevant statutes as well as the constitutional separation of powers and the First Amendment.

There is another unprecedented feature of the situation that is so obvious it is easy to overlook, and that might ultimately prove the most consequential of all: the way in which the federal government is seeking to reshape the internal operations of universities not through generally applicable directives, but rather through a series of bilateral “deals.” The Trump administration has made clear that while Columbia is first in line, it intends to reach comparable agreements with other schools—to scale the Columbia shakedown into a broader model of managing universities deemed too woke. As has already occurred with law firms, tariffs, and trade policy, regulation by deal is coming to higher education.

There’s a whole lot more in his post, which I commend to you in full.

I’m insufficiently grounded in the administrative processes of Columbia or other elite universities to assess the merits of the claims made by the Trump administration. But, like Pozen, I’m deeply concerned about the precedent set here.

I fully understand why Columbia would give in to extortion here. The nature of lawsuits is that it’s often cheaper to give in to even the most unreasonable demands than to fight it out in court. Here, paying $200 million in order to unlock tens of millions in funding is a no-brainer.

Pozen lays out a pretty strong case that the Trump administration holding up the funds in this way is legally dubious. But that’s been true of any number of executive actions taken by the administration, which seems rather obviously to be setting up a Supreme Court fight over the unitary executive theory. One suspects we’ll get a ruling on the matter at some point in the next three years.

Whether the administration has the right to withhold Congressionally-appropriated funds to coerce “deals,” doing so clearly violates the longstanding social contract between the federal government and academia. Research universities like Columbia produce not only top-tier graduates but also an enormous amount of cutting-edge knowledge, both of which benefit society. Having their operations subject to detailed oversight on the basis of the partisan whims of each administration is highly disruptive, to say the least.