Columbia deal with Trump administration may set stage for other schools – The Washington Post

Education lawyers and advocates said Columbia’s deal with the White House was a potentially dangerous government intrusion into higher education.

Updated, July 24, 2025 at 4:37 p.m. EDT, yesterday at 4:37 p.m. EDT, 8 min

By Susan Svrluga, Laura Meckler, Justine McDaniel and Joanna Slater

The Trump administration hailed its deal with Columbia University as a victory and a template for agreements with other institutions on Thursday, even as concerns mounted that the settlement represents an unprecedented intervention by the government in the inner workings of higher education.

Under the terms of the deal, announced late Wednesday, Columbia will pay more than $200 million to settle claims over antisemitism and discriminatory hiring. In return, the government will unfreeze more than $1 billion in federal grants and funding to the university.

The settlement represents a dramatic new stage of President Donald Trump’s aggressive effort to exert control over some of the nation’s most prestigious college campuses, cracking down on anti-Jewish bias as well as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and demanding a shift away from a liberal worldview.

In agreeing to the deal, the elite Ivy League institution in New York City is entering uncharted territory: It is making an enormous payment to the federal government despite not admitting any wrongdoing while relinquishing a certain measure of oversight to an independent monitor.

Columbia’s deal follows one between the University of Pennsylvania and the Trump administration this month. The administration had announced this spring that it was freezing $175 million to Penn over its policies on transgender athletes – which were in alignment with the NCAA’s rules at the time. Penn agreed to no longer allow transgender women to compete on its female teams and said it would send apology letters to swimmers who were affected by its policy.

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