The Trump administration is cutting off $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, claiming it has failed to take steps to confront antisemitism on campus after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, The Free Press has learned.
The cuts represent the federal government’s first round of grant cancellations for Columbia, according to the administration’s newly formed antisemitism task force, which is leading the effort. Columbia has over $5 billion in active federal grants that are being reviewed by the government.
Leo Terrell, the head of the DOJ’s antisemitism task force, said the funding cuts are “only the beginning.”
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”
In a statement to The Free Press, Columbia said: “We are reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding. We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”
The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services plan to immediately issue stop-work orders on grants to the school, the task force said. The task force provided no specifics to The Free Press on the programs affected.
Critics have warned that cutting off federal dollars is a blunt tool with which to punish colleges, given that most of that money goes to scientific research. As the economist Alex Tabarrok noted last month, “The problem is that the disciplines leading the woke charge—English, history, and sociology—don’t receive much government funding.”
Over $1.3 billion of Columbia’s $6.6 billion in annual operating revenue comes from federal research grants, according to a 2024 report. The National Institutes of Health accounts for 62 percent of these grants, totaling about $747 million in the financial year ending June 30, 2023, according to the school—although not all of those funds were allocated to research. Columbia’s Irving Medical Center is a significant recipient of federal funding.
The move comes just days after the Trump administration wrote to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong, threatening to pull over $5 billion in federal funding unless Columbia immediately addressed antisemitism on its campus.
According to a representative from the task force, Armstrong did not respond to the letter, although the university did release a public statement, saying, “We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism,” adding that "glorifying violence or terror has no place at our university.”
Immediately following the initial warning from the joint task force, Columbia and Barnard College students occupied a Barnard campus library, leading to nine arrests—of four Columbia students, one Barnard student, one Union Theological Seminary student, and three others who are unaffiliated with any of the schools. All were charged with disorderly conduct, trespassing, and obstructing governmental administration. Barnard President Laura Rosenbury noted that the police were called to clear the building after receiving notice of a bomb threat, not because students took over the building in protest.
The task force includes the Department of Justice and representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and from the General Services Administration.
The Trump administration's announcement about Columbia comes days after the Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the University of California system, a move first reported by The Free Press. The system’s schools “may be engaged in certain employment practices that discriminate against employees who are or are perceived to be Jewish or Israeli,” said DOJ officials in the letter sent to the UC system.
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