Columbia University announced Wednesday it has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus.
Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees that occurred following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the White House said.
Columbia has agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and applying a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not only to teaching but to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating students critical of Israel.
You may not know this but Columbia had departments that used to be one of the loudest voices against Palestinians genocide.
They were the home of Edward Said, a Palestinian American, who through sheer intellectual force changed an entire academic discipline, by pointing out the majority of Western “Orientialist” studies were nothing more than a thin veneer for racism.
Few people have done more for me intellectually. That’s what makes this such a tragedy. They were the backbone of a nuanced view on the middle east even very recently.