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Amid mounting federal pressure over its handling of antisemitism on campus, Columbia University announced on Wednesday it would pay more than $200 million to the U.S. government in a settlement that will restore the vast majority of its previously-suspended federal funding.
The agreement follows months of investigations and tense negotiations after the Trump administration’s March 2025 decision to revoke $400 million in grants from the university. Officials cited Columbia’s insufficient response to escalating antisemitic harassment and intimidation targeting Jewish and Israeli students following Hamas’s October 7th massacre and the eruption of anti-Israel protests on campus.
In a statement, Columbia emphasized that it “does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement,” but acknowledged that “Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed.”
The settlement also includes a $21 million resolution with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and introduces several new university procedures — among them, screening international applicants about their motivations for studying in the U.S. and requiring a commitment to civil discourse.
In a major shift, Columbia also recently adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which recognizes certain anti-Israel rhetoric as a form of Jew-hatred. The university also announced it will sever ties with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student group that publicly praised Hamas’s October 7 attack and supports violent “resistance.”
The settlement came just days after Columbia disciplined dozens of students involved in a May protest in which demonstrators seized the university’s main library. The takeover was part of a broader surge of extreme anti-Israel activism across U.S. college and university campuses in the aftermath of October 7th.
A report issued last summer by Columbia’s own antisemitism task force confirmed what many Jewish students had been saying for months — they faced verbal abuse, classroom humiliation, and social ostracism at the height of the spring 2024 campus protests.
The university may be regaining access to billions in federal support—but whether this settlement brings meaningful change remains an open and urgent question.
