WASHINGTON: Columbia University’s $200 million agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration marks the end of a months-long showdown, but academics warn it is just the first round of a government “assault” on higher education.

Academics from Columbia and beyond have expressed concerns that the deal — which makes broad-ranging concessions and increases government oversight — will become the blueprint for how Trump brings other universities to heel.

The New York institution was the first to be targeted in Trump’s war against elite universities, for what the US president claimed was its failure to tackle anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests.

It was stripped of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding and lost its ability to apply for new research grants. Labs saw vital funding frozen, and dozens of researchers were laid off. But Columbia last week agreed to pay the government $200 million, and an additional $21 million to settle an investigation into anti-Semitism.

According to Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the lack of due process — with the government slashing funding before carrying out a formal investigation — left Columbia in an “untenable position.” Columbia law professor David Pozen agreed, saying the “manner in which the deal was constructed has been unlawful and coercive from the start” and slamming the agreement as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme.”

Federal oversight

The deal goes beyond addressing anti-Semitism and makes concessions on international student admissions, race and ethnicity considerations in admissions and single-sex spaces on campus, among other issues.

Columbia also agreed to appoint an independent monitor to implement the deal, share ethnicity admissions data with the government and crack down on campus protests.

Many of the provisions “represent significant incursions onto Columbia’s autonomy,” said Pozen.

“What’s happened at Columbia is part of a broader authoritarian attack on civil society,” he said, pointing to similar pressures on law firms and media organisations to fall in line.

According to the law professor, the deal “signals the emergence of a new regulatory regime in which the Trump administration will periodically and unpredictably shake down other schools and demand concessions from them.” In the coming weeks, Pozen said he expected the “administration will put a lot of pressure on Harvard and other schools to follow suit.” Harvard University has pushed back against the government, filing a lawsuit in a bid to reverse sweeping funding cuts.

But Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, said that “in terms of academic freedom and in terms of democracy, the (Columbia) precedent is devastating.”

‘First round’

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she hoped the Columbia deal would be a “template for other universities around the country.” On Wednesday, McMahon announced a deal with Brown University to restore some federal funding and end ongoing investigations after the Ivy League school agreed to end race considerations in admissions and adopt a biological definition of gender.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2025