The Trump administration said Friday that it would immediately cancel $400 million of federal grants to Columbia University, an extraordinary targeting of a single institution that Republicans say has been a hotbed of antisemitism since protests erupted over the war in Gaza.
The move came just four days after three federal agencies — the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Education — announced a review of $5 billion in federal contracts and grants held by Columbia. The funding review is being led by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, created by President Trump shortly after he took office.
It wasn’t immediately clear which grants were being canceled. The announcement said that stop-work orders would be issued for Columbia’s grants and contracts with the HHS and the Education Department. The HHS oversees the National Institutes of Health.
As of Saturday morning, it appeared that termination notices had been issued for at least eight projects, including a $1.1-million Food and Drug Administration grant to study the effects of exposure to opioids on preterm infants, and a $1.1-million NIH grant related to the possible development of a malaria vaccine.
In a statement sent by a Columbia spokesperson, university officials said they “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 combating antisemitism and ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, faculty, and staff.”
In a Friday-evening message to the Columbia community, Katrina Armstrong, the interim president, said the university was “taking the government’s action very seriously” and that “combating antisemitism” was its “number-one priority.”
Still, Armstrong said, “There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the university, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care.” (Her statement did not specify which funding was being canceled.)
One legal scholar questioned whether the Trump administration had the authority to immediately cancel grants. Samuel R. Bagenstos, who served as general counsel for the HHS under the Biden administration, said there are typically due-process requirements — such as statements of findings, hearings, and appeals — in cases alleging violations of civil-rights law. (Columbia has been accused of running afoul of Title VI, which bars discrimination in education based on race, color, and national origin.)
“Congress set forth specific procedures for suspending or terminating funds based on allegations of discrimination,” Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, wrote via a LinkedIn message. “This purported ‘immediate cancellation’ complies with none of them.”
The administration’s decision comes without clear evidence of wrongdoing by Columbia under Title VI, said Jonathan S. Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education.
“They don’t have a ruling from a judge. They don’t have a finding by an administrative agency. They haven’t tried to reach a resolution. They simply started cherry-picking money that’s going to Columbia and saying, ‘We’re not going to pay that,’” Fansmith said. “That’s not how we do this in the United States.”
The Education Department’s press release noted that the Columbia cancellations “represent the first round of action and additional cancellations are expected to follow.” (The antisemitism task force said last week that it also planned to investigate George Washington University, Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and the University of Southern California.)
Fansmith said that Friday’s news was cause for concern for those institutions, but that he was hopeful a court would “quickly intervene” in the Columbia case first.
Singled Out
For over a year, Columbia has been in the headlines for its handling of protests calling for the institution to sever financial ties with Israel.
Pro-Palestinian activists have said divestment is a necessary response to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed tens of thousands of people. Critics, including many Republican lawmakers, have condemned Columbia for allegedly failing to crack down on antisemitic rhetoric from activists and giving them a pass when they break campus rules and even laws.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Linda McMahon, Trump’s newly confirmed education secretary, said in a Friday statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”
Armstrong wrote in her Friday message that when she took office in August 2024, she “knew Columbia needed a reset from the previous year and the chaos of encampments and protests.” Since then, she said, her administration has clarified its rules of conduct and added an Office of Institutional Equity and an administrator to address antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. The new unit has opened a series of investigations into students who have criticized Israel, the Associated Press reported.
Trump said earlier this week that he’d pull federal funding from any college that allowed “illegal protests,” and threatened to deport and arrest student participants. Over the weekend, a former Columbia graduate student who had participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year was arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in university-owned housing, according to the student’s lawyer, multiple news outlets reported.
Congress set forth specific procedures for suspending or terminating funds based on allegations of discrimination. This purported ‘immediate cancellation’ complies with none of them.
Agents reportedly told the former student, who had recently graduated, that his visa and green card had both been revoked by the State Department. Columbia officials acknowledged Sunday that ICE had been on campus but did not say whether anyone had been detained.
The announcement of Columbia’s canceled grants comes after Barnard College, the women’s institution affiliated with Columbia, called the New York Police Department to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters who refused to leave a campus building on Wednesday.
Tensions have erupted at Barnard since the college expelled two students for disrupting a history class on Israel at Columbia and handing out antisemitic flyers. Barnard’s president, Laura Rosenbury, defended her actions in a Chronicle essay, saying that students had crossed a line. Some faculty members have called for Rosenbury to resign over the decision to involve the NYPD.
Donna L. Farber, a professor of microbiology and immunology who leads a lab at Columbia, called the Columbia funding announcement “devastating.” She hadn’t heard as of Friday afternoon whether her lab of about 20 people — most of whom are supported by NIH grants — will be affected.
“Singling out Columbia University is awful,” Farber said. “It’s so vindictive. It’s so counterproductive. We’ve never had our government sort of turn against us as citizens, as educators, as researchers, as people working for the betterment of human health. We just haven’t experienced that the government completely turns against us, which has been what’s happening and what will likely continue to happen in even worse ways.”
Jennifer J. Manly, a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia, was at the Stand Up for Science march in New York City on Friday afternoon when she learned of the administration’s announcement through a message on her lab’s Slack channel.
“This is one more step in what seems like the playbook for a full-out assault on science,” Manly said. At risk are her NIH grants to study racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease, one of which is worth $3.37 million per year. Directly after speaking with The Chronicle, Manly said, she planned to attend a faculty meeting where she hoped to get more information about whether her work would be affected.
Gerard Karsenty, chair of the department of genetics and development at the Columbia University Medical Center, said on Friday afternoon that he was awaiting a meeting with administrators to find out whether his lab will be affected. Karsenty has several grants with the NIH, the largest of which is for $2.65 million.
“It may be that labs will be closed, people will lose their jobs, and this will happen overnight for a reason that is not apparent to me,” Karsenty said. “Years and years” of research and treatment development will be halted, he said.
“Personally, I don’t understand the need of these measures,” he added. “I can say that, since I am Jewish, I don’t think antisemitism is a problem at Columbia.”
Dan Bauman, a senior reporter, contributed to this story.
