New York (AP) -The Trump government said on Friday that it is pulling 400 million US dollars from Columbia University and describing grants and contracts based on what the government describes as the failure of the Ivy League school is describing anti -Semitism on campus.
The announcement came five days after the federal authorities announced that they would consider instructions to end the work on 51 million US dollars with New York City University and to check their authorization for over 5 billion dollars of federal granting for the future. And after Columbia set up a recent disciplinary committee and his own investigation into students who were critical of Israel and had built alarming supporters of freedom of speech.
But Columbia’s efforts obviously not went far enough for the federal government.
“The universities must comply with all federal anti -discrimination laws if they receive federal financing. For too long, Columbia has given up this obligation towards Jewish students who study on his campus, ”said Minister of Education Linda McMahon in a statement on Friday.
Later she posted on X that she had had a “productive meeting” with the interim president of the university, Katrina Armstrong, and expected to “work together to protect all students”.
Columbia vowed to work with the government to try to get the money back.
“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and is obliged to combat anti -Semitism and to ensure the security and well -being of our students, faculties and employees,” said the university in an explanation.
It is not clear which research, projects or activities in Columbia will be affected, which among other things operates a medical center. The university said it checked the announcement. An investigation was sent to the Federal Education Department, which published the announcement on Friday together with the departments for Health and Justice and the General Services Administration.
Although the details are not yet unthreatening, the announcement occurs when research projects in Columbia find out their budgets for the next academic year, and they are “very concerned about what this means,” said Oceanographer Robert Newton, a retired senior researcher who continues to teach at the university.
Newton, who is Jewish, sees the complaints of the government as on a “complete falsehood” that Columbia impresses in anti -Semitism and is indifferent to the reports of some Jewish students about hostility.
But the Cutoff in the amount of 400 million US dollars was a welcome news for Columbia/Barnard Hillel, a Jewish student group. The managing director Brian Cohen said he hoped that it was “a wake -up call for the government of Colombia and the trustees, anti -Semitism and the nuisance of Jewish students and faculties seriously”.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, described the Move a unconstitutional government, “to force universities and universities to censor the speech and attorney of the students who are not approved, e.g. A message that was looking for a comment was sent to a coalition group Propalestinian demonstrators.
Columbia is the first goal in President Donald Trump’s campaign to reduce the federal money at universities that are accused of feting anti-Semitism in the middle of the Israel-Hamas War that started in October 2023.
Last spring, the university was at the top of the US campus protest against the war. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators founded a camp in April and inspired a wave of similar protests. The demonstrators in Columbia confiscated a campus building, which led to dozens of arrests when the police clarified the building.
In the meantime, the Republicans of the Congress grilled the then President of Columbia Minouche Shafik about the university’s reaction to anti -Semitism. Shafik said that she was “personally obliged to do everything I can to confront it directly.” She resigned four months later.
A few weeks later, a university -act force said that Jews and Israelis were outlawed by student groups at school, humiliated in classrooms and suspended verbal abuse in the spring demonstrations.
In the past few days, a much smaller contingent of demonstrators has staged tiny professions of buildings on Columbia-connected Barnard College in order to protest against the expulsion of two students who are accused of disrupted an Israeli history class. Several students were arrested on Wednesday after taking over a building on Wednesday.
Many people who are involved in the protests said that there is nothing anti -Semitic to criticize Israel about his actions in the Gaza or to express solidarity with Palestinians.
Some students and a lawyer who advises them see the recent disciplinary approach of the university as an effort to suppress the government by suppression pro-Palestinian language.
Columbia belongs to a handful of universities that have been admitted under recent investigations of Federal Anti -Semitism. Others are the University of California in Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; Northwestern University; and Portland State University.
