One of the best educational institutions in the country, Columbia University, has agreed to pay $221 million to settle allegations that the administration of US President Donald Trump lacked anti-Semitism on campus.
The New York-based university announced on Wednesday that Columbia would receive the “vast majority” of the $400 million in federal grants that the Trump administration had frozen reinstated as part of the deal.
According to the university, Columbia will also be able to access billions of dollars in both current and future grants.
According to Columbia, the agreement formalized changes made to the harassment of Jews, including increased public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary procedures, and efforts to create “an inclusive and respectful learning environment.”
Additionally, the agreement requires Columbia to carry out programs that “promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, and] diversity targets” while maintaining merit-based admissions and ending those programs.
Columbia will pay the federal government $ 200 million over the course of the agreement in addition to a $ 21 million settlement from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Although the settlement was “substantial,” Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said the university could not continue with a situation that would “jeopardize our status as a world-leading research institution.”
Additionally, we carefully considered all options available to us, according to a statement from Shipman, as I have stated on numerous occasions with our community.
“We might have won some short-term litigation victories, but not without going through deeper, more damaging issues: the potential for losing accreditation, the potential for losing thousands of international students’ visas,” he said.
Shipman cited the “very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism” as evidence that the Trump administration had violated civil rights by blinding Jews.
She said, “We are aware that there are still more things to do.”
Trump’s efforts to control third-level education, including campus activism in support of Palestine and other causes, are all in vain thanks to the settlement.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump praised the settlement as “historic.”
Trump wrote that “Numerous other higher education institutions have upcoming that have hurt so many, been so unfair and unjust, and have improperly spent federal funds, the majority of which are from our government.”
The settlement was criticized as a useful bribe by the student activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).
The organization stated on X that “imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide.”
In the spring and summer of 2024, protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza raged among dozens of US universities.
Pro-Palestinian advocates have accused critics of frequently misinterpreting the hatred of Jews with the opposition to Israel, while many Jewish students and faculty expressed concern that the campus demonstrations veered toward anti-Semitism.
The Columbia University Judicial Board announced on Tuesday that the university’s finalized disciplinary proceedings against students who participated in protests last year at the university’s main library in May and at the “Revolt for Rafah” encampment.
Source: Aljazeera
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