US feds may halt $50 million in Columbia U contracts due to antisemitism

NEW YORK — A federal antisemitism task force in the US is considering a halt to more than $50 million in contracts with New York’s Columbia University due to campus antisemitism, authorities said on Monday, in a warning shot to the university from the Trump administration.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the General Services Administration announced a review of Columbia’s federal contracts and grants due to ongoing investigations into campus civil rights violations.

As part of the review, the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is weighing a halt to $51.4 million in contracts between the university and the federal government due to “Columbia’s ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students,” the statement said.

The task force is also reviewing more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to the university, the joint statement said. The grant commitments would likely be more difficult to cut off than contracts.

“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses,” said US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”

The statement said that, so far, “no immediate contracting actions are being taken.”

The statement amounted to the most significant warning yet to the university from the Trump administration, which has vowed to crack down on campus antisemitism.

The antisemitism task force said last week that it will visit 10 university campuses that saw antisemitic incidents since October 2023, including Columbia and Harvard.

In another warning, Trump said Tuesday that he will cut federal funding to any educational institution “that allows illegal protests,” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump did not specify what an “illegal protest” entailed, but appeared to be referring to anti-Israel demonstrations that broke out on US university campuses, led by Columbia, following the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he said. Trump made similar threats regarding anti-Israel protesters while on the campaign trail.

Trump added that students who have US citizenship will be expelled or possibly arrested, signing off the post with “NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Columbia said in a statement that it was reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies.

“Columbia is fully committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University,” the university said in a statement. “We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

The announcement came after anti-Israel protesters last week invaded a campus building at Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, injuring a university employee. Earlier, Barnard expelled two students who disrupted an Israeli professor’s class at the start of the spring semester. A campus protest group said on Monday that a third Barnard student had been expelled.

Barnard president Laura Ann Rosenbury condemned the campus protesters in a Monday op-ed published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Rosenbury said the disruption of the Israeli professor’s class was a “calculated act of intimidation,” and that protesters have “exploited the conflict in the Middle East to try to tear our campus community — our Barnard home — apart.”

The protest last week caused $30,000 in damages, and the administration has identified most of the activists despite their wearing masks, Rosenbury said.

Also last week, Deborah Lipstadt, who was the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism under former US president Joe Biden, said she had turned down a position at Columbia because of the school’s role in recent anti-Israel protests.