Inside Higher Ed reports that “Columbia University has agreed to (an over) $200 million settlement with the federal government after months of scrutiny over how it handled pro-Palestinian student protests and campus antisemitism.”

Columbia Board of Trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Jeh Johnson were quoted as saying, “today’s agreement with the federal government affirms Columbia’s unyielding commitment to academic freedom, freedom of expression, and open inquiry,” which, as you can imagine, resulted in what was referred to as “strong reactions” from academics on social media.

Those strong reactions included one from the AAUP, who “took aim” at the Trump administration with the following statement, “You can never bend the knee enough to appease an authoritarian bully. This is a devastating blow to academic freedom & freedom of speech at Columbia. Never in the history of this nation has there been an administaration so intent on the utter destruction of higher education as we know it.”

The full article can be found here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/trustees-regents/2025/07/23/columbia-settles-trump-administration

This follows Columbia’s announcement on Tuesday that it “expelled and suspended multiple students for participating in allegedly disruptive protest activity in spring of 2024 and earlier this year.” Officials are quoted as saying, “while the University does not release individual disciplinary results of any student…sanctions include probation, suspensions (ranging from one to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”

The full article can be found here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/07/22/columbia-expels-suspends-student-protesters

The question is, to what extent are Columbia’s administrators willing to sell out to Trump? IHE noted in a 7/14 article that GOP demands threatened, “if Columbia University wants a financial relationship with the federal government, the Ivy League institution will need to overhaul its discipline process, ban masks, expel some students, put an academic department under review, give its campus security ‘full law enforcement authority’ and reform its admissions practices.”

Read that article here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/03/14/trump-escalates-attack-columbia-his-latest-demands