White House Seeks Payments From Other Universities—Including Harvard—After Columbia Deal Sets Precedent
The Trump administration is in talks with several schools about future funding following allegations of antisemitism
The White House is seeking fines from several universities it says failed to stop antisemitism on campus, including hundreds of millions of dollars from Harvard University, in exchange for allowing the schools to access federal funding, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The deal that the Trump administration struck with Columbia University on Wednesday is now a blueprint for negotiations with other universities, a White House official said. Columbia agreed to pay $200 million to the federal government over three years to settle allegations it violated antidiscrimination law and to restore its federal grants.
The administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown, the person familiar with the talks said, though it sees striking a deal with Harvard, America’s oldest university, as a key target.
The White House hopes to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from Harvard, in a deal that would make Columbia’s $200 million payment look like peanuts, the person said.
Harvard declined to comment. It has pursued a different strategy than Columbia amid Trump’s attacks, choosing to sue the administration in federal court. Billions of dollars in Harvard’s federal research money remains frozen, and the university has been cut off from future grants.
A spokesperson for Cornell declined to comment. Brown, Northwestern and Duke didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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The Columbia deal sets a striking precedent in the relationship between the federal government and universities. It agrees to some of the demands made by the Trump administration when it initially canceled Columbia’s grants in March, falls short of several others, and caps it all off with a cash settlement unlike anything seen before in higher education.
“We’re in a world now where the government can say to all these schools, ‘Hey, we’re serious, you’re going to have to pay the piper to get along with the most powerful organization in the world,’” said Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “Which is the federal government.”
The Columbia agreement prohibits programs that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes” in student admissions and faculty hiring. It calls for the appointment of a senior vice provost to review programs in the department that houses Middle Eastern studies. It also appoints new faculty members in Jewish studies, economics and political science to “contribute to a robust and intellectually diverse academic environment.”
The deal doesn’t include a consent decree, which would have put a federal judge in charge of ensuring Columbia adheres to the terms. Instead, a “resolution monitor,” who has been jointly selected by Columbia and the government, and paid for by the school, will keep tabs on Columbia’s compliance.
The deal garnered relief but not excitement among trustees, who voted for it unanimously, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. The terms are dividing Columbia’s campus between those who think it doesn’t go far enough in protecting Jewish students and those who think it compromises the university’s independence.
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel with the Lawfare Project, which advocates for civil rights on behalf of the Jewish community, said he was disappointed the deal didn’t do more to address antisemitism. But he was also cautiously optimistic the fine would “deter Columbia from ignoring the civil rights of Jewish students in the future.”
The deal drew mixed—but strong—reactions from academics and university leaders from across the country.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the main lobbying group for universities, called it chilling that the financial penalty came without the typical due process used in investigations into antisemitism claims. “This cannot be a template for the government’s approach to American higher education,” he said.
The deal had defenders, including Lawrence Summers, Harvard’s former president, who said on X about the news that “this may be the best day higher education has had in the last year.” He called the agreement an “excellent template” for those with other institutions, saying it balances university autonomy with antisemitism reforms.
Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California system, said he views the deal favorably and thought Columbia had objectionable policies around discipline and maintaining order on campus that this would help address.
The agreement, Yudof said, gives university presidents cover to push back on faculty they disagree with to make needed changes. Typically, he said, “it’s hard to take on the faculty” and seen by some as not worth the infighting.
Higher education is now turning its eyes on Harvard to see if its leaders take a similar path.
“If both big brands fall, what chance does the rest of the industry have to hold their own against Trump?” said Teresa Valerio Parrot, a principal at TVP Communications, which specializes in higher-education communications.
Write to Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com, Douglas Belkin at Doug.Belkin@wsj.com and Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com