Columbia University agrees to federal compliance demands to unfreeze $400 million in government grants

Columbia University reached an agreement with the Trump administration to unfreeze $400 million in federal grants that had been suspended after the administration accused the university of failing to control campus antisemitism. The compliance agreement required Columbia to hire a senior law enforcement official to oversee campus protests, enforce a ban on masks at demonstrations, review and potentially modify its Middle Eastern studies curriculum, and give administration officials advance notice of planned campus events. Critics, including the American Association of University Professors, called the terms an unprecedented federal intrusion into university governance. Several Columbia faculty members and student groups publicly opposed the agreement, arguing it sacrificed academic freedom and due process rights to recover research funding. Other universities watched Columbia's decision closely, recognizing that the federal government now had a demonstrated template for using grant freezes to extract institutional concessions.