Trump forces Columbia, Brown to share race data in $200M settlement for research funding

Columbia University agreed on July 23, 2025, to pay $200 million to the federal government over three years and an additional $21 million to settle an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into religious harassment of Jewish employees following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. In exchange, the Trump administration restored access to roughly $1.3 billion in frozen federal research grants. Brown University followed on July 30, 2025, reaching a separate three-year agreement that required no payment to the federal government but committed Brown to directing $50 million in grants to Rhode Island workforce development organizations over ten years; the federal government simultaneously reimbursed Brown for more than $50 million in suspended grant costs that had been accumulating at roughly $3.5 million per week.

Both settlements require the universities to submit annual admissions data to federal auditors showing every applicant — accepted and rejected — broken down by race, color, GPA, and standardized test scores. The agreements also bar both schools from using what the settlement language calls a "proxy for racial admission," including personal statements or diversity narratives that might indirectly introduce race as a factor. Neither university admitted wrongdoing. Both cited language protecting their authority over curriculum and academic speech, though legal analysts at the Knight First Amendment Institute noted those protections may offer limited practical defense given the settlements' other sweeping conditions.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon on August 7, 2025, extended the data-disclosure model nationally, directing the National Center for Education Statistics to collect race-disaggregated admissions data from colleges across the country for the 2025–26 academic year and the five prior years. Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said the administration was casting "a really big net" and warned that the volume of new data would be difficult to interpret because admissions offices weigh many variables beyond academics. The Trump White House framed the effort as enforcing the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-conscious admissions at all colleges receiving federal funding.

Brown's settlement went beyond admissions. The agreement required Brown to adopt the federal government's definitions of "male" and "female" for athletics, programming, and on-campus housing, consistent with Trump's "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism" executive order. Brown also agreed not to perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to minors. Columbia's settlement incorporated the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into its Office of Institutional Equity and suspended or expelled nearly 80 students for involvement in Gaza-related protests. Three federal agencies — the Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education — were parties to the Columbia agreement.