How conservatives are using Columbia as a ‘test case’ to enforce Trump’s agenda

Months before Columbia University interim President Katrina Armstrong stepped down, conservative policy circles were buzzing about ways to force elite universities to change.

Critical of college admissions, diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and campus protests that he lambasted as pro-Hamas, Max Eden, then a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an outline that presaged what was to come in the new Trump administration. He singled out Columbia as the top target.

“To scare universities straight,” Eden wrote in the Washington Examiner, Education Secretary Linda McMahon “should start by taking a prize scalp. She should simply destroy Columbia University.”

Eden, whose opinion piece came before Trump was inaugurated or McMahon was confirmed, suggested canceling research grants and deporting international students who took part in protests. Though it’s unclear whether his plan had a direct impact, it bears a striking resemblance to the early actions the Trump administration has taken to transform America’s most prestigious colleges and universities.

During his campaign, Trump characterized colleges as indoctrinating young people and not doing more to stop antisemitism and protests on campus. “Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hardworking taxpayers and now we are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all,” he said last year.

Columbia quickly became the first front in the higher education war.

Last month, McMahon met with Armstrong and told her that $400 million in funding to Columbia had been canceled for what the federal government said was the school’s failure to protect Jewish students from discrimination. Several international students who the administration said participated in “pro-jihadist protests” at Columbia were sought or detained by immigration officers and threatened with deportation.

President Donald Trump said it was only the beginning.

On the day the administration canceled the federal funding to the school, a senior Trump administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, described Columbia as a “test case” for using funding to pressure colleges to comply with Trump’s ideology.

“We’re going to bankrupt these universities,” Leo Terrell, leader of the recently formed Justice Department task force on antisemitism, said on Fox News after the cuts to Columbia were announced. “We’re going to take away every single federal dollar. … If these universities do not play ball, lawyer up, because the federal government is coming after you.”

Billions more in funding to Columbia are at stake as the Trump administration evaluates whether the Ivy League school has acted strongly enough to combat antisemitism on campus. With the higher education community watching, Armstrong abruptly stepped down on March 28. Claire Shipman, a co-chair of the university’s board, took on the role of acting president “with a clear understanding of the serious challenges before us.”

Columbia so far is the only school to see federal funding canceled, but it is hardly the only target of the Trump administration’s push to combat what it sees as leftist ideology and antisemitism in higher education.

Days before McMahon was confirmed, federal agencies in February alerted a list of 10 universities that would be visited by the Justice Department task force. Columbia was first on the list. Another 60 schools were warned of potential enforcement action if they did not follow federal civil rights law to protect Jewish students on campus, with the news release explicitly highlighting the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia.

And last week, the Trump administration announced a review of nearly $9 billion in federal funding to Harvard and its affiliates, suspension of grants to Princeton University, and a planned freeze of $510 million in funding to Brown University. The administration announced last month that $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania would be frozen.

Officials at Brown and Penn have said the federal government has not given them direct information about the actions. Harvard received a letter calling for “a meaningful dialogue focused on lasting, structural reform at Harvard” and steps necessary for a continued relationship with the federal government, including shuttering DEI programs, review of “programs and departments that fuel antisemitic harassment,” and “merit-based hiring reform.”

Eden did not respond to requests for comment on whether he had any role in the administration’s higher-education offensive. The Post found a White House email address for a Max Eden. When asked to confirm his role, a White House spokesman declined to comment on “personnel” matters.

Elite universities have long been valued for their contributions to scientific discoveries, the economy, civic life and national security.

But higher education has little public trust right now, said Frederick M. Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, especially well-known private institutions. From the political left, there’s skepticism about the cost of higher education. From the right, he said, “it’s seen as ideological, it’s seen as politicized, it’s seen as bloated.”

There has been a growing rift between the American public and higher education, especially on the right: In 2015, about 56 % of Republicans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, according to Gallup. By 2024, that had dropped to 20 %.

And for the past year and a half, Hess said, because of pro-Palestinian protests, some universities have also come across as “hypocritical, willing to tolerate violent, disruptive, anti-American, antisemitic demonstrations, and unwilling to either safeguard academic learning or even enforce empty talk about inclusion and mutual respect. Politically, they’re in an incredibly vulnerable place.”

Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton, argued in the Atlantic last month that the attack on Columbia is “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.”

Intense pressure had been brought to bear on Columbia last year as demonstrations were seen as sparking protests nationwide. While some on and off campus defended students’ right to free speech, university officials faced backlash from alumni, lawmakers and influential business titans who pressured the city and school leadership to quash protests and ensure campus safety.

With billions more in federal dollars at risk, Armstrong tried to negotiate with the Trump administration in hopes of restoring government funding. Some cast the changes she promised as a capitulation, although much of the work had long been discussed or was already underway. On Friday, the school’s acting president said in a video to campus that university officials were working to implement the plans, which she said “are the right thing to do.”

Columbia has faced criticism from some faculty and free-speech advocates for not taking Trump to court over the cuts, but some higher education experts say litigation would be risky. Columbia holds more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments that could be jeopardized if the university were to fight the administration.

As school leaders tried to work with the feds, unions representing Columbia faculty and staff sued the Trump administration over the funding cuts.

“They are targeting private institutions of education and attempting to police and control speech, political expression and thought. And that is truly unprecedented,” said Orion Danjuma, counsel at Protect Democracy, which is representing the unions alongside the law firm Altshuler Berzon. “Columbia is the testing ground for this. It’s a canary in the coal mine.”

The antisemitism task force, for example, accused Columbia of violating Title VI, a provision of federal civil rights law requiring colleges to prevent and alleviate hostile environments based on race, color or national origin. But the administration has not followed the process the law mandates before pulling federal money, the lawsuit alleges. Columbia never received a hearing or an opportunity to negotiate before the government revoked its funding, according to the complaint.

Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the Trump administration “followed all applicable law in holding Columbia University to account for the lawless antisemitism that it allowed to occur on its campus.”

Columbia has been in the crosshairs since the early days of the Israel-Gaza war, when protesters from all over the city joined demonstrations last year, and the school became the center of protests and crackdowns across the country.

The university later closed its gates to anyone without a school ID. Campus has been largely quiet this academic year – although on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, a protest group celebrated at the center of campus, using the Hamas name for the onslaught, the Al-Aqsa Flood.

On the first day of classes at Columbia this semester – the day after Trump’s inauguration – masked protesters interrupted a course on the history of modern Israel and handed out antisemitic fliers.

The expulsion of several students involved touched off protests at Barnard College, the independent but affiliated school across the street. Things happened quickly: On Feb. 27, the college’s president said protesters caused more than $30,000 in damage to a building. Days later, on March 3, several federal agencies said they were investigating Columbia and would “conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”

After a March 5 protest – at which some pro-Israel students said demonstrators were handing out fliers glorifying Hamas, a bomb threat was announced and police arrested some protesters – some people on and off campus began posting photos and names of protesters on social media, including calls for international students to be deported.

On March 7, Armstrong learned that $400 million in federal funding had been canceled because, agencies said, the school had failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination on campus.

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student, was seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and told his green card had been revoked. Immigration officers also searched for two other students, prompting some international students who had protested to stay with friends and avoid campus.

“Taking over buildings, defacing private property, and harassing Jewish students does not constitute free speech,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

About a half dozen international students from U.S. colleges have since been detained by ICE officers after being accused of supporting terrorism and movements that counter U.S. foreign policy. The government also has revoked the visas of scores of students.

Columbia has more international students than almost any other university in the country, according to the Institute for International Education, with more than 20,000 enrolled last academic year.

The Trump administration is targeting people whose views it disagrees with, said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, whose organization is helping Khalil’s legal fight against deportation. “This is an attempt at disappearance.”

Meanwhile, researchers were grappling with the abrupt funding cuts. The most direct hit fell on the school’s medical campus, a couple of miles north of the protest action.

A March 10 email from the leadership at Irving Medical Center informed faculty that 232 NIH grants had been terminated – about 25 percent of the center’s total number of grants.

Joshua Gordon, the chair of the psychiatry department at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said that terminated grants in his department include funding for dozens of young, early-career scientists who are at a formative stage in their careers and a major autism research grant. “It’s a real threat to the future of science,” he said.

The same day researchers found out about the canceled grants, Armstrong wrote to the campus community, “All eyes are on Columbia at present. It falls to us to ensure our University, and indeed the values of higher education more broadly, survive and thrive.”

The Education Department sent a letter three days later that set out its demands. Among them were calls for disciplinary changes, a mask ban and the right to monitor an academic department as a precondition to restoring funding.

In response to the administration’s list of demands, Columbia said it would enforce new rules on student protests and discipline, expand intellectual diversity among faculty, and review its admissions policies, among other changes.

Armstrong faced tough questions. Some saw the changes as caving. But some of the responses aligned with changes that were already in motion, such as training campus police to give them the authority to make arrests.

Other changes are not an exact match to the administration’s demands. The university is not abolishing its judicial board that oversees disciplinary cases as requested. But it will remove students from participating and give the provost oversight. It is not putting the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department in academic receivership for five years as the administration wanted. That academic department will undergo a review by the provost’s office.

On March 25, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers filed their lawsuit alleging the administration violated the First Amendment and civil rights law by unilaterally canceling Columbia’s funds.

Danjuma, the attorney representing the unions, said he thinks the administration may never return the money because it wants financial leverage to ensure Columbia doesn’t engage in research or political expression that runs counter to the Trump agenda.

“This was planned,” said Reinhold Martin, president of Columbia’s chapter of the AAUP. “We’ve seen the script. The assault on Columbia is going according to that script.”

Carolyn Y. Johnson, Razzan Nakhlawi, Aaron Schaffer, Dan Diamond and Alice Crites contributed to this report.