Linda McMahon called Wednesday’s landmark capitulation by Columbia “a road map for elite universities.” It turns out that it also serves as a road map for Department of Education attorneys and negotiators. If those elite universities hadn’t figured that out when the terms of the settlement went public, their bankers probably began making plans.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration plans to use the Columbia settlement as their framework for dealing with schools that allowed anti-Semitic intimidation campaigns to take place over the last two years. They want changes, and they want these universities to show them the money:
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.
Harvard is a particular target, the WSJ notes, and the Trump administration wants a much higher price from Harvard than they got from Columbia. That may be due in part to Harvard’s refusal to deal honestly with its Civil Rights Act violations, including its attempts to finesse the Supreme Court ruling on DEI in its 2023 SFFA v Harvard decision striking down affirmative action. A month ago, the Department of Justice ruled that Harvard has also violated the CRA in its refusal to protect its Jewish students and faculty, an escalation created by Harvard’s refusal to negotiate for real reform on its campus.
The more resistance, the more it will likely cost. That’s certainly another “road map” that Trump and McMahon would like to lay out when dealing with other schools in similar positions.
However, this makes sense in another way. Harvard has much more to lose than Columbia did. The Trump administration had held up over $400 million in federal funding to Columbia before they finally capitulated. Columbia agreed to pay back about half of that amount over the next five years in return for unrestricted flow of funds while the federal monitor ensures compliance with the agreement and the law. Harvard has lost over $2 billion in federal funds, which would suggest a settlement in the billion-dollar range, all things being relative and equitable. That’s also a roadmap that might appeal to Trump and McMahon.
And that might even appeal to the universities themselves, at least from a financial perspective. My friend Scott Johnson expressed disappointment at Power Line in the scope of the Columbia settlement for that reason, although he did react more positively to the accomplishment of forcing Columbia to at least recognize the need for change:
Short of the Carthaginian solution, what sort of agreement would redress the wrongs that Columbia University has tolerated, facilitated, committed, and lied about against its Jewish students and teachers? There is room for reasonable disagreement, but I think it would be something that goes beyond the Danegeld/fine of $200 million in installment payments over three years, another $21 million to resolve the investigation of pending claims by the EEOC, and other terms of the 22-page-settlement agreement on which Columbia and the Trump administration landed yesterday.
The money to be paid means nothing to Columbia. In exchange for the payments, Columbia wins the restoration of hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended research grants and something close to the continuance of the governing status quo, subject to reporting requirements and a mutually agreed-upon compliance monitor (Bart M. Schwartz, a former chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York). Columbia has also agreed conform its actions to legal requirements and to implement the policy changes it agreed to when it unlocked long-term negotiations in March.
Be sure to read it all, because Scott has a point. This is a good deal for Columbia in the financial sense, and the administration may have been able to get more if it really played hardball. However, Trump values the capitulation and compliance more than the money in these battles, especially with other fights looming. Giving Columbia a reasonable escape hatch at least advances the larger war against Academia.
And it’s not as if the financial penalties are the only damage Columbia will take in this settlement. At The Free Press, Maya Sulkin and Frannie Block report today that the EEOC findings will tar Columbia’s reputation for quite a while. They also, though, note that Scott’s not the only person who thinks this could still far short of real reform. And the Trump administration has plans if it does:
Lucas told The Free Press that the EEOC’s investigations have found “things out of Nazi Germany.” Students were turned away from educational and work spaces, Jewish faculty were too scared to go to work, students were terrified of getting assaulted or harassed while walking across campus, and much more. “This was a really grave civil-rights violation at a really large scale,” she said. …
A Columbia affiliate close to the situation told The Free Press that the outcome “is good for Jewish students. It makes sense for the university, and it is important progress. But it remains to be seen whether the university will fully undertake the reforms it needs to. The stuff that did not make it into the contract would have reformed the institution.”
A senior Trump administration official familiar with the negotiations said that “this is just step one.” The official added: “In late August, the kids and faculty come back to campus, and many of them believe they—and not the board or administration—are in charge of Columbia. . . . The substantive challenge is resetting the balance of power and reasserting the leadership of the school and letting the students and faculty know that for the first time in many decades, there will be order on campus and consequences for breaking the rules.”
If that doesn’t happen, “the administration is not going to let Columbia embarrass us,” the senior Trump administration official added. “We’ll be watching you.”
It’s all about the follow-up. That will also be a “road map,” one that other universities will watch closely. Especially Harvard.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is fighting Academia, DEI, and anti-Semitism to reform higher education and ensure America’s kids get the education they deserve.
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