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It’s been three weeks since Columbia University capitulated to Trump’s extortion

Brian Leiter

Is there any sign they are getting the $400 million?  Please post links or information about where the university stands in its effort to recover the illegally withheld monies.

UPDATE:  As commenters point out, below, the NIH has also cut another $250 million in grants to Columbia since the capitulation!  Surely now they have to get a court to enjoin this lawless behavior.

ANOTHER:  And new comes a report that the Trump Administration may seek a consent decree, which would mean a federal judge would monitor Columbia Univeristy for compliance with the terms the Trumpistas want to impose.

STILL MORE:  Recall the earlier warning.  Lee Bollinger should "lawyer up" given who is he is dealing with.  So should Harvard!  And better lawyers than the ones who advised Claudine Gay before her congressional appearance last year.

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8 responses to “It’s been three weeks since Columbia University capitulated to Trump’s extortion”

  1. Evan Neely

    No info on whether they got the money, but they are actively advertising for the newly created position of “Associate Director of Student Accountability and Group Conduct,” which surely bodes well.

    Reply
  2. Sergiop Tenenbaum

    If this report is correct, it seems that the "reward" is more cuts:
    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/04/09/nih-freezes-millions-more-funding-columbia

    Reply
  3. davidkilloren

    In an article published yesterday, IHE refers to the $400 million as "in limbo."
    https://archive.is/jyUJz

    Reply
  4. Vicky L Brandt

    Here's the original article in Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-research-grants-columbia-university Note: this article went public before anyone at Columbia had been notified of the freeze. The first paragraph says "…according to internal documents seen by Science," i.e., someone in the administration shared this information before telling Columbia. Worse, yesterday evening the NIH grants website blocked access to Columbia faculty for about an hour, again without explanation. So far as I know from my colleagues there, the administration has not offered any information on how they will respond.

    Reply
  5. Luca Ferrero

    Why putting a single department on receivership when you can do that for an entire university?

    https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/columbia-consent-decree-trump-federal-funding-2f4c4690?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

    Reply
  6. Michael Clune

    The wsj piece that broke the consent decree appears to suggest the reason Columbia hasn’t challenged the government in court: it would “likely” lose access to federal funds during the years the case is litigated and “may ultimately lose.” Is the first part of this claim true? If it is, that would seem to suggest that any university dependent on government $ will probably behave in the way they have in fact been behaving thus far.

    Reply
  7. Brian Leiter

    The WSJ piece was a little unclear I thought, perhaps they were talking about litigating a consent decree? Columbia could have gotten an injunction that would require the NIH money to start flowing again, but they chose capitulation and have no money to show for it. There's no question Trump could lawfully cut Columbia's NIH funding, but that would take his administration a couple of years.

    Why didn't Columbia seek an injunction immediately? One possibility is that they are covering up unlawful conduct, which they don't want exposed to the judicial light of day. Another, and more likely, possibility is that those immediately affected by the NIH funding stoppage prevailed on the interim Presdent (from the medical school, which lives on NIH money) to try to cut a deal, believing–obviously wrongly–that this would turn the spigot on again. It has not.

    Reply
  8. Dhananjay Jagannathan

    Though I teach at Columbia, I don't have any special insight into why the university has not pursued legal remedies for the unlawful funding cuts. Per Brian's speculation, former Interim President Armstrong certainly seems to have thought she could turn the spigot back on by cultivating a relationship with Linda McMahon (see the talk of their exchanging personal cellphone numbers here — https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-potomac-watch/columbia-surrenders-to-donald-trumps-demands/2a4bd8e7-aff1-44de-b2cb-a0fa79ac1c3d ). This sort of approach has seemed utterly ridiculous to most of the faculty colleagues I've talked to, not least since McMahon is in charge of a department the Administration hopes to eliminate. But the broader point is that appeasement will simply invite further attacks, as it has at Columbia and now also at Northwestern – https://dailynorthwestern.com/2025/04/10/campus/hhs-cites-incidents-of-antisemitism-in-confirmation-of-northwestern-funding-freeze-while-experts-question-legality/

    It also seems that senior administrators Columbia thought they would be alone in resisting these attacks, which would simply ramp up the pressure on them——a classic prisoners' dilemma. One wonders if better leadership, and a real communications strategy, might have made a difference.

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