Columbia’s Settlement With Trump Could Trigger a Revolution in Higher Ed

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(Daily Signal)—Real accountability is coming to higher education thanks to President Donald Trump.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Friday that Columbia University agreed to pay $21 million to settle antisemitism charges following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks.

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“Under the guise of promoting free speech, many universities have actually become a haven for antisemitic conduct, often in violation of the universities’ own time, place, and manner policies, as well as civil rights law,” EEOC acting Chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement. “The Trump administration is committed to combating antisemitism wherever it rears its head, including the workplace—and universities are workplaces too.”

This comes on the heels of an over $200 million settlement between Columbia University and the Trump administration.

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the settlement a “monumental victory for conservatives” who for a very long time have criticized the operation of elite universities but have been unable to make them mend their ways.

What’s significant is not just that Columbia will pay up. The school, according to the New York Post, reportedly agreed to “submit to independent monitoring to ensure it is complying with merit-based hiring and admissions requirements.”

The Post reported that Columbia also, “agreed to end all programming that discriminated against faculty or students—bringing it into full compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-based affirmative action—and create some yet-to-be-announced faculty positions in the name of broadening intellectual diversity.”

The school will have to provide all hiring and admissions data to the federal government to help ensure that they won’t be skirting the law like many schools clearly intend to do. Never underestimate higher education’s creativity in finding ways to racially discriminate.

The bottom line is that Columbia University’s settlement is a huge deal.

Columbia was set to lose over $400 million if they lost their legal dispute with the Trump administration. By settling, they keep some of their money, but agree to reforms (and avoid what could have been found in discovery during the case).

As Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote on X, the Columbia settlement is a good template for how to deal with other publicly funded higher education institutions in the future.

If they want to keep getting taxpayer dollars, they need to demonstrate an actual, verifiable commitment to reform. For too long they’ve gotten away with violating both the law and the public’s trust.

As should be clear by now, elite universities have no intention of reforming from within.

Whatever arguments about the need for ideological balance or merit-based admissions, it’s clear that the universities will simply carry on unless faced with lawsuits or defunding. And that’s because they’ve become almost universally leftist institutions, where the only marginally “conservative” forces on campus are still to the left of your typical congressional Democrat.

They are well-funded, ideologically narrow credentialing factories for the global elite. Until now, they’ve faced virtually no accountability despite their dependence on U.S. taxpayers.

Besides ideological conformity and lunacy, higher education in America has truly become a racket. Some schools, like Columbia and Harvard University, sit on (until very recently tax-exempt) endowments in the tens of billions of dollars. Meanwhile, they expect the American people to bail out student loan debt, which is really a giveaway to the universities.

But times are a changing. The blank check Americans once gave to higher education has been rescinded. Now, the American people rightfully expect them to change or see their taxpayer funding dry up. The excuse that Americans must tolerate all their nonsense in exchange for critical research is a farce.

As Jay P. Greene, a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, wrote for The Daily Signal in March, if schools like Columbia fail to comply with the law, research grants can be sent elsewhere.

The American people have leverage over higher education and a president who is clearly willing to use it. It would not be surprising if after the Columbia settlement there will be a cascade of settlements by other universities, including the biggest one of all: Harvard.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration is in talks with Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, Brown, and Harvard to hash out similar deals as the one agreed to by Columbia. Remarkable.

The settlements certainly won’t solve all of higher education’s problems, but this could very well be the end of the beginning of the fight to restore education in America.

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