Columbia University faculty sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to restore $400 million in federal funding withdrawn over antisemitism concerns — and stop the government from meddling in university affairs.
The lawsuit, brought by the faculty members’ union in Manhattan Federal Court, accused several agencies of ignoring the legally required process to terminate funding. Instead, the federal government has revoked contracts — and threatened to cancel more — to bully Columbia into acquiescing to their demands, faculty alleged.
“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” said Reinhold Martin, president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors and a professor of architecture. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction.”
“The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”
The Education and Justice departments, two of the top agencies named as defendants in the lawsuit, did not immediately return a request for comment. The latter runs a task force to combat antisemitism that has led the federal government’s response to pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia.
In an effort to resume the flow of funds, Columbia made a series of remarkable concessions Friday to the Trump administration, which had demanded oversight of the Ivy’s Middle Eastern studies department and arrest powers for campus security. The university agreed to those conditions plus others, including changes to rules on wearing face masks at protests and student discipline. Last year, public grants amounted to 20% of Columbia’s operating revenue.
The Education Department has yet to restore the funding but indicated Columbia is on the “right track.”
The policy changes at the behest of the federal government were condemned by faculty, who said the whole ordeal infringed on academic freedom and imposed “unconstitutional conditions” on the receipt of funding. The legal action by the AAUP and its affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers, came a day after professors and students protested the policy changes as classes resumed after spring break.
According to the lawsuit, filed by attorneys from Protect Democracy and Altshuler Berzon LLP, the government’s involvement has already started to chill free speech. One professor described a student who refused a writing assignment on reproductive rights, fearing their coursework could be accessed by the Trump administration and used against them.
The terminated grants have also “hobbled” public health efforts, court documents show — including research to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, promote maternal health and cure cancer.
A majority of the canceled funds came from the National Institutes of Health, which has mostly impacted Columbia’s medical center, some dozens of blocks north of where the pro-Palestinian campus protests took place. The withdrawn grants amounted to a quarter of the center’s research portfolio, according to the lawsuit. At the medical school alone, NIH revoked nearly 30% of grants.
Another faculty member, who is Jewish, said in the lawsuit that their $2.5 million grant to study student mental health and substance abuse had been terminated. The project involved a “New York City agency” and was aimed at informing city policy. But the project’s work is now on hold: Researchers have ceased meetings with city officials while data analysis has stopped.
“The Trump administration is coercing Columbia University to do its bidding and regulate speech and expression on campus by holding hostage billions of dollars in congressionally authorized federal funding — funding that is responsible for positioning the American university system as a global leader in scientific, medical and technological research and is crucial to ensuring it remains so,” read the complaint.
Before revoking the federal funds, attorneys for the faculty said the Trump administration should have worked with Columbia on voluntary compliance. If Columbia was found unwilling to comply, the Trump administration needed to provide the university with a hearing and wait a specified amount of time ahead of the cancellations, they said.
“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said Orion Danjuma, an attorney at Protect Democracy. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education.”
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