In recent weeks, the federal government has canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University because of what it describes as the school’s failure to limit antisemitic harassment. The government recently broadened its investigation into cases of antisemitism to 60 colleges and universities. Separate to the ongoing investigations, federal agents detained a recent graduate student at Columbia who had been a vocal participant in recent campus protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Detention of student protestor
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, faces possible deportation after being detained by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 8. Khalil is a legal permanent resident and is married to a U.S. citizen. During his arrest, officials initially told him that his student visa had been revoked. When they were informed that he did not have such a visa, they instead detained him on the basis that his green card had been revoked.
Khalil has not been charged with a crime. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was detained under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the Secretary of State to deport anyone who interferes with the country’s foreign policy or national security interests.
Khalil was a prominent participant of the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia last spring against Columbia’s investments in funds that support Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. As a student negotiator, he often interacted with the university’s administration as well as the press. Following the protests, he was investigated by Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity, a new disciplinary body that the university created to investigate charges of harassment and discrimination. The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil organized events espousing Hamas’ ideology. Some reporting suggests Khalil may have been targeted due to his public-facing role and the fact that he did not wear a mask when many other protestors did.
Khalil is currently being held at LaSalle Detention Center, a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana. The American Civil Liberties Union and Khalil’s attorneys argue that his arrest on the basis of his involvement in the protests is a flagrant violation of his right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment. The Trump administration has said that Khalil is only one of many whom they plan to detain and deport for similar reasons, according to the The New York Times.
Federal grants for Columbia canceled
Separately, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, formed on Feb. 4, announced the immediate cancelation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University on March 7 due to what the Task Force described as the “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” according to its press release.
Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president, addressed the impact of the funding cuts in a statement to the Columbia University Senate, the school’s policy-making body that includes faculty and students, and is subject to the power of the school’s trustees. “I will tell you that we are going to work diligently with all of you and across our community to preserve our mission,” she wrote in a report to the University Senate, according to the Columbia Spectator.
“We owe to every student here the best possible experience that they can ever have, that there should never be a student who does not feel welcome, included, or valued,” Armstrong wrote the day the Task Force announced the funding cuts.
The $400 million in cuts comes from the bodies that make up the Task Force — the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration. The National Institute of Health — a division of the Department of Health and Human Services — announced on March 10 that it was canceling $250 million in research grants to Columbia as part of the $400 million in cuts to the university’s federal funding. The cuts will terminate over 400 individual research grants.
“There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care,” Armstrong wrote in a campus-wide email, according to the Spectator.
Investigation of antisemitism within higher education broadens
Following the cancellation of Columbia’s federal funding, the Department of Education announced on March 10 that its Office of Civil Rights (OCR) had sent letters to additional colleges and universities threatening enforcement action if the institutions failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The letter was not released to the public, but threatened that schools found to be in violation of Title VI could lose federal funding, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Initially, the department’s investigation had focused on Columbia and four other universities. Following President Trump’s executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism,” the department announced that it was investigating cases of antisemitism at Columbia, Northwestern, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. That investigation is ongoing and prompted the cancellation of Columbia’s federal funding on March 7.
Three days later, on March 10, OCR identified 55 additional institutions in response to complaints filed with the office, making for a total of 60 schools subject to the investigation, including small liberal arts colleges such as Middlebury and Swarthmore. Williams, however, has not been included in the investigation.
“U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in the department’s press release. “That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
