By Jonathan Allen and Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The Trump administration has told Columbia University that it must make a series of policy changes as a precondition for talks on restoring $400 million in federal funding, adding fresh pressure in its crackdown on schools where pro-Palestinian protests flourished last year.
The demands, spelled out in a letter dated on Thursday, coincided with a search of two student dormitory rooms by federal agents at the New York City campus. The searches came a week after immigration agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, the leader of last year’s protests at Columbia, in a bid to deport him that so far has been blocked in federal court.
The developments are the latest signals that the Trump administration has no intention of easing up on efforts to crack down on student activists and reshape the policies of universities on dealing with protests.
Earlier this week, the Department of Education warned that it was investigating 60 colleges and universities for allegedly tolerating antisemitic harassment and a hostile environment for Jews. In a related move, it on Friday said it was investigating 45 universities after complaints that the schools engaged with a program designed to increase diversity that set eligibility based on race. It said such activities violated a 1964 civil rights law.
The early target of the crackdown has been Columbia, which the administration has accused of an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism on campus during last year’s weeks-long encampment by activists and a brief occupation of a campus building.
The university has defended its response to the protests by saying it has worked to combat antisemitism and other prejudice. At the same time, it has had to fend off accusations by civil rights groups that it is letting the government erode academia’s free speech protections.
Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong said in a statement on Thursday that agents from the Department of Homeland Security served the university with two warrants signed by a federal magistrate, allowing them to enter and search the student residences. No one was arrested or detained, no items were removed, and no further action was taken, she said.
Even before Khalil’s arrest, students say federal immigration agents had been repeatedly spotted at dorms and student housing around Columbia’s Manhattan campus.
Over the last week, Columbia staff and law students have sent emails and group messages to alert people on campus to the sightings, saying the agents are in plainclothes, and reminding students of their rights.
The campus demonstrations that precipitated the federal scrutiny of Columbia began after an October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, and the subsequent U.S.-supported Israeli assault on Gaza, the Palestinian enclave that Hamas controls. Protesters demanded that university endowments divest from Israeli interests and that the U.S. end military assistance to Israel.
In Thursday’s letter to the school, the Trump administration set out a list of changes that Columbia must set in motion ahead of formal efforts to restore the suspended contracts and grants.
Among the demands, it said Columbia must formally define antisemitism, ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate,” and place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments under “academic receivership,” which would take control out of the hands of their faculties.
It also demanded that the school reform its admissions and international recruiting policies in compliance with federal law, but offered no specifics.
The university responded on Friday by saying it was reviewing the letter. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” it said in a statement.
But other members of the university community were critical of the demands on Columbia, saying the First Amendment of the Constitution gave universities the right to decide what speech and debate to allow on their campuses.
“The subjugation of universities to official power is a hallmark of autocracy,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University.
Earlier on Thursday, the school announced that it had meted out a range of punishments – including suspensions, expulsions and the revocation of degrees – to students who occupied the building last spring during the protests. It did not name the students or say how many were disciplined.
The discipline followed a months-long process conducted by the University Judicial Board. One of the new federal demands on Columbia is that the office of the president take direct control of disciplinary matters.
In the latest court filing in Khalil’s case, his lawyers said the Trump administration’s stated policy of deporting foreign nationals who participate in pro-Palestinian protests is unconstitutional. It urged U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan to immediately release him from immigration detention.
Khalil’s deportation has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, and the student leader, who has not been charged with any crime, is being held in a federal facility in Louisiana.
Earlier this week, Justice Department lawyers representing the government said Khalil, 30, was subject to deportation because Secretary of State Marco Rubio had determined that his presence or activities in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The government did not elaborate in court papers on how Khalil could harm U.S. foreign policy. Trump, without evidence, has accused him of supporting Hamas, and Rubio told reporters earlier this week that noncitizen protesters who disrupt campus life should have their visas revoked.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
