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Columbia University was dealt another blow to research funding this week.
The Trump administration has frozen all U.S. National Institutes of Health funding for research grants at Columbia University, Science reported, cutting off the flow of $250 million to the private institution mere weeks after it yielded to sweeping demands related to pro-Palestinian campus protests.
The federal government had already clamped down on $400 million in research funding for Columbia last month. But after the university agreed to enact various reforms the Trump administration demanded to address alleged antisemitism on campus, it appeared a reprieve was in order. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said last month that she believed Columbia was “on the right track” toward final negotiations to unfreeze the research funds.
Instead, the Trump administration has gone in the opposite direction, cutting off even more research funding. According to Science, the NIH froze Columbia’s funding Monday at the direction of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is reportedly not only blocking new funding but also ceasing payments for work on existing projects. In addition, the agency will require prior approval to tap existing disbursements.
“HHS strongly condemns anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish students on college campuses,” a department spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed by email. “In line with President Trump’s mission to combatting discrimination and promoting fairness, HHS is partnering with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior. We will not tolerate taxpayer-funded institutions that fail to uphold their duty to safeguard students from harassment.”
Critics assailed the move.
“It’s shocking, but not surprising, as with so many previous developments in this matter,” said Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia math professor and vice president of the institution’s American Association of University Professors chapter. “And it shows that the Trump administration just has an animus against American universities.”
Thaddeus called the actions “so patently unlawful” that litigation against the Trump administration would have a strong chance of success—yet Columbia hasn’t sued. The AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers union, with which the AAUP is affiliated, have filed a lawsuit over the prior $400 million cut.
“If what you’re dealing with is threats from an extortionist, then capitulating to the threats of an extortionist is not a wise move,” Thaddeus said. “What’s happening is not an enforcement action, it’s a political vendetta.”
Reinhold Martin, president of the Columbia AAUP chapter and an architecture professor, said “the defunding of science” reflects a structural pattern: “the movement of public funding out of the nonprofit sector into, eventually, we can fully expect, the for-profit sector. So that’s what this is about.”
A Columbia spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed the university has not yet been notified of the freeze. “At this time, Columbia has not received notice from the NIH about additional cancellations,” the spokesperson said via email. “The University remains in active dialogue with the Federal Government to restore its critical research funding.”
Columbia would not be the first university to learn about the loss of federal funding indirectly. The Trump administration also froze $790 million in federal research funding at Northwestern University earlier this week, which officials learned about via media reports. Cornell University was also dealt a $1 billion blow to its federal funding this week.
Elsewhere in the Ivy League, the Trump administration has frozen $510 million at Brown University, $175 million at the University of Pennsylvania and $210 million at Princeton University. The funding freezes mainly come in response to allegations of antisemitism related to pro-Palestinian campus protests, though federal investigations into the claims are ongoing.
Outside of Columbia, scholars noted that even though the university gave in to Trump’s demands, the administration still seemed unsatisfied.
“The NIH just froze ALL grant funding owed to Columbia University, meaning that the university’s concessions to the Trump administration clearly didn’t go far enough to satisfy the federal government,” Robert Kelchen, a professor of education and head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, wrote in a BlueSky post.
