Columbia University hit research funding this week.
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The Trump administration has frozen funding from the National Institutes of Health for Columbia University’s research grant, science The report said $250 million was flowed to private institutions a few weeks after entrusting the full demand related to the protests on the pro-Palestinian campus.
The federal government has cut research funding for Colombia last month. But it seems imminent that the Trump administration demands to address what is called anti-Semitism on campus after the university agrees to enact various reforms. Education Minister Linda McMahon said last month that she believes Colombia is “on the right track” to achieve final negotiations to thaw the research fund.
Instead, the Trump administration has moved in the opposite direction, reducing more research funding. according to scienceNIH froze Colombia funds under instructions from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday. It was reported that NIH not only blocked new funding, but also stopped working on existing projects. Additionally, the agency will require prior approval to take advantage of existing expenditures.
A department spokesperson told Internal Advanced ED By email. “In line with President Trump’s mission to combat discrimination and promote equity, HHS is working with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants granted by universities that fail to protect students from discriminatory conduct. We will not tolerate taxpayer-funded institutions that fail to uphold their responsibilities to keep students protected from Harassment.”
Critics attacked the move.
“It’s shocking, but not surprising, like many developments before this,” said Michael Thaddeus, professor of mathematics in Columbia and vice president of Columbia at the institution’s Association of American Colleges Professors. “It shows that the Trump administration has an hostility towards American universities.”
Taders called the actions “apparently illegal” that there would be a great chance of success in the lawsuit against the Trump administration – Colombia has not yet filed a lawsuit. The AAUP and the AAUP-affiliated Federation of Teachers and the AAUP have filed lawsuits against the previous $400 million cut lawsuit.
“If you’re dealing with the threat of ransomists, then the threat of ransomists is unwise,” Thades said. “What happened is not law enforcement actions, but political vendetta.”
“Scientific money funding” reflects a structural model: “The flow of public funds raised from a nonprofit sector, and ultimately, we can fully expect that we can fully expect that this is the for-profit field. That’s it that.”
A Colombia spokesman told Internal Advanced ED The university has not received a notice of the freeze. “Currently, Columbia has not received notification from the NIH,” a spokesperson said via email. “The university is still in active dialogue with the federal government to restore its critical research funding. ”
Colombia will not be the first university to indirectly understand federal funding losses. The Trump administration also frozen $790 million in federal research funding at Northwestern University earlier this week, and officials learned about the funding through media reports. Cornell also hit its federal funding this week with a $1 billion blow.
Elsewhere in the Ivy League, the Trump administration has frozen $510 million at Brown University and $175 million at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. The funding freeze was primarily in response to anti-Semitism allegations related to the pro-Palestinian campus protests, although federal investigations into these claims are still underway.
Scholars outside of Columbia point out that the administration still seems unsatisfied even if universities succumb to Trump’s demands.
“NIH simply freezes all grants owed by Columbia University, which means that the university’s concessions to the Trump administration are clearly not enough to satisfy the federal government,” said Robert Kelchen, professor of education and chair of the Department of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, chair of the Department of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Knoxville.
