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CV NEWS FEED // Columbia University has laid off nearly 180 staff members after the Trump administration revoked $400 million in federal grants, citing the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.
“Across the research portfolio we have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination,” said acting university President Claire Shipman in a Tuesday statement.
The layoffs affect roughly 20% of staff whose positions were supported by the canceled federal funding, according to Shipman.
The loss of federal funding in early March followed repeated incidents of antisemitic hostility on campus following the Oct. 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
In one widely reported case, 40 anti-Israel agitators seized a university building last April. Two janitors later filed a lawsuit alleging unsafe and hostile working conditions during their occupation.
A university task force report released last August described “serious and pervasive” antisemitism on campus. Jewish and Israeli students reported being verbally abused, excluded from student organizations, intimidated in classrooms, and pressured to conceal their views to avoid retaliation.
Last month, Columbia agreed to several changes in an attempt to restore federal funding.
The university banned identity-concealing masks, granted arrest powers to 36 campus police officers, and appointed a senior vice provost to oversee departments focused on Middle East, South Asian, and Palestine studies.
Shipman said the university remains in talks with federal agencies to reinstate frozen research awards. She also cited broader concerns over future federal research reimbursements as contributing to the cuts.
“We have had to make deliberate, considered decisions about the allocation of our financial resources,” Shipman said. “Those decisions also impact our greatest resource, our people. We understand this news will be hard.”
Columbia currently holds the fifth-largest endowment in the Ivy League at $14.8 billion.
The university has also faced renewed scrutiny over its internal policies. As CatholicVote previously reported, Columbia’s new Office of Institutional Equity (OEI) received backlash after a Catholic doctoral candidate was targeted for publicly stating that people cannot change their gender.
The situation at Columbia reflects a broader crackdown on taxpayer-funded institutions accused of tolerating ideological bias.
Just last month, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University after it refused to eliminate its DEI programs and similarly failed to address campus antisemitism concerns.
