Columbia University to lay off some 180 researchers amid Trump squeeze
NEW YORK - Columbia University said on May 6 it was laying off around 180 researchers amid a funding squeeze prompted by US President Donald Trump's move to strip the Ivy League institution of US$400 million (S$515.52 million).
Mr Trump targeted Columbia as part of his campaign against elite US universities he claims are hotbeds of anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiment, stripping them of funds and targeting their foreign students in response.
'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 a memo signed by Ms Claire Shipman, Columbia's acting president.
'This represents about 20 per cent of the individuals who are funded in some manner by the terminated grants.'
The update did not specify which research projects would be affected.
Columbia said it would seek to continue engaging with the federal government to press for the reinstatement of the funds.
Along with Columbia, Mr Trump has focused his ire on Harvard, where he has already frozen US$2.2 billion in grants.
Trump had demanded that Columbia accept external oversight, but the school stopped short of that with measures it announced to placate Trump in March.
Mr Trump is on a fierce offensive against many major US institutions, attacking not just academia but also the news media, big law firms, the courts and other centres of American power as he issues executive orders to an unprecedented extent.
His goal is to bring to heel institutions he sees as too liberal, or 'woke.'
Columbia's student movement has been at the forefront of protests that have exposed deep rifts over the Gaza war.
Activists call them a show of support for the Palestinian people, while Mr Trump condemns them as anti-Semitic, and says they must end.
The president cut US$400 million in federal funding for Columbia – including research grants and other contracts – on the grounds that the institution had not adequately protected Jewish students from harassment.
Besides cuts to Columbia's federal funds, with more threatened, immigration officers targeted a leader of the campus pro-Palestinian protests, Mr Mahmoud Khalil.
Mr Khalil, a US permanent resident with Palestinian roots and a graduate student at Columbia, was arrested by officers and has been held in Louisiana as he and his supporters fight the administration's attempt to deport him on grounds he is hindering US foreign policy. AFP
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