Trump and Mamdani both targeted Columbia — only one is backing off
Columbia's deal with the Trump administration has become a national flashpoint. After months of pressure — including the suspension of pro-Palestinian student protesters and administrative shakeups — the university agreed last month to a $221 million settlement. In return, the White House restored $400 million in frozen research grants.
Critics have called the settlement a political shakedown. But for the Trump administration, it served as a successful first draft of a new playbook: use financial leverage to force universities into public accountability on its terms. The president is not stopping at Columbia — similar threats now loom over Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern, among others.
The fallout also shifted the political rubric for local Democrats, especially in a mayoral race where candidates are pushing to prove their distance from the White House.
A Mamdani spokesperson said the candidate still supports 'the notion of repealing' the universities' property tax exemptions and 'fully funding CUNY, while being laser-focused on his main campaign agenda.' The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Trump's feud with Columbia affected Mamdani's approach to the tax policy.
'Zohran condemns Trump's attacks on universities unequivocally and believes the Administration is playing games with college students and their futures,' Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.
Not everyone on the left sees the overlap as a liability. New York Sen. John Liu, who sponsored the REPAIR Act in the state Senate, said the White House's involvement hasn't changed the fundamentals. Columbia saves more than $180 million annually through property tax exemptions, and he wants to see that money invested in CUNY.
'If the GOP succeeded, which I hope they don't, they would simply take away that tax-exempt status, and anybody losing their tax exempt status would then resume paying property taxes to New York City. So this doesn't muddy this issue,' Liu told POLITICO.
'I'm not rooting for Republican success in their attempt to demonize some of our universities,' he added. 'Rather, we're looking at things from the perspective of these universities have just become mega land owners and landlords, and probably don't need that $100 million-plus [in] tax breaks that could be better used to fund public education for far more New Yorkers.'
Mamdani likes to quip that Columbia was his first landlord. The 33-year-old grew up in a university-owned apartment complex reserved for staff and faculty, like his father, Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani. That early proximity gave him a front-row view of the school's outsized presence in upper Manhattan — and, later, its polarizing role in city politics.
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Columbia's property holdings, which straddle multiple neighborhoods uptown, have long been a lightning rod in New York. In West Harlem, memories still linger from the bruising battle over its Manhattanville expansion, when residents accused the university of abusing eminent domain and wielding its political clout to push out longtime tenants and acquire large swaths of the neighborhood for cheap.
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