High school seniors reject Columbia University as Trump admin reviews money for Ivy League schools
Students who have been accepted to Columbia University are declining to attend the Ivy League school amid anti-Israel protests that have caused chaos on campus, the New York Post reported.
According to a college admissions consultant who spoke to The Post, 10 college seniors whom the consultant guided through the process and who were accepted to Columbia have all decided to enroll elsewhere.
"This would not have been the case three years ago," Christopher Rim, CEO of Command Education, told the Post. "The actual brand has been tarnished."
Rim also said that the students who will enroll for the 2025–2026 school year are ones "who didn't get in anywhere else" and said that there is too much "up-and-down craziness" making Columbia seem like an unstable center for higher education.
His clients who have been accepted to Columbia are instead choosing schools like New York University, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University in St. Louis, he said.
Columbia has been ground zero for anti-Israel riots and demonstrations during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza in response to the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack targeting Israeli concertgoers.
President Donald Trump responded by revoking $400 million in federal funding from the school after his Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and revoked the green card of accused riot ringleader Mahmoud Khalil. Trump also demanded that the university ban protesters from wearing face coverings.
The university caved to Trump's demands, enraging students and graduates alike.
Former Columbia President Minouche Shafik stepped down in August, and interim President Katrina Armstrong also resigned at the end of last week, less than eight months into her tenure.
Fox News Digital reached out to Columbia for comment.
Ivy League woes extend beyond Columbia, though.
After watching Trump's intervention on Columbia's campus, Interim Harvard Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler reportedly dismissed faculty leaders from the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), saying that the school's "programming on Palestine was insufficiently balanced," according to the Harvard Crimson.
CMES' director, Turkish studies professor Cemal Kafadar, and associate director, history assistant professor Rosie Bsheer, were reportedly purged from their posts inside the center.
Harvard's chapter of the American Association of University Professors responded with condemnation of their own.
"Not only has such a standard never been required before of any other centers, but the standard itself, if real, would be a new ideological attempt by critics of the university to undermine its faculty's subject-area expertise and to dictate what its faculty teaches," the chapter said in a statement.
The Department of Education also recently announced a "comprehensive review" of federal contracts and government-funded grants at Harvard, as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on antisemitism on campuses.
The agency said in a press release on Monday that it will review more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard, its affiliates and the federal government, plus nearly $9 billion worth of grants.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard.
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