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USA Today
23 minutes ago
- Business
- USA Today
After $220 million Columbia deal, Trump promises more to come
After commending Columbia University for "agreeing to do what is right," President Trump indicates his pressure campaign to reshape prestigious colleges isn't stopping any time soon. WASHINGTON – After announcing a $220 million deal with Columbia University to restore its federal funding, President Donald Trump indicated his pressure campaign to reshape prestigious colleges isn't stopping anytime soon. Not long after the settlement was reached, he wrote on his social media platform that similar agreements with "Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming." Columbia, a selective and wealthy Ivy League school in New York City, on July 23 agreed to pay more than $220 million in fines over several years to the government for allegedly violating federal civil rights laws. Last year, the campus became the epicenter of student protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. At the time, the tense environment drew nationwide concern over a spike in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents. The heightened scrutiny also focused the ire of many conservative politicians, who have long accused higher education more broadly of being too left-leaning. Read more: How Columbia University became the epicenter of disagreement over the Israel-Hamas war Trump's criticisms of the campus, however, have extended far beyond its compliance with antidiscrimination protections. In March, he demanded that the school overhaul its hiring, admissions and teaching practices. Columbia's president, Claire Shipman, said the university would appoint an independent monitor to oversee the campus in conjunction with federal officials, and to ensure administrators are abiding by the terms of the deal. The 22-page agreement contains sweeping concessions from the college, including handing over admissions data to the independent monitor, new faculty appointments, conducting reviews of some academic departments and more greatly scrutinizing foreign student enrollment. In return, the Trump administration promised to reroute more than $400 million in paused federal funding, largely for research, back to the college. In an interview on CNN the morning after the arrangement was announced, Shipman indicated billions more dollars were at stake. "It's not just money for Columbia," she said. "This is about science. It's about curing cancer, cutting edge, boundary breaking science that actually benefits the country and humanity." The unprecedented agreement came weeks after the administration struck a separate accord with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, another member of the Ivy League, to unfreeze $175 million in return for apologizing to swimmers who competed against a transgender athlete years ago. "I also want to thank and commend Columbia University for agreeing to do what is right," Trump wrote. "I look forward to watching them have a great future in our Country, maybe greater than ever before!" Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@ Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle White House Fight
(Bloomberg) -- Columbia University reached a landmark deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding for research, easing a crisis that has rattled the school's finances and upended its leadership. Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US Why the Federal Reserve's Building Renovation Costs $2.5 Billion The High Costs of Trump's 'Big Beautiful' New Car Loan Deduction Salt Lake City Turns Winter Olympic Bid Into Statewide Bond Boom The Ivy League school will pay a $200 million penalty over three years to resolve multiple civil rights investigations, clearing the way for the reinstatement of the majority of more than $400 million in canceled grants and contracts, as well as access to billions of dollars in future grants. Columbia will pay another $21 million to settle claims that Jewish faculty and staff faced unlawful workplace discrimination following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, according to the agreement. The school also made a series of commitments intended to increase transparency and compliance with federal civil rights law, and said it would strengthen its oversight of international students and bolster campus safety. The requirements highlight a new era of federal scrutiny of higher education in the US, with little assurance that the pressure is over. While the deal gives Columbia immediate relief from the Trump administration's hardball tactics, it leaves open the possibility of renewed investigations or future funding freezes. It also imposes years of oversight by a jointly approved resolution monitor, who will keep tabs on how the deal is being carried out and receive regular reports from the university. The terms amount to a sweeping set of commitments for a school that, in the text of the agreement, denied any wrongdoing — and a potential sign of a continuing role the Trump administration may play in shaping university policy. 'We've seen with this administration that no decision is permanent,' said Marcel Agueros, an astronomy professor at Columbia and the secretary of the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Center of Controversy Columbia's deal will potentially act as a template for other colleges negotiating with the US government, including Harvard University, which has also been hit by a flurry of actions cutting off funding and targeting its ability to enroll foreign students. Robert Kelchen, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, said the agreement 'increases the pressure on other universities' to settle. President Donald Trump said Wednesday on social media that deals with other schools are 'upcoming.' Columbia has been at the center of controversy since pro-Palestinian protests roiled its New York City campus over the war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack. Lawmakers hammered the school for fostering antisemitism on its campus, but after Trump was elected to a second term, criticisms broadened to include efforts to promote diversity and objections to the number of foreign students admitted to campus. Foreigners make up almost 40% of the New York school's student body and contribute a significant portion of its revenue. In March, multiple federal agencies canceled more than 300 grants and contracts to researchers at Columbia as a result of its 'continued inaction' in the face of a surge in complaints of antisemitism from Jewish students. Columbia said in a statement Wednesday that under the deal, paused payments on active research will be reinstated, including grants from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services. 'The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track,' said Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman in a statement. 'Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.' In a letter to students and staff on Wednesday night, Shipman highlighted the agreement's assurances that the government would have no authority to control faculty hiring, admissions decisions or permitted academic speech and classroom topics. 'The federal government will not dictate what we teach, who teaches, or which students we admit,' she wrote. Still, Agueros said that he had 'very mixed feelings' about the settlement, but that chief among them was 'demoralization.' 'It's hard not to feel like we have just caved to the bullying of this administration, which has now seen that it can in fact successfully use these tools to make a private university follow its wishes,' Agueros said. Broad Turmoil The broad turmoil at Columbia since 2023 has contributed to the departures of president Minouche Shafik and interim leader Katrina Armstrong, who resigned in March after she appeared on a Zoom call with faculty to downplay reforms agreed with the White House. Armstrong had agreed to a partial ban on masks, increased policing on campus and oversight of Columbia's Middle East studies department. Under the final agreement, the university will share more detailed information with federal agencies about hiring and admissions decisions, restructure how it oversees student protests, and tighten rules against disruptive or masked demonstrations. Face masks for the purpose of concealing one's identity while violating school policy are also banned. The deal also requires a review of Columbia's regional programs, beginning with those related to the Middle East. Oversight of the agreement will be handled by resolution monitor Bart Schwartz, the founder of Guidepost Solutions, and an administrator. Columbia will also strengthen its oversight of international students by assessing applicants' reasons for studying in the US, sharing data with the federal government, and reducing the school's financial dependence on foreign students. A senior White House official described the $21 million payment for workplace discrimination claims as the largest public employment-discrimination settlement in nearly two decades, and the biggest ever tied to antisemitism or for workers of any religion. Government Probe Columbia agreed to the arrangement following a government probe that found the Ivy League school violated federal civil rights law by acting 'with deliberate indifference' toward the harassment of its Jewish students. Shipman said Wednesday the school has not admitted wrongdoing and disagrees with the government's conclusion, but that it does not deny 'the very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism.' To Brian Cohen, executive director at Columbia's Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, the deal 'is an important recognition of what Jewish students and their families have expressed with increasing urgency: antisemitism on campus is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students' sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights.' He added that he's hopeful the deal 'marks the beginning of real, sustained change.' In a post on X, Columbia University Apartheid Divest — a coalition of pro-Palestinian student groups behind the campus protests — denounced the school for 'selling your students out.' Earlier this month, the school said it would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism and pledged to appoint coordinators to respond to and report allegations of civil rights violations. The school also said it would partner with Jewish organizations for mandatory anti-discrimination training. Education Secretary Linda McMahon described the deal as a 'roadmap for elite universities' and said in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday that she hoped a settlement with Harvard would likewise come 'outside of the courtroom.' --With assistance from John Harney. (Updates with Columbia's comment on civil rights violation, and comment from Education Secretary in last paragraph.) Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
The Hill
2 hours ago
- Business
- The Hill
Dear Elon: The answer to our debt problem is hard money
Elon Musk's epic feud with President Trump intensified recently with Musk's announcement of a new political party focused on reducing the national debt. Speculation on Musk's motivations have ranged from his alleged loss of green subsidies to administration personnel clashes to genuine concern over America's astronomical spending. But taking Musk's concerns at face value, his solution is wildly off-base. The only way to tame government fiscal avarice is to return to hard money. Fortunately, the crypto revolution now makes this possible from the bottom up. Government activity, like all human activity, is dictated through incentives. Democrats, guided by a Modern Monetary Theory that abjures any limits on money printing to pay back debt, will never constrain spending, because spending buys votes. Republicans, though more ideologically inclined against accumulation of debt, constantly face the hard realities of electoral politics. Sometimes, facing flippant accusations that they want to starve children and push grannies off cliffs, laundered through a compliant media, they bow down to the same debt god. Other times, they simply find their own preferred occasions to overspend. Most Americans have never known an era in which government faced any real limits on its money-printing prerogatives. In 1971, Richard Nixon followed the rest of the world and took the U.S. off the gold standard. A decade of oil shocks, stagflation, and economic malaise immediately followed. The destructive consequences of Nixon's intensified in the half-century since. As Saifedean Ammous describes in The Fiat Standard, fiat money's degrading effects stretch well beyond our constant battle with inflation. It shortens our time horizons, makes us discount the future, and transitions us from hopeful savers to instant-gratification debt-ridden spenders. We are forced to become investment experts just to maintain the value of what we earn. Fiat money also puts a cadre of Ivy League intellectuals in the unenviable and impossible task of finding some 'just right' formula to balance discordant factors such as inflation, unemployment and the cost of capital. The unnoticed effects are equally deleterious. Fiat money affects our food supply, the materials and design of our buildings, the priorities of scientific research and the frequency of geopolitical conflicts, among innumerable other issues. This situation will not resolve from the top-down. But for the first time, it doesn't have to. There is a way for people, acting independently, to force government discipline. They can refuse to transact in money that constantly loses value. Bitcoin — with its fixed supply, rock-solid and thermodynamically guaranteed network security, and brand recognition — is the most obvious candidate. But that is only one option. Other 'layer-one' blockchains could emerge, either 'forked' from Bitcoin or built from scratch. Monetary policy is hard-coded into these cryptocurrencies, free from political meddling — if they are designed correctly. Or people could choose to return to the gold standard, through gold-backed stablecoins. This would eliminate the original gold standard's greatest drawback — the cost of transport and salability over space. This is already happening in countries where Modern Monetary Theory is having its toxic effects, devaluing national currencies at scale. Dollar-backed stablecoins have proven popular in Brazil, India, Nigeria, Turkey, and Indonesia. One article dubbed Venezuela the 'stablecoin capital of the world.' In 2024, total stablecoin transfer volume hit $27.6 trillion, exceeding Visa and Mastercard transactions combined. The dollar will only maintain its world's reserve currency status if the U.S. government imposes enough fiscal discipline to fend off harder competitor currencies — something it will not do voluntarily. Nor will a new political party bring this about. Whatever his motivations, if he is serious about reining in the national debt, Musk should abandon his fanciful America Party and focus instead on hardening America's monetary future. The harder the money, the brighter that future will be.
Chicago Tribune
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding
NEW YORK — Columbia University announced Wednesday it has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus. Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees that occurred following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the White House said. 'This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,' acting University President Claire Shipman said. The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university's failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia has since agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university's student disciplinary process and applying a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not only to teaching but to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating students critical of Israel. Wednesday's agreement — which does not include an admission of wrongdoing — codifies those reforms while preserving the university's autonomy, Shipman said. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the deal 'a seismic shift in our nation's fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.' 'Columbia's reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,' McMahon said in a statement. As part of the agreement, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was 'comprehensive and balanced' and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It also promised to end programs 'that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.' The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs 'do not promote unlawful DEI goals.' In a post Wednesday night on his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump said Columbia had 'committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.' He also warned, without being specific, 'Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming.' The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the more than 270-year-old university. It was among the first targets of Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students be threatened and harassed. Columbia's own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations. Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they aren't targeting Jews but rather criticizing the Israeli government and its war in Gaza. Columbia's leadership — a revolving door of three interim presidents in the last year — has declared that the campus climate needs to change. Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students 'questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,' and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to 'civil discourse.' In a move that would potentially make it easier for the Trump administration to deport students who participate in protests, Columbia promised to provide the government with information, upon request, of disciplinary actions involving student-visa holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions. Columbia on Tuesday announced it would suspend, expel or revoke degrees from more than 70 students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the main library in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year. The pressure on Columbia began with a series of funding cuts. Then Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who had been a visible figure in the protests, became the first person detained in the Trump administration's push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who aren't U.S. citizens. Next came searches of some university residences amid a federal Justice Department investigation into whether Columbia concealed 'illegal aliens' on campus. The interim president at the time responded that the university was committed to upholding the law. Columbia was an early test case for the Trump administration as it sought closer oversight of universities that the Republican president views as bastions of liberalism. Yet it soon was overshadowed by Harvard University, which became the first higher education institution to defy Trump's demands and fight back in court. The Trump administration has used federal research funding as its primary lever in its campaign to reshape higher education. More than $2 billion in total has also been frozen at Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and Princeton universities. Administration officials pulled $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania in March over a dispute around women's sports. They restored it when school officials agreed to update records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and change their policies. The administration also is looking beyond private universities. University of Virginia President James Ryan agreed to resign in June under pressure from a U.S. Justice Department investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices. A similar investigation was opened this month at George Mason University.
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First Post
4 hours ago
- Politics
- First Post
Trump administration opens investigation into Harvard's visa program eligibility
The US Department of State announced that it is opening an investigation into Harvard's eligibility as a sponsor for the Exchange Visitor Program, marking US President Donald Trump's latest escalation against the Ivy League institution. read more A Harvard sign is seen at the Harvard University campus in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 27. Image used for representation. (Source: AFP) The US Department of State is opening an investigation into Harvard University's 'continued eligibility as a sponsor for the Exchange Visitor Program.' On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the move, marking US President Donald Trump's latest escalation against the Ivy League institution. The Trump administration has already been facing legal challenges over its attempts to block the university's ability to host international students. 'The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation's interests,' the top US diplomat said in a statement without offering further details about the investigation. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The move came after the Trump administration first revoked Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program status in May. However, the order was blocked by the US federal judge Allison Burroughs. 'All sponsors participating in this program are required to fully comply with exchange visitor regulations, transparency in reporting, and a demonstrated commitment to fostering the principles of cultural exchange and mutual understanding upon which the program was founded,' Rubio said in the Wednesday statement. Trump vs Harvard In the past, the administration cited antisemitism on campus as a reason for halting the school's international student program. The Trump administration also accused Harvard of not providing the government with required information about its international students. 'To maintain their privilege to sponsor exchange visitors, sponsors must comply with all regulations, including conducting their programs in a manner that does not undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United States,' Rubio maintained. 'The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law, and provide safe environments for all students,' he added. In the past, the State Department investigation specifically targeted people under J-1 visas, which the university says is 'to bring foreign nationals as professors, researchers, specialists and students to the University.' It is separate from the F-1 visa program that is strictly for students and is largely administered by the Department of Homeland Security. 'This investigation is yet another retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights,' said Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton in a statement Wednesday. 'Harvard continues to enrol and sponsor international scholars, researchers, and students, and will protect its international community and support them as they apply for U.S. visas and travel to campus this fall,' the statement continued. 'The University is committed to continuing to comply with the applicable Exchange Visitor Program regulations.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
