The Education Department said Columbia University no longer appeared to meet accreditation standards after concluding that the school is in violation of anti-discrimination laws, the latest effort by the Trump administration to target elite schools over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the school’s leadership “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus” after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
“Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell Grants. Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,” she said.
The Education Department said it had notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that the administration found that the school failed to meaningfully protect students during the protests, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The department also cited federal law which they said required accreditors to notify member institutions if they were in noncompliance and establish a plan to bring them back into compliance.
“If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period, an accreditor must take appropriate action against its member institution,” the statement said.
Columbia and the Middle States Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration has seized on the protests over the Israel-Hamas war that rocked college campuses to push academic institutions to adopt a wide-range of policy changes over matters such as admissions and faculty hiring, casting it as an effort to counter antisemitism. But university administrators have said the push threatens their schools’ missions and free speech.
The admonishment comes despite Trump in recent days comparing Columbia favorably to Harvard University, which the administration has targeted with a punishing effort to revoke student visas and federal funding.
“I think Columbia wants to get to the bottom of the problem,” Trump said last Friday during an Oval Office event. “They’ve acted very well. And there are other institutions too they’re acting, but Harvard is trying to be a big shot.”
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