When President Trump issued an ultimatum to Columbia University — canceling $400 million in funding and demanding an overhaul of its admissions and disciplinary rules — it launched the institution into an extraordinary crisis.
According to legal scholars, it may have also violated the law and the Constitution.
“Never has the government brought such leverage against an institution of higher education,” said Lee C. Bollinger, the former president of Columbia University, who stepped down in 2023 after a 21-year tenure. “The university is in an incredibly unprecedented and dangerous situation. It is an existential threat.”
The Trump administration has accused Columbia of failing to protect students and faculty from “antisemitic violence and harassment,” particularly in the months since the war in Gaza ignited a pro-Palestinian protest movement on campus, which then spread across the country. The government has said its demands are intended to protect Jewish students from discrimination.
Columbia thus far has publicly responded with caution and deference. The university is “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, wrote in a letter to the university community.
The response has concerned some legal scholars because they believe the government has drastically overstepped its authority.
“It is puzzling that they have not filed a lawsuit that they would be extremely likely to prevail in,” said Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
Genevieve Lakier, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said Columbia might be worried about escalating a battle with the Trump administration. “The institution is staffed with very intelligent lawyers,” she said. “I have to assume that they are concerned that the other shoes that could drop are worse.”
Some free expression experts said that the administration’s tactics violate the protections of the First Amendment. “The Supreme Court has imposed a very high burden on the government if it seeks to intrude into the core decisions of academic freedom,” Prof. Bollinger said.
Other legal scholars said that the government is not adhering to the procedure and restrictions explicitly laid out in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was written with safeguards to prevent governments from leveraging federal funds in a malicious manner.
In a statement Sunday evening, the Trump administration said it had acted properly. The government “followed all applicable law in holding Columbia University to account for the lawless antisemitism that it allowed to occur on its campus,” said Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education.
The government’s threat is just one front in an ongoing crisis at Columbia stemming from pro-Palestinian protests. Two demonstrators were arrested by U.S. immigration officials this month. And Dr. Armstrong confirmed last week that Homeland Security agents had entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms.
It is also part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration targeting institutions of higher education. Shortly after taking office, Mr. Trump announced the creation of a federal task force to combat antisemitism, particularly on college campuses. And after announcing its plan to cancel grants and contracts with Columbia, the government warned 59 other universities that a similar fate could await them. Among the schools listed were Harvard, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, as well as state schools including Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee.
To some students, parents and faculty, Columbia University has often failed to find a balance between respecting the rights of protesters and providing a sense of safety to Jewish people.
Last spring, protesters encamped on a lawn at the center of campus, using language that some characterized as critical of the Israeli government and that others believe was antisemitic. Some Jewish students described feeling afraid to walk freely on campus. After nearly two weeks, protesters seized control of an academic building before the university called in the city’s Police Department, which arrested more than 100 people.
Since President Trump’s return to office, the unrest has escalated after a period of relative quiet. A day after his inauguration, student protesters disrupted an Israeli history class and distributed fliers with incendiary messages. Two students at Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia, were expelled. In February, students protested the expulsions.
Then, earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that it was considering stop-work orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government.
“Antisemitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary, said in a news release. “In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence.”
The government’s antisemitism task force would also conduct a “comprehensive review” of substantial federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university was complying with “its civil rights responsibilities,” the announcement said.
The scrutiny intensified quickly. Just four days later, the administration announced the “immediate cancellation” of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia.
And a few days after that, the government sent a far-reaching list of demands that it said Columbia must meet before it would consider negotiating for the reinstatement of the money. It called for the university to formalize its definition of antisemitism, to ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and to place the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.”
The Trump administration has specifically cited provisions of the civil rights act in criticizing Columbia. The relevant section of the law, Title VI, prohibits discrimination by institutions that receive public money and requires federal agencies that believe an institution to be in violation to work with it before seeking to remove funding.
But some experts believe the Trump administration has skipped the onerous process civil rights law mandates must take place before funds can be revoked.
If the government wants to claim an institution has not complied with anti-discrimination law — after exhausting all attempts to obtain voluntary compliance — it must call a hearing and provide evidence, according to federal statute. Then it is tasked with alerting relevant congressional committees that is about to terminate funds, allowing legislators 30 days to intervene and seek a remedy.
The only funds that can be cut are those directly connected to the source of the civil rights violation.
“All of these things recognized how drastic these funding issues are and how much they can affect a university,” said Prof. Litman. “The process creates opportunities to bring the school into compliance.”
Usually, “it takes years to get any recognition or resolution of a complaint,” said Janel George, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s law school.
The speed with which the Columbia situation has been handled, and the outcome, is surprising, Prof. George said, adding that the process is designed deliberately to be slow because the goal is not to punish, but to bring an organization into compliance. “Termination of funds is considered a very last resort,” she said. “It is very, very rare.”
On Sunday, the Department of Education spokeswoman did not respond to a question about whether the government had specifically followed that process.
Additionally, the remedies demanded by the Trump administration appear to go far beyond what the law allows, said Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He cited putting an academic department in receivership and demanding changes to the process of student discipline. “There is no question but that this goes far beyond of the scope of the law,” he said. The internal workings of an academic institution are “not something that should be within the government’s control.”
Though the Trump administration specifically cites Title VI in its news announcements, it has not stated definitely that it is terminating funds under that law, resulting in a lack of clarity among legal scholars. “It feels so lawless,” said Prof. Lakier, “and it makes it worse that the administration won’t clearly state what law it is relying on.”
She said that, in any case, she believes the government’s actions violate the First Amendment.
For Prof. Bollinger — who dedicated his academic career to championing the First Amendment, and his administrative career to furthering the reach of Columbia University — the Trump administrations’s actions are deeply troubling.
“Anyone who cares about universities should be shocked by the seemingly obvious effort of the government to intrude into academic decision-making,” he said.
“There are moments when the rights we value only survive if everyone joins the effort to save them,” Prof. Bollinger added. “This is not just about Columbia, and Columbia can’t do this on its own.”