(Reuters) – Columbia University said on Tuesday it was laying off dozens of researchers whose work was funded by U.S. government grants and contracts that President Donald Trump’s administration canceled in March, citing antisemitic harassment on and near campus.
“We have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination,” Columbia’s interim president and other officials said in an open letter, citing an “intense” strain on the university’s finances.
Columbia will keep trying to persuade the government to restore the funding, according to the letter. It did not specify which departments would lose researchers and infrastructure.
The cuts came out of what Columbia’s leaders said was more than $5 billion in grants committed to the university. Much of that funding went to healthcare and scientific research but Reuters could not verify the figures.
In March, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia and threatened to withhold billions more because of what it described as antisemitic harassment around the school’s New York City campus.
Columbia has been the epicenter of a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that roiled U.S. campuses over the last year and a half as Israel’s war in Gaza raged.
On Monday, the Trump administration told Harvard University it would not get future federal funding until Harvard, the wealthiest and oldest U.S. college, agreed to the government’s demands of how it should address campus antisemitism and other issues.
Columbia had acquiesced to several Trump administration demands in an effort to get funds restored. The school promised to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint an official with authority to review departments offering courses on the Middle East.
Harvard has sued to block the Trump administration from freezing billions of dollars in federal funding. It rejected a list of White House demands, saying these would undermine its independence.
An April Reuters/Ipsos poll found 57% of all respondents did not think the president should withhold funding from universities he disagreed with. Among Republican respondents, however, the same percentage thought he should withhold funds from such universities.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Donna Bryson and David Gregorio)
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