The Trump administration is reportedly cutting $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University as pro-Hamas protesters continue creating chaos for the Ivy League school.
The Free Press first reported the cuts Friday after protesters took over a building, displayed terrorist propaganda and allegedly assaulted an employee at the Columbia-affiliated Barnard College starting Feb 26. The funding cuts are part of a larger, ongoing review the Trump administration is conducting in response to Columbia’s pro-Hamas protest encampment in 2024 and reports of rampant antisemitism on campus.
“Relentless anti-Semitic racism on college campuses will not be tolerated, and Columbia University will be held accountable for their refusal to protect students equally,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The newly formed federal task force to “Combat Anti-Semitism” is also reviewing federal grants commitments and contracts, the White House spokesperson said.
“The government’s Anti-[Semitism] Task Force is considering Stop Work Orders for over $50 million in contracts with the federal government and will review more than $5 billion in grant commitments to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations,” Fields said, reiterating an announcement the task force made Monday.
Happening now: protesters @BarnardCollege are handing out pamphlets written by the Hamas Media Office justifying October 7th.
This is terrorist support in its rawest and most obvious form. pic.twitter.com/1t2V9HDNvw
— Elisha (Lishi) Baker (@LishiBaker) March 5, 2025
New York police arrested nine people on Wednesday who occupied Barnard College’s Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, the Columbia Spectator reported. An anti-Israel mob also swept Barnard’s Milbank Hall the previous Wednesday and “assaulted” an employee, the school said. Police said they were “responding to a bomb threat” when entering the campus, though no details were provided of the threat.
Barnard College did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF. Barnard College is located across the street from Columbia’s main campus in New York City.
Columbia’s main campus deflected responsibility in a statement online, saying Barnard is “a separate institution from Columbia University, although it is affiliated” and that “Barnard’s leadership and security team” would respond to the situation. “The disruption of academic activities is not acceptable conduct,” Columbia said.
Before the arrests, Barnard President Laura Rosenbury called into the occupied Milstein building and offered to negotiate with protesters if three students would meet with her “unmasked,” according to the Columbia Spectator. The crowd declined her offer after she refused to promise no punishment for students involved in the sit-in.
The chaos originally started Feb. 26 when outraged protesters responded to Barnard expelling two students who disrupted a class on Israeli history in January. It’s unclear how many Barnard students have been involved in the incidents that followed.
Concerned Columbia student Elisha Baker posted Wednesday on X that protesters were “handing out” copies of a Hamas document, “Our Narrative … Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” in which the group justified committing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel.
“This is terrorist support in its rawest and most obvious form,” Baker said, showing pictures of the Hamas pamphlet.
Trump’s antisemitism task force said on Feb. 28 that Columbia University was one of ten schools federal officials will visit to investigate their efforts to uphold Jewish students’ civil rights.
“All Federal Funding will stop for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump said in a social media post Tuesday.
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