Trump Admin Demands on Columbia University Mount as Agents Search Dorm Rooms

The Trump administration has told Columbia University that it must make a series of policy changes as a precondition for talks on restoring $400 million in canceled federal contracts and grants, ratcheting up its crackdown on the school and others where anti-Israel protests flourished last year.

The demands, made in a letter dated on Thursday, coincided with a search of two student dormitory rooms by federal agents at the New York City campus, its interim president said. The searches came a week after immigration agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, the leader of last year’s protests at Columbia, in a bid to deport him that so far has been blocked in court.

The developments are the latest signals that the Trump administration has no plans to ease up on efforts to reshape the policies on how US college campuses deal with disruptive protests.

Earlier this week, the Department of Education said it was investigating 60 colleges and universities for allegedly tolerating antisemitic harassment and a hostile environment for Jews. In a related move, it on Friday said it was investigating 45 universities after complaints that the schools engaged with a program designed to increase diversity that set eligibility based on race. It said such activities violated a 1964 civil rights law.

Columbia has emerged as a prime target of the administration, which has accused it of an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism on campus during last year’s weeks-long encampment by activists and a brief occupation of a campus building.

The university has said it has worked to combat antisemitism and other prejudice. At the same time, it has fended off accusations by civil rights groups that it is letting the government erode academia’s free speech protections.

Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong said in a statement on Thursday that agents from the Department of Homeland Security served the university with two warrants signed by a federal magistrate, allowing them to enter and search the student residences. No one was arrested or detained, no items were removed, and no further action was taken, she said.

Even before Khalil’s arrest, students say federal immigration agents had been repeatedly spotted at dorms and student housing around Columbia’s Manhattan campus.

Over the last week, Columbia staff and law students have sent emails and group messages to alert people on campus to the sightings, saying the agents are in plainclothes, and reminding students of their rights.

The campus demonstrations began after an October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Israel, and the subsequent US-supported Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave that Hamas controls. Protesters demanded that university endowments divest from Israeli interests and that the US end military assistance to Israel.

In Thursday’s letter, the Trump administration ordered Columbia to formally define antisemitism, ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate,” and to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments under “academic receivership,” which would take control out of the hands of their faculties.

A Columbia spokeswoman told the New York Times that the school was reviewing the letter. Reuters could not immediately reach a Columbia representative for comment.

Earlier on Thursday, the school announced that it had meted out a range of punishments – including suspensions, expulsions, and the revocation of degrees – to students who occupied a campus building last spring during the anti-Israel protests. It did not name the students or say how many were disciplined.

The discipline, which followed a months-long investigation, was announced ahead of a Thursday night court filing in which Khalil’s lawyers said the Trump administration’s stated policy of deporting foreign nationals who participate in pro-Hamas protests is unconstitutional. It urged US District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan to immediately release him from immigration detention.

Khalil’s deportation was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, and the student leader, who has not been charged with any crime, is being held in a federal facility in Louisiana.

Earlier this week, Justice Department lawyers representing the government said Khalil, 30, was subject to deportation because Secretary of State Marco Rubio had determined that his presence or activities in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The government did not elaborate in court papers on how Khalil could harm US foreign policy. Trump, without evidence, has accused him of supporting Hamas, and Rubio told reporters earlier this week that noncitizen protesters who disrupt campus life should have their visas revoked.

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