Did Columbia’s Deal With Trump Save Its Stature or Sacrifice It?

From the perspective of one longtime professor, a storied 270-year-old institution had capitulated to a bad-faith pressure campaign. Another faculty member saw a measured and mature decision from a university under fire.

And among Jewish leaders, sharp disagreement emerged over whether Washington was truly concerned about campus antisemitism — or using it as a cover to crack down on one of the nation’s most distinguished universities.

One day after Columbia University reached a comprehensive deal with the Trump administration to settle allegations that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, reactions on the university’s Upper Manhattan campus and beyond ranged from fierce criticism to celebration. The university agreed on Wednesday to pay a $200 million fine and meet other demands in exchange for federal research funding being restored.

The deal represented a major juncture in the Trump administration’s monthslong battle with the nation’s elite universities. As part of the agreement, Columbia made several pledges, including to follow through on commitments from March to address antisemitism and to provide admissions data to an independent monitor to ensure compliance with court rulings prohibiting race-conscious admissions.

Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, cast the agreement as a high-stakes balancing act. She said the university had sought to safeguard its academic independence and core values while remaining cleareyed that the threats to research and accreditation were unsustainable.

The university’s decision had been publicly portrayed “as a test of principle — a binary fight between courage and capitulation,” Ms. Shipman said.

“But like most things in life, the reality is far more complex,” she wrote in a Wednesday message to the university community. “We established our nonnegotiable academic and institutional boundaries clearly, and we chose to talk and to listen.”

Across the world of higher education, though, a polarized debate emerged on Thursday about whether it was the right move to negotiate with an administration that has made evident its mission to target and upend campuses nationwide. Did the leaders of Columbia endanger its standing as one of the nation’s foremost universities? Or did they save it?

And from the halls of Congress to other top private research universities, where administrators face their own funding threats and have closely watched Washington’s tactics, some worried that the deal might not bring a permanent end to the threats and ultimatums against Columbia.

Joseph R. Slaughter, a Columbia literature professor and member of the university senate, said that the agreement appeared to preserve a measure of institutional independence and academic freedom. But it might still establish a dangerous precedent for “the normalization of political interference in teaching, research and the pursuit of truth,” he said.

The agreement resembled a consent decree in some ways, Professor Slaughter said, but without “the ordinary legal safeguards and judicial oversight that might protect Columbia from further federal extortion and political interference.”

“It leaves the university exposed to the shifting whims of this federal administration and sets a dangerous precedent for higher education across the U.S.,” he said in an emailed statement.

At Columbia, administrators and trustees emphasized that a number of the steps it had agreed to take were already underway, and that the federal government would not be empowered to dictate decisions over hiring, admissions or academic speech.

In medical and scientific circles, where there were fears that irreparable damage could have been done to decades of progress on research breakthroughs because of funding cuts, the settlement was viewed by some as a pragmatic decision to prioritize the university’s long-term health over a moral stand.

Howard J. Worman, a professor of medicine, pathology and cell biology and member of the university senate, warned that additional cuts to federal funding could have triggered an exodus of promising faculty, especially from the medical center. He called the settlement “the best way to move forward” and said that he was “absolutely” supportive of the university’s decision.

“I think Columbia is on the right track,” Dr. Worman said.

Other faculty members were concerned that the deal, negotiated against the backdrop of a pro-Palestinian student movement that has organized demonstrations on campus lawns and libraries for more than a year. might have a chilling effect on student activism.

“The purpose of this is to have an effect on political speech on campus,” Joseph Howley, a classics professor and member of the university senate, said.

Some outside experts said they could understand both perspectives but argued that the Trump administration’s escalating attacks would have created a profound dilemma for any school.

Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 campuses nationwide, said in a statement on Thursday that Columbia was forced into “an untenable position by the outrageous actions of the executive branch of the government.”

Mr. Mitchell said he appreciated the university’s pledge to preserve its institutional autonomy, and noted that the agreement was made “in the context of limited options and virtually no due process.” But he was adamant that these tactics could not become a template for the White House.

“Weaponizing charges of antisemitism as a political exercise takes us down a very damaging path,” Mr. Mitchell said, adding that it would threaten not only higher education but fundamental American values.

During the last three months, many in academia and politics have measured Columbia’s response to Washington’s crackdown against the actions of Harvard, which opted to sue to restore federal funding cuts and to preserve its ability to enroll international students. The Trump administration has cast its fight with both schools as a justified response to antisemitism.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, one of New York’s most prominent Jewish leaders and a Columbia graduate, agreed that the university must do more to safeguard its Jewish community members. But he said that unlike Harvard, his alma mater “effectively waved the white flag,” allowing “a once highly-respected institution to succumb” to coercion.

“This disgraceful and humiliating action will not, in any way, improve the situation on campus for Jewish students,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement.

Still, Gil Zussman, a Columbia professor of electrical engineering and computer science, said it was significant that the deal included a recognition of “the antisemitism and anti-Israeli hate that were directed at students, staff and even faculty for almost two years.”

Some legal scholars argued that the nature of the agreement itself requires as much scrutiny as its terms.

David Pozen, a Columbia law professor, wrote in a blog post that the Trump administration’s embrace of backroom deals to reshape an institution’s operations “raises profound concerns not just for universities’ budgets and independence but also for the rule of law.”

These agreements — made without thorough investigations or judicial findings of misconduct — serve to enhance executive power, sideline Congress and the courts and sow fear throughout civil society, he wrote.

“The pattern is clear,” Professor Pozen said in an interview on Thursday. “This is a regulatory style that President Trump favors — unsurprisingly, because it marries his capitalist instincts for deal-making with his authoritarian instincts for bullying.”

Among some immigration advocates and attorneys, Columbia’s agreement to notify the Department of Homeland Security when foreign students are arrested drew particular concern. The university, like all others, already had an obligation to inform the Department of Homeland Security when international students are suspended or expelled.

But Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer who leads a legal defense organization that focuses on the rights of visa applicants, worried that the expanded requirement could unleash a wave of federal crackdowns against international students who are arrested during demonstrations — even if their cases never lead to formal charges or are later dismissed.

“It’s a naked attempt to intimidate students from engaging in protests,” he said.