There are a couple reports out very recently that NIH is lifting its block on paying grant funds to Columbia, see here and here. According to one of these reports, this applies only to Columbia, not to Brown/Northwestern/Cornell/Harvard.
Presumably Columbia has done something to make Trump happy, maybe we’ll find out soon.
There was a Zoom briefing yesterday for Columbia people explaining the current financial and grant situation. Columbia’s biggest financial exposure by far is the NIH grants, which are a large fraction of all grant income. What Trump had done starting in March with these grants was particularly egregious. The way they work, the university incurs costs payable under the grant, then gets reimbursed. What had happened was that the NIH stopped paying these reimbursements (there also were grant cancellations, non-renewals, no new grants, etc.). One would think this was so obviously illegal that one could easily get a court judgement, no one seems to have an explanation why Columbia did not sue at least on the specific issue of not getting paid for expenses incurred under a valid contract.
Max Kozlov, journalist at Nature, reports:
Several NIH staffers tell me they are beyond thrilled to finally process award notices and outlays that have been sitting idle for months. But they are concerned about what Columbia may have conceded.
Aren’t we all..
More about this later as there is further information.
Update: Good news! It looks like Columbia didn’t cave yet (or, not enough yet…). Latest from Kozlov:
Well, that was short-lived: NIH staff received instructions to HOLD funds to Columbia again.
Speculation on what happened per NIH staffer: the White House found out and blew a gasket.
As they “negotiate” the trustees should probably be thinking about the fact that, besides Trump himself, there are quite a few clowns with different agendas involved in this on the Trump side, some of whom are quite devoted to the project of completely destroying Columbia. I don’t see how they can ever reasonably expect to make a deal with these people.
Article at Science magazine here
In an email sent this morning to NIH grants staff across the agency and first described on Bluesky by Nature, Michelle Bulls, director of the agency’s Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, writes: “Great news, we have been told that we can resume funding awards to Columbia (funding pause has been lifted).”
It’s not clear from the email how the policy change will affect terminated grants. Bulls writes that her office is awaiting guidance from Jon Lorsch, acting director of NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, on “whether we should reinstate” awards that “were terminated for ‘antisemitism.’”
A spokesperson for Columbia said the university “is aware of the renewal and continuance of some government grants. We remain in discussions with the government and are deeply committed to our broader efforts to advance our critical medical and scientific research and all it provides to the world.”
Looks like this was written before the latest reversal, described here by:
Grants at Columbia unfrozen at 9:30 this morning…
Refrozen at 2:30 this afternoon with instructions to undo all of the releases done earlier.
It like the 7th graders in detention broke into the Principal’s Office…
Official statement from one of the clowns:
There is no Federal funding for unvetted woke ‘research’ at Columbia. Any minimal disbursements that presently exist are for specific measures, including to wind down the grant entirely.
Update: The Chronicle of Higher Education has Columbia Got Some NIH Funding Back. Then It Didn’t.
Update: Can anyone tell me what this is about? Asha Jadeja Motwani appears to be a MAGA tech mogul, widow of a husband involved early on with Google. She somehow is now, together with Elise Stefanik, coming after Columbia:
As i start playing a more active role at Columbia University in New York, I expect to work very closely with representative Elise Stefanik in creating a healthier campus environment.
Along with like-minded faculty and student bodies, we will nurture a true diversity of viewpoint, respect the rights of everyone to free speech and create a safe space for Jewish students. These kids have borne the brunt of hate from campus “protesters” over the last few months since October 7, 2023.
Watch as we reboot the American University system (mostly the Ivy League) from the ground up, one university at a time. The groundswell of support that we are getting from every corner and every last mile is staggering. Humbled and energized.
Elise is the tigress responsible for historic congressional hearings that enabled the firing of three university presidents for their stance on campus antisemitism.
What “active role at Columbia” will she be playing???
Update: Just got a message in my email from the acting president, about release of a new report from the Task Force on Antisemitism. It’s hard not to be suspicious that this has something to do with the news from earlier today about Columbia’s funds being unfrozen. Perhaps this is part of some package of “fighting antisemitism” actions that was supposed to get Columbia’s money back (but then, like the last cave-in, didn’t).
The release of the report now is kind of odd. It surveyed students a year ago, at the end of a difficult year with a lot of attention to contentious pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The idea seemed to be to use this to understand problems experienced by Jewish and Muslim students in 2023-24, make positive changes, and then do a new survey this year. Unclear why it took since last September to analyze the survey data, also unclear why there’s been no talk of a new survey. The environment of 2024-25 has been completely different than that of 2023-24, with an intense new security system and successful nearly complete crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The past year has been dominated not by annoying pro-Palestinian chants, but by pro-Palestinian protestors being dragged off to prison by masked men. There’s a lot of fear among people here, but it’s fear of the new dictatorship which has demonized and made public enemies of critics of the ongoing and worsening genocidal military campaign in Gaza.
If you look at the numbers in the survey about 2023-24, one striking thing is that they’re very similar for Jewish and Muslim students. Both groups report problems due to their religious identity in very similar numbers. The only place where they were significantly different was in the opinion about the encampments. 60% of Muslim students strongly supported them, 57% of Jewish student students strongly opposed them. Also, very few (5%) Muslim students opposed the encampments, while a significant fraction (26%) of the Jewish students supported them.
There’s lots of numbers in the report, those who want to use them to argue that Columbia has a terrible antisemitism problem will surely find some things they can use. I do hope the university is preparing another such survey for 2024-25, asking the community how it feels about this academic year spent living under an oppressive security apparatus, at an institution that quickly caved in to a Fascist dictator and would do nothing to support students dragged away to prison or forced to flee.
Update: Some other numbers from the “antisemitism” report. Overall, 30% of students opposed the encampments, 49% supported them.
The New Yorker has a piece by Alistair Kitchen explaining what now happens to any non-US citizen who reported positively about the encampments.
The Columbia Spectator reports on what Shipman said last Friday at the Senate plenary:
“I really don’t think we would want to be at war for four years, or could afford it, with the federal government,” Shipman said. She added that “we are in a different position from Harvard. We did not receive the same sort of demands that Harvard did.”
The trustee’s attitude seems to be that going to court to try to get back the money Trump illegally took would be going to “war” with the dictator. They refuse to do this, especially since the demands made of them are mostly ones that many of them want to happen anyway. The idea that the different demand letters mean Columbia is not facing the same campaign from the same people as Harvard seems to me extremely naive.
Update: Various good news today. Judge orders Khalil released, will Trump follow the judge’s order? Another judge issues preliminary injunction stopping the Trump attempt to shutdown student visas at Harvard. From same article, something very strange from Trump today:
Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their largescale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution. We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so. They have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations, and appear to be committed to doing what is right. If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country.
Nonsense with no relation to reality? A big Trump TACO? Harvard has decided to go MAGA? Who knows…
Update: Khalil is released. The New York Times reports on the Trump negotiations with Harvard. Unclear what has actually happened, beyond Harvard explaining things it has already done to address issues raised by the Trump people:
The discussions began again this week at a meeting in the White House. At the meeting, Harvard representatives showed White House officials a PowerPoint presentation that laid out measures the school has taken on antisemitism, viewpoint diversity and admissions.
In turn, the White House signaled other steps it would like for Harvard to take on those subjects and later sent a letter laying out conditions that could resolve the conflict, according to one of the people.
It is unclear how Harvard plans to respond to the letter.
As usual, what Trump says is nonsense:
It is unclear how close both sides are to a potential deal and the exact terms any final agreement would entail. In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said it was “very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so.”
Two people briefed on the discussions said it was highly unlikely a deal would be reached in the next week.
The people involved in this on the Trump side are clowns, no way to guess what idiotic thing they will do next. Presumably Harvard and its lawyers are well aware of this, so know that promises from the Trump side are meaningless, likely are offering meaningless things in exchange.
Whenever I’ve asked people at Columbia why the university can go to court about the Trump illegality, while still negotiating with his people, I’ve been assured that this is not the way negotiations work, that if you went to court, you couldn’t negotiate. What Harvard is doing shows that this is nonsense (like every other explanation I’ve heard for why Columbia won’t go to court, except the “we want to do this stuff anyway” one).
Update: Yet more weirdness.
LOL:
https://bsky.app/profile/maxkozlov.bsky.social/post/3lrvns67f2k26
Dave,
I’m hoping this clown show will convince the Columbia trustees of what the “mistaken demand letter” similar clown show convinced the Harvard Corporation: the idea you can negotiate with these people is absurd.
Any attempt at compromise will be met by the Trump junta with yet more demands. Any compromise is interpreted as weakness.
The only way to beat Trump is with obdurate refusal to all of their demands. If a school has to limp along without money for research, well, so be it. Universities have assets that they can sell. Sure, it’s not easy, but it has to be done. Appeals to the alumni/ae may also be helpful; and to philanthropists with deep pockets (e.g. the Gates and Laurene Jobs Powell foundations).
>philanthropists with deep pockets (e.g. the Gates and Laurene Jobs Powell foundations)
This doesn’t work actually. Gates Foundation, for example, $ is under huge stress also from Trump actions and much of the money will be redirected. There also simply isn’t enough to cover the shortfall. I do agree there is no real negotiated endpoint with these guys that is acceptable.
David Derbes,
There was a detailed presentation from the Columbia CFO on Zoom yesterday, addressing this kind of question. One point she kept making is that different institutions are in different situations due to different size endowments, with Columbia’s endowment/student significantly lower than places like Harvard/Yale/Stanford. Columbia’s endowment is about \$15 billion, but much of it is legally committed to specific purposes by terms of the donation, and income from the endowment is what keeps much of the university afloat. Federal grants bring in about \$1.3 billion/year. If you tried to replace all that from the endowment, you’d rapidly end up running out of money and not being being able to finance operation of the rest of the university.
My general takeaway was that the really big problem is NIH biomedical research. NIH has been spending \$30 billion/year on biomedical research, maybe \$800 million going to Columbia. This is a huge operation, here and elsewhere. With the NIH money gone, Columbia has been trying to keep financing as much as possible of it out of its own funds, but can’t do this in the long term so has to decide what to fund and for how long.
The trustees seem to have started out believing that if they just “fight antisemitism” hard enough (i.e. crackdown hard enough on pro-Palestinian protests of any kind, conveniently a goal of some of the trustees), they’ll get the money restored and be back in business. They seem to now be realizing that in any case, the NIH budget is getting cut by more than half, so there will be much less grant money available even if they placate Trump. There’s a major effort to try to make contingency plans for a future with much less grant income.
Why they keep not going to court to get as much money back as possible, but instead keep saying stupid things about how the Trump people are negotiating “in good faith”, I’ll never understand.
I think it’s relevant that the only reason, or at least one of the reasons, that “anti-semitism” could be used as a pretext for censoring protests over Israel’s outrageous abuses in Gaza, is that the campus left (and also some media and politicians) has for over a decade been using “racism” and “sexism” to silence dissenting POV. The reason this anti-semitism scam is so successful is that progressive leftists have already introduced into the discourse such concepts as “words can cause harm,” “othering marginalized people is never okay,” and other such censorious postmodernist nonsense. This circle of foul ideas was perfect fodder for the pro-Israel right to seize on, in their propaganda mission to convince institutions that criticism of Israel is the same as hurting Jews.
Anon,
I think it’s true that universities going along with the weaponization of accusations of racism and sexism (to avoid being tarred themselves as “racist” or “sexist”) is part of the reason they’re now in such trouble with “antisemitism”. Even before Trump took power, pro-Israel activists had very effectively used the same tactic to weaponize “antisemitism” accusations against their opponents, and universities had fallen in line and participated in this (otherwise, they would be “antisemites”, no?).
In private conversations with Scott Aaronson, he was very intent on using weaponized Title VI accusations to attack what he saw as the terrible “antisemitism” problem at Columbia. When I tried to point out to him that he knew very well how bad it had been to see this done with “racism” and “sexism”, he told me he didn’t care, that it was antisemitic to deny his side the use of this weapon.
The MAGAites had good reason to be annoyed by a lot of the “racism” and “sexism” weaponization that had gone on. When the opportunity to weaponize “antisemitism” appeared, they ran with it, seeing in it the perfect weapon to “own the libs”, tearing apart the liberal coalition which had always had a large Jewish component. This has been extremely successful for them, allowing them to do a huge amount of damage to what they see as their enemies.
But, I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the history of these sins. Just saw that the “antisemitism” accusations are alive and well, with a new email that just came from Shipman. Need to write about that, and try to stick to the topic of the current situation at Columbia.
Peter-those #s were not surprising because there were similar #s in a New York Magazine survey from a similar timeframe.
Anon-this is exactly correct. I’d go further and say that beyond the weaponization of Civil Rights legislation (which I think is bad all around) is the fact that an entire generation of people have been taught about “safety” and “harm” in a way that makes the Antisemitism charge completely predictable.
Hi, Peter.
Thanks for your reply. I know that endowments are not particularly liquid. To me the big problem with lack of research money is not the reduction of important research (particularly biomedical research), but that a lot of very smart, highly educated people are suddenly deprived of a living wage. If somehow funding can be found to provide for the researchers, I believe the major research institutions can survive this barbaric attack. Weirdly, Princeton is not as vulnerable as Columbia and Harvard because they have no medical school. They are being stiffed out of 200 million or so, which will hurt, but they also have the largest endowment per student in the country.
I agree with you that the single strangest aspect of Columbia’s response is a lack of vigorous legal action. Weird.
David Derbes,
Administrators tell us that they are making their highest priority funding grad student and postdoc positions that lost grant funding. Not completely sure about this, but I think they said they are now committed to this through the next academic year.
My impression is that a big problem is the fact that biomedical research involves very expensive clinical trials and laboratories. Keeping scientists paid if they have no money to run a lab or clinical trials doesn’t solve anything.
The situation in math and theoretical physics is rather different. Partly this is because the NSF story has been different. In math, the grants are small, not even enough to pay for a grad student. The blocking of funds has not happened the same way as at the NIH. Here the funding problem is more in the future (with huge NSF cuts, grants not renewed, no new ones). All in all, the problem here in math is manageable. I don’t know if the same is true of Columbia theoretical physics.
In general, especially in theoretical physics, grant cut-backs would mean fewer Ph.D students and postdocs. Given how few tenure-track positions there are in the subject, it’s not clear that this is such a bad thing. The situation is very different in experimental areas, where no funding means no experiment, so no science.
Peter, respectfully, when you say “The past year has been dominated not by annoying pro-Palestinian chants, but by pro-Palestinian protestors being dragged off to prison by masked men”, you are seemingly excusing:
* Oct 7, 2024 protest
* Hind’s House “museum”
* History of Modern Israel class invasion
* Milbank Hall protest
* Milstein Center protest
* Butler Library protest
* Cement vandalism in SIPA
* Vandalizing Cas Holloway’s apartment
The above sometimes cross the line into disrupting the academic mission, which even you are committed to. Even Joe Howley and Katherine Franke condemned the class invasion. These go far beyond “annoying pro-Palestinian chants.”
Peter-in my department there are already a spate of students getting booted from groups at least partially because of finances (current and anticipated). Our chair is inquiring what to do about this with the dean’s office, but I have a feeling there is no real plan and that Columbia has not anticipated the scale and immediacy of the issue.
Aaron Bush,
Your accusation that I am “excusing” anything in what you quote is obviously not true and offensive.
About the events you bring up, I already had somewhat of a discussion with Dave about some of them here
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14485&cpage=1#comment-250357
I’ll stand by my claim that the events you list had little disruptive effect on this campus compared to the events of 2023-24 and certainly compared to the chilling effect of having students dragged off to prison or forced to flee the country.
I’m in the office today and the campus is nearly deserted (Juneteenth). To get here I had to go through two security checkpoints. There are faculty in my department who this year have told me they avoid coming into the office because of the oppressive and disturbing security environment. This kind of thing is disrupting the academic mission infinitely more than what some vandal did back in January to a few of the women’s toilets in SIPA (and no, to say this is not to excuse vandalizing toilets).
Yesterday’s pantomime doesn’t seem to have resolved the situation with regard to NIH funding to Columbia. It is clear that the Culture Warriors are in charge at HHS and in the WH and that therefore there is little point in negotiation. NIH has been muzzled.
Most sentient beings at the medical school are convinced that this is going to be a long drawn out siege and that our Acting President has little to no concept of how to deal with the situation. We really need to go to the public debt markets and sell bonds in order to prepare ourselves for what might be one or two years of non-payment of NIH funds.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon emptying equipment from one of my labs in order to reduce the Department footprint and liability to the internal shenanigans known as the Dean’s tax so we can avoid having to let additional junior research personnel go.
We don’t have any unusual security concerns uptown. Immediate concerns for clinicians, experimentalists and theoreticians are now mundane things, like how can I order two small bottles of trypsin in order to passage cells? Is the University going to be able to run the air conditioning over the next few extremely hot days? Will we be able to repair important shared equipment items if they break down?
More existential questions include the following: can I take my NIH grant and move it to a more viable lower profile academic institution? Will we be able to hire young clinical staff given the always pressing cost of living in NYC? Are we going to see the departures of senior and mid-career investigators for positions in less stressful environments?
A Concerned Scientist:
When you say “We really need to go to the public debt markets and sell bonds in order to prepare ourselves for what might be one or two years of non-payment of NIH funds,” how would you think through the implications?
For example:
1. What is Columbia’s effective debt load?
2. What is Columbia’s incremental debt capacity at its current credit rating?
3. If Columbia trips its current credit rating, does that trigger re-ratings (and higher interest) across the rest of its portfolio?
4. Would the debt issuance be tax-free or taxable?
5. Have there been changes in Columbia’s debt pricing in the last few months?
6. What happens if the crisis lasts longer than the next 1-2 years?
7. How successfully has debt of peer institutions been placed in recent months?
Before making hand-wavey pronouncements to “go to the public debt markets and sell bonds,” perhaps you should discern the answers to these 7 questions first. The answers may surprise you.
Concerned Scientist/Jeremy,
I’m incompetent to host a discussion of what Columbia can do to deal with having a billion or so in revenue/year all of a sudden disappear. I doubt there’s any answer that is not very painful, glad I’m not the one making those decisions.
On the other hand, trying to fix the problem by caving in to a Fascist dictator is both seriously unethical and all the evidence so far is that trying to do this will not get the money back, instead lead to massive humiliation and wrecking of the university’s reputation.
We’ll see…
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5361313-trump-administration-expects-deal-harvard/
Dave,
Thanks! Who knows what that means, another TACO?
Yeah I have no idea-so much wind from the guy….
What’s a TACO?
Doug McDonald,
Trump Always Chickens Out
In this case, Harvard has been doing very well in court, so one possible interpretation is that he’s going to give up the fight with Harvard. If so, presumably Harvard would offer some sort of agreement to do what they have already been doing, and he would use that to declare “mindbogglingly HISTORIC’ victory.
Who knows though, the whole thing is such a clown show, impossible to guess what’s going to really happen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/us/politics/harvard-federal-funding-trump.html
Parties settle out of court while a trial is pending all the time, more often than not, in fact. Having a trial date imminent is often a prompt for them to get off their duff and talk it out.
Peter, you say “I’m incompetent to host a discussion of what Columbia can do to deal with having a billion or so in revenue/year all of a sudden disappear” but you adamantly rule out “caving in to a Fascist dictator.”
Out of curiosity, if the Orange Man somehow permanently withheld our money (by having his cronies in Congress write into appropriations bills that Columbia was ineligible), and Saudis, Qataris, Russians, and Chinese came offering to backfill that funding, would you be OK with that?
Just trying to understand the basis of your objections.
Jeremy,
My disagreement with the trustees is that, faced with illegal dictatorial actions they’ve decided to publicly pretend this is all legal and a good faith action by the government. Faced with a new dictatorship trying out the exercise of illegal dictatorial powers I believe it was their duty to challenge this, in particular by going to the courts. They don’t see it this way.
I would not have a problem with them going to court to challenge the legality of dictatorial actions and simultaneously trying to negotiate a settlement.
Yes I’m not competent to tell them how to restructure university finances to deal with the loss of grant funding. This is an independent issue. What they have done so far (caving-in and not going to court) has not gotten them any money back, Trump just took more away after the cave-in. At this point, I think they realize that no matter what they do, they’ll not get most of the money back, and in the future there will be much smaller grant funding to all universities. They have a huge financial problem to deal with no matter what. By doing what they did they both didn’t solve that problem and made “Columbia” synonymous with refusal to fight a dictator and getting nothing for it.
Scientific research and technology in the US are heavily reliant on importing top-notch foreign students. My most recent data is from 2021:
“At U.S. universities, foreign nationals account for 82% of the full-time graduate students in petroleum engineering, 74% in electrical engineering, 72% in computer and information sciences, 71% in industrial and manufacturing engineering, 70% in statistics, 67% in economics, 61% in civil engineering, 58% in mechanical engineering and agricultural economics, 56% in mathematics, 54% in chemical engineering, 53% in metallurgical and materials engineering, 52% in materials sciences and 50% in pharmaceutical sciences.”
“Postdocs assist in critical research at U.S. universities after completing their doctorate. Fifty-six percent of postdocs at U.S. universities are foreign nationals who work on temporary visas, including 73% in electrical engineering (954 postdocs in 2019), 72% in metallurgical and materials engineering, 69% in mechanical engineering, 68% in chemical engineering, 66% in oncology and cancer research (1,202 postdocs), 66% in physics (1,785 postdocs), 64% in computer and information sciences, 63% in chemistry, 53% in neurobiology and neuroscience (1,179 postdocs) and 49% (1,951 postdocs) in clinical medicine.”
Many of these students would like to stay and work in the US, too, though I don’t have numbers for how many do (or are allowed to).
Trump is trying to demolish this system, without helping build a replacement.
John Baez,
I think we should all be wary of believing “Trump is trying to…” where what follows is anything other than “get attention” or “own the libs”.
In the case of foreign students which I’ve been following the past couple months, there has been
1. Arresting and throwing in jail students for doing anything pro-Palestinian, on national security grounds.
2. Canceling student visas for no obvious reason
3. Restoring said student visas
4. Canceling Harvard’s ability to host students
5. Restoring Harvard’s ability to host students
6. Pausing all student visa interviews everywhere
7. Claiming to be going after students with ties to Chinese communist party
8. Negotiating an agreement with the Chinese communist leader to let all Chinese students come.
9. Setting up system of going through all student’s social media to see if they are evil pro-Palestinian terrorists (or just anti-Trump?)
and a bunch more I could come up with. None of this adds up to a coherent policy other than that whoever is behind it (Stephen Miller?) hates foreigners, hates universities, loves weaponizing “antisemitism” and every day wakes up asking himself “what weird nonsense policy can I come up with today which will upset my enemies?”
Worth paying attention behind all the noise is what’s actually happening this summer: how many of the admitted foreign students to US universities will actually get a visa and be able to enroll in September. For example, the Columbia math dept. has admitted 7 new Ph.D students for the fall, all foreign students. I’ll try and keep track of how many are getting visas and able to show up. I suggest others keep track of what is happening at their own institutions. We now live in an information environment which is mostly complete nonsense, need to find ways to keep track of what is really happening.
How can we censor the news that somebody inside Columbia leaked data to the Fascist Dictatorship?
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1937650713431278077
Alessandro Strumia,
The only source for this I see so far is a single one on Twitter, which is not a good reason to believe anything. The university is having mysterious computer system problems, maybe hacking is involved, we’ll see. University administrators however have always been very aware that whatever they do on university computer systems is all too likely to get subpoenaed and end up as a court document. So, the probability that they’re openly defying the law this way doesn’t seem very high. We’ll see what happens…