Columbia announces meeting with Trump administration to finalize deal, release admissions data to restore funding
Columbia University provided a statement in response to Campus Reform’s request for comment, stating that its admissions processes comply with the law.
Before the deal was announced, a blogger claimed to possess leaked data showing disparities in acceptance for white and Asian applicants compared to Hispanic and Black applicants.
Columbia University announced that it will be attending a meeting with senior White House officials to finalize a deal to pay a fine and release admissions and hiring data following a federal funding freeze.
The meeting comes as a remedy to restore the $400 million in federal funding cuts Columbia suffered earlier this year, as the university was given a list of demands by the Trump administration to comply with for the funding to be unfrozen, as reported by The Washington Free Beacon.
The deal is anticipated to include a payment of $200 million to settle previous demands with the Trump Administration.
Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, previously stated in a message to students and faculty that Columbia is committed to earning back the federal funding while addressing issues and allegations of anti-Semitism.
The announcement about hiring and admissions data being released comes after allegations of race-based admissions processes surfaced online when a cyberattack hit the university in June, as the Columbia Spectator then reported.
In a statement provided to Campus Reform, a Columbia University spokesperson stated that, “While the investigation into our IT outages is ongoing, there is no evidence at this point of any data breaches or of any data having been exfiltrated.”
Despite the university’s claim, a Substack blog called Cremieux Recueil posted an article one day after the cyberattack that claims that leaked internal data from Columbia University shows that the university is still pursuing race-based admissions.
The blog included three tables that displayed the leaked data from Columbia University, claiming that the data supports the fact that race is a factor when considering potential students’ applications.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based admissions processes are unconstitutional. The court ruled that Harvard University’s race-based admissions process violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Although schools are not allowed to consider race in admittance processes, a table displayed on the blog shows that mean ACT scores for Asian students who were admitted or rejected were each higher than scores of rejected or admitted students whose race is white, Black, or Hispanic.
In response to Campus Reform’s request for comment, a Columbia University spokesperson stated the following about the claims from the blog: “To be clear: Columbia University’s admissions process complies with the Supreme Court’s SSFA decision and does not consider race or ethnicity in our admissions selection process.”
“We have followed and continue to follow the law,” the spokesperson said.
Campus Reform contacted Columbia University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
