Columbia Axes 180 Staff After Trump Cuts $400 Million In Federal Funding

Columbia University laid off nearly 180 staff members on Tuesday due to the Trump administration’s decision to cut $400 million in federal funding over what officials described as the school’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

“We understand this news will be hard,” Claire Shipman, Columbia University’s acting president, wrote in a statement with other top officials, citing “intense strain on Columbia’s finances and research mission” as a result of Trump’s cuts to federal funding.

The funding cuts came in early March after Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism determined the Ivy League institution had failed to adequately protect Jewish students from harassment.

“Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses — only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement at the time.

According to The New York Times, more than 300 multi-year research grants have been slashed, shrinking their approximately $1.3 billion in federal research funds in 2023 to practically nothing.

Among the cut grants was a project examining “the consequences of structural racism on substance use risk in Puerto Rican adolescents,” as the Times puts it, with a researcher lamenting that it was “very disheartening to see the wheels of science kind of grinding to a halt in certain ways.”

Columbia had been temporarily paying the salaries of some affected researchers while departments developed plans to navigate the cuts, although Tuesday’s layoffs signal an apparent end to this approach.

The layoffs affect roughly 20% of research staff “who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants.”

“Columbia’s leadership continues discussions with the federal government in support of resuming activity on these research awards and additional other awards that have remained active, but unpaid,” the Tuesday statement reads. “We are working on and planning for every eventuality, but the strain in the meantime, financially and on our research mission, is intense.”

Moving forward, scientists at the university can apply for limited grants to complete their research and support graduate students who would otherwise be terminated, although the university added that it would be “running lighter footprints of research infrastructure.”

Columbia has attempted to comply with the administration’s first round of demands, but negotiations to restore the funding remain ongoing.

“In the coming weeks and months, we will need to continue to take actions that preserve our financial flexibility and allow us to invest in areas that drive us forward,” officials said.

The cuts are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration targeting universities over allegations of anti-Semitism, with dozens of other institutions facing similar scrutiny.