Antisemitism at Columbia: Settlement, EEOC Fund, and Khalil Case

Columbia University’s antisemitism crisis grew out of the campus response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the pro-Palestinian protests that followed. It ended, at least in its acute phase, with a $221 million settlement, a president’s resignation, federal civil rights findings, and a set of binding institutional reforms overseen by an independent monitor.

How the Crisis Started on Campus

In the months after October 7, 2023, Columbia tightened its protest rules, requiring demonstrations to be registered two days in advance and confined to designated areas during weekday hours. The rules did not hold. On April 17, 2024, the same day President Minouche Shafik testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about antisemitism, students set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the main lawn.¹

The next day Shafik authorized the NYPD to clear the encampment, calling it an “extraordinary step” prompted by “extraordinary circumstances.” More than 100 protesters were arrested and issued trespassing summonses, the first time in roughly 50 years Columbia had called police on student demonstrators.¹ The action did not end the protests. A larger encampment appeared on an adjacent quad, and Columbia moved to hybrid learning for the rest of the semester.²

On April 30, 2024, protesters occupied and barricaded Hamilton Hall, renaming it “Hind’s Hall.” Columbia called the NYPD a second time. Officers in riot gear entered through a second-floor window using a laddered truck and arrested 46 people.³⁴⁵⁶

What Federal Civil Rights Investigators Found

On May 22, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Education jointly issued a Notice of Violation, finding that Columbia had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by demonstrating “deliberate indifference” to student-on-student harassment of Jewish students between October 7, 2023, and May 2025.⁷

The agencies concluded that Columbia had no effective reporting mechanism for antisemitism until summer 2024, did not enforce its own misconduct policies, and did not investigate classroom vandalism including the repeated drawing of swastikas. Documented incidents included the assault of an Israeli student, a “hallway of shame” protest blocking Jewish students, and the violent occupation of Hamilton Hall, in which employees were trapped and verbally harassed. In some cases, staff had been instructed to erase hateful graffiti rather than investigate the underlying conduct. Students reported feeling unsafe, being spit on, and hiding their Jewish identity to avoid harassment.⁸

The Congressional Investigation

A December 2024 staff report from the House Education and Workforce Committee called Columbia’s failure to address antisemitism “egregious” and documented what it described as an “extensive pattern” of the university failing to enforce its own rules. The report noted that Shafik had acknowledged in April 2024 that the encampments created a “hostile environment in violation of Title VI.”⁹

The committee also flagged what it called disparate treatment of Jewish students. Jewish students who had used novelty “fart spray” near a protest received 18-month suspensions, while the report found little evidence of “meaningful discipline for numerous serious antisemitic conduct offenses.” The report said Columbia had offered concessions to encampment organizers, including amnesty for conduct violations and the possible creation of a fund for projects in Gaza and the West Bank, and that Interim President Katrina Armstrong had apologized in September 2024 to students arrested during the Hamilton Hall occupation.⁹

The Funding Freeze and $221 Million Settlement

In March 2025, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, made up of officials from the DOJ, HHS, Department of Education, and GSA, announced the immediate cancellation of roughly $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, citing “continued inaction.”¹⁰ The freeze expanded to cover nearly all of Columbia’s federal funding, including about $700 million from the NIH alone.¹¹

Columbia reached an agreement with the federal government on July 23, 2025. The financial terms were a $200 million settlement paid to the federal government over three years in roughly equal installments, plus a separate $21 million fund to resolve an EEOC investigation into antisemitic harassment of employees.¹²¹³ The agreement contained no admission of wrongdoing. In exchange, most frozen grants were reinstated and Columbia regained eligibility to apply for new federal research funding.

The deal imposed a set of institutional reforms:

Columbia formally incorporated the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into its Office of Institutional Equity’s anti-discrimination policies.¹⁴
The university committed to reviewing its regional studies programs, starting with those focused on the Middle East and Israel, and to ensuring a “comprehensive and balanced” curriculum.¹³
Columbia clarified time, place, and manner rules to prohibit protests inside academic buildings, enforced an anti-masking policy, and expanded security personnel with authority to arrest trespassers.¹⁵
The University Judicial Board was placed under the Office of the Provost, with membership limited to faculty and administrators.¹⁵
Attorney Charles J. Cooper was appointed as an independent monitor to oversee Columbia’s compliance, receiving reports on admissions and hiring practices and serving as a channel for whistleblower complaints.¹⁶

By early 2026, nearly 99 percent of the canceled grants had been restored. Broader proposed cuts to federal science agencies in the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget request threatened new reductions to Columbia’s research funding, leaving researchers in what the Columbia Spectator described as “lingering uncertainty.”¹⁷

The $21 Million EEOC Fund for Jewish Employees

The $21 million EEOC settlement was the largest public settlement the agency had reached in nearly 20 years for any discrimination case, and its largest ever for antisemitism or religious discrimination. It resolved a Commissioner’s Charge filed in 2024 by then-Commissioner Andrea Lucas, now EEOC Chair, on behalf of a class of Jewish employees. The charge alleged a pattern or practice of harassment based on national origin, religion, and race in violation of Title VII, including vandalism, assaults, death threats, violent slogans, and disruptive protests that hindered employees’ access to their workplaces.¹⁸

The claims process opened on December 4, 2025, and closed on June 2, 2026. Current or former Columbia employees, including student employees, who experienced harassment between October 7, 2023, and July 23, 2025, based on Jewish faith, Jewish ancestry, Israeli national origin, or objection to such harassment, were eligible to file. The EEOC held sole discretion over eligibility and individual award amounts.¹⁹²⁰ Columbia resolved the charges without admission of liability.

Leadership Fallout

Minouche Shafik resigned as Columbia’s president on August 14, 2024, after roughly 13 months in office, citing a period of “turmoil” and the “considerable toll” the crisis had taken on her family.²¹ Her decision to call in the NYPD had drawn a faculty vote of no confidence in May 2024, while critics of campus antisemitism faulted her for not acting forcefully enough.²² Katrina Armstrong, who led Columbia’s medical center, was named interim president and was later succeeded in the role by Claire Shipman.

In early July 2024, the House Education and Workforce Committee released text messages exchanged by four senior Columbia administrators during a May 31, 2024, alumni reunion panel on Jewish life. The administrators mocked concerns raised by Jewish community members. One described student complaints as coming “from such a place of privilege” and wrote it was “hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center.” Another sent vomiting emojis. Other messages, which the committee characterized as invoking antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, included “Amazing what $$$$ can do” and suggestions that a Hillel director saw “huge fundraising potential” in the moment.²³

The four administrators were Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support; and Josef Sorett, dean of Columbia College. Chang-Kim, Kromm, and Patashnick were placed on indefinite leave and did not return. Sorett apologized publicly, saying he was “deeply sorry,” and kept his role, a decision that drew sharp criticism from Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx.²⁴²⁵ Shafik called the messages “unacceptable and deeply upsetting” and announced mandatory antisemitism and anti-discrimination training for faculty, staff, and students.

What Columbia’s Task Force Found

Columbia established a Task Force on Antisemitism in November 2023. Its fourth and final report, released on December 9, 2025, focused on the classroom experience. The 70-page document concluded that Columbia “lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist,” and found that Middle East studies courses were “saturated with condemnations of Israel” and sometimes contained outright falsehoods, including claims that Theodor Herzl was an antisemite or that Eastern European Jews were not actually Jewish. The report documented instructors labeling Jewish donors as “laundering blood money,” calling an IDF veteran an “army of murderer,” and pressuring students to attend anti-Israel protests or holding classes in the encampments where “Zionists” were told they were not welcome.²⁶

A summer 2024 survey by NORC at the University of Chicago of more than 9,000 Columbia students found that only 34 percent of Jewish students reported a positive sense of belonging, compared to 50 percent overall. Muslim students reported similarly high rates of feeling unaccepted and fearing personal danger for voicing their views.²⁷

The final report recommended new senior-level chairs in Middle East studies, urged faculty to confine courses to their subject matter, and called for clear policies against pressuring students to attend protests or applying ideological litmus tests to readings. Acting President Claire Shipman expressed gratitude for the work, but student Elisha Baker wrote in a Columbia Spectator op-ed that faculty who had supported or enforced the protest encampment had faced no consequences, calling the “unresolved question of faculty responsibility” an “open wound.”²⁶

Pushback From Faculty and Students

Not everyone welcomed Columbia’s reforms. Professor Marianne Hirsch said the IHRA definition’s illustrative examples made it “impossible to criticize a state, Israel, without being accused of antisemitism.” Professor Joseph Howley called the administration’s refusal to engage with student activist groups “dangerous to effectively wall ourselves off from strategies for de-escalating conflict.” Both advocated for the alternative Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which they argued more clearly permits “evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state.”²⁸

The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition and the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said the definition “codified anti-Zionism as antisemitism” and would result in censorship of Palestinian students.²⁸

On June 2, 2026, a group of Jewish faculty filed their own EEOC claims, alleging they had faced harassment and discrimination not for being Jewish but for supporting Palestinian rights. They argued Columbia’s administration had pressured employees to adopt a “pro-Zionist and pro-Israeli position” and that conflating Jewish identity with support for Israel amounted to “textbook antisemitism.”²⁹ Faculty members reported being labeled “kapos,” “fake Jews,” and “self-hating Jews.” Classics professor Joseph Howley said he had been attacked as a “bad Jew” by people who held “the university’s authority or its implicit support.” Filmmaker and professor James Schamus wrote a public critique titled “Where is my antisemitism money?” and pledged to donate any settlement payout to organizations working for “a just peace in Israel/Palestine.”³⁰

The Mahmoud Khalil Deportation Case

One of the highest-profile individual consequences involves Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student and legal permanent resident who served as a mediator during the 2024 encampments. In March 2025, ICE agents arrested Khalil in his student housing lobby. He was detained for 104 days at an ICE facility in Louisiana, where he remained during the birth of his first son.³¹³²

The government alleged Khalil obtained his green card through fraud and misrepresentation, and publicly characterized him as a Hamas supporter and antisemite. Khalil denied the allegations, contending he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian speech. His legal team, led by Baher Azmy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, called the case “ideological persecution.”³²

A federal judge initially ordered Khalil’s release in June 2025, finding his detention unconstitutional. In January 2026, an appeals court reversed that ruling, and in May 2026 the Third Circuit upheld the reversal in a 6–5 vote. The Board of Immigration Appeals separately upheld a finding that Khalil could be deported, in a process the New York Times described as marked by “unusual” speed and procedural irregularities.³³ As of mid-2026, Khalil’s attorneys were preparing to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, and Khalil had secured assurances preventing his re-detention until the Court acted.³¹

1
The New York Times. Columbia University Protests
2
NPR. Campus Protests Israel Gaza Encampments Arrests
3
CNN. Columbia University Protesters Trespass Dismissed
4
Times of Israel. Columbia President Resigns Amid Criticism Over Her Response to Anti-Israel Protests
5
BBC. Columbia Protester Khymani James Banned From Campus
6
NBC News. Columbia University Bans Khymani James
7
HHS. OCR Columbia Violates Federal Civil Rights Law
8
HHS. OCR Joint Notice of Violation to Columbia
9
U.S. House of Representatives. House Staff Report on Antisemitism
10
HHS. Task Force Cancels Columbia University Grants
11
Science. Trump Administration Unfreezes Then Refreezes NIH Funding Columbia University
12
Columbia University. Federal Resolution Agreement
13
PBS NewsHour. Columbia University Makes Deal With Trump Administration
14
Columbia University. Understanding How We Incorporate IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
15
GSA. HHS ED and GSA Respond to Columbia University Actions to Comply
16
Columbia University. Resolution Agreement Frequently Asked Questions
17
Columbia Spectator. Columbia Stands to Lose Tens of Millions as White House Reopens Push to Cut Science Funding
18
EEOC. Largest EEOC Public Settlement Almost 20 Years
19
EEOC. Columbia University Begins Payout EEOC Settlement
20
EEOC Columbia Settlement. EEOC Columbia Settlement Claims
21
BBC. Columbia University President Shafik Resigns
22
Axios. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik Resigns
23
U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Committee Releases Columbia Administrator Text Messages
24
NPR. Columbia Deans Texts Antisemitic Jewish Students Protests
25
U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Committee Statement on Columbia Dean Resignations
26
Times of Israel. Jewish Students Singled Out Scapegoated Columbia Releases Last Antisemitism Report
27
Columbia University. Report 3 Task Force on Antisemitism
28
Columbia Spectator. Columbia Adopts New Definition of Antisemitism Partners With ADL for Antisemitism Training
29
The Hill. Columbia Professors Claim Antisemitism
30
The Guardian. Columbia Jewish Faculty Protests Settlement Fund
31
NPR. Mahmoud Khalil Takes Deportation Case to the Supreme Court
32
The Guardian. Mahmoud Khalil Supreme Court Appeal Deportation
33
The New York Times. Mahmoud Khalil Deportation Case