Columbia Lays Off 180 Staff After Trump Slashes $400M in Federal Funding

Columbia University laid off nearly 180 staff members on Tuesday after the Trump administration cut $400 million in federal funding over the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment following the October 7 Hamas massacre.

The layoffs represent the first major academic casualty of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on Ivy League institutions that have tolerated radicalism and campus anti-Semitism. The federal cuts, enacted in March, devastated Columbia’s bloated $1.3 billion research budget and now threaten its entire academic model.

“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,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who leads Trump’s aggressive push to defund campuses that shelter hate.

The university admitted that the mass layoffs are a direct result of the Trump administration’s decision:

• Roughly 20% of Columbia’s research staff have been let go.

• Over 300 multi-year federal research grants were wiped out, including left-wing academic pet projects like research into “the consequences of structural racism on substance use risk in Puerto Rican adolescents.”

• Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman acknowledged the institution is under “intense strain” from the loss of funding.

Despite temporary attempts to pay researchers’ salaries, the university couldn’t survive without the federal cash it once took for granted.

The Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism found that Columbia repeatedly failed to take action in the face of rising harassment and intimidation directed at Jewish students particularly following the outbreak of pro-Hamas protests and encampments across campus.

Now, the consequences are hitting home.

“We will need to continue to take actions that preserve our financial flexibility,” Columbia said in a panicked statement Tuesday, as it struggles to avoid a larger academic collapse.

The message from the Trump White House is unmistakable: taxpayer dollars will not fund institutions that enable hate, extremism, or anti-American ideology. Columbia and other woke universities now under federal scrutiny are learning that lesson the hard way.

This is just the latest move in a sweeping education overhaul under Trump’s second term. Dozens of universities, from Harvard to Stanford, are facing similar investigations and grant freezes if they fail to comply with basic civil rights protections and anti-terrorism statutes.

And while Columbia scrambles to save face, Trump is delivering on his promise to defund failure and restore accountability to America’s education system.

No more free rides for the radical elite.

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