Two organizations representing faculty at Columbia University today filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the administration of US President Donald Trump's cancellation of $400 million in research grants and contracts to the university . The lawsuit follows a controversial decision by university leaders to alter campus and academic policies in accordance with the government's demands ― a move that many scientists and academics fear will encourage the federal government to ask for even more concessions from Columbia and other schools.

“The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia are part of a clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education," Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a non-profit group in Washington DC that advocates for academic freedom, said in a statement. The AAUP filed the lawsuit with the American Federation of Teachers, a union based in Washington DC that represents university faculty among others.

The US Department of Education, one of the agencies named in the suit, did not respond before publication to a request for comment. Officials with the department and other agencies have justified the cancellations by saying that the university had failed to protect its Jewish students.

Administration officials said earlier this month that they would not negotiate with the university about government funding unless Columbia acceded to the administration’s ultimatums on an array of security, admissions and academic policies. In response, on 21 March, the university announced a range of measures, including restrictions on the wearing of face masks, new campus disciplinary rules and a review of Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), which has become a flashpoint of controversy.

Some scientists who have lost funding nonetheless have misgivings about the university’s efforts to cooperate with the administration. Others argue that the university’s acquiescence will embolden an administration that has sought to exert control over academic institutions by withholding funding mandated by Congress. It should have been Columbia, not organizations representing faculty, filing the lawsuit against the administration today, says Sheldon Pollock, who twice chaired MESAAS and is now retired.

“This is a real-time experiment in how totalitarianism inserts itself into a democratic society,” Pollack says. “I do not feel that that is an exaggeration.”

The White House declined to address these and other allegations in this story.

List of conditions

The administration alleges that Columbia failed in its obligations under the US Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students during campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza . That war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.

In a letter issued on 13 March, the administration laid out nine conditions that Columbia must meet to start negotiations over funding. Most of the conditions focused on security and disciplinary measures, but the administration also waded into academic affairs by demanding that MESAAS be placed under ‘academic receivership’.

Receivership is a relatively rare action used to relieve members of a department of control and bring in new leadership. MESAAS has been the subject of particular controversy since one of its faculty members, Joseph Massad, described Hamas’s attack on Israel as a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance”.

An analysis posted online by a group of Columbia law professors says that the cancellation of grants is illegal under the Civil Rights Act, which lays out specific procedures for handling alleged violations, including “an express finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing”. The analysis adds that the law stipulates that any penalties be applied to the programme in question, not to unrelated programmes at the same academic institution.

The Department of Education declined to answer questions from Nature , but spokesperson Madi Biedermann said in a statement that the Trump team “followed all applicable law in holding Columbia University to account for the lawless antisemitism that it allowed to occur on its campus”.

Politics at play

On 21 March, Columbia University’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, released a conciliatory response that laid out a suite of relevant actions the university has already taken, as well as further commitments to bolster security, foster “intellectual diversity” and review admissions policies to ensure that they are “unbiased”.