The Trump administration and Harvard College are reportedly near reaching a settlement that might require Harvard to pay US$500 million in trade for the federal government releasing frozen federal funding and ending an investigation into antisemitism on campus.
This follows comparable offers the White Home struck with Columbia College and Brown College in July 2025. Each of these universities agreed to undertake campus reforms and pay a big sum – greater than $200 million within the case of Columbia and $50 million for Brown – in an effort to obtain federal funding that the Trump administration was withholding. The White Home initially froze funding after saying that these universities had created unsafe environments for Jewish college students throughout Palestinian rights protests on campus in 2024.
As a scholar of upper schooling politics, I examined the assorted offers the Trump administration made with some universities. When Harvard declares its deal, it is going to be informative to see what’s totally different – or the identical.
I imagine the Columbia and Brown offers can be utilized as a blueprint for Trump’s plans for larger schooling. They present how the federal government needs to drive cultural reform on campus by giving the federal government extra oversight over universities and imposing punishments for what it sees as earlier wrongdoing.
Listed here are 4 key issues to grasp concerning the offers:
Columbia College college students stroll previous police on graduation day on Could 21, 2025, exterior the campus on Broadway in New York.
Selcuk Acar/Anadolu by way of Getty Photos
1. Antisemitism isn’t a serious function of the agreements
The Trump White Home accused Brown and Columbia of tolerating antisemitism throughout campus protests. However the administration neither adopted federal requirements for investigating antisemitism, nor did it dictate particular reforms to guard Jewish college students.
Forward of its deal, Columbia in March 2025 adopted a brand new, broader definition of antisemitism that was created by the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The United Nations and most European Union international locations additionally use this definition.
But the college’s 22-page deal mentions antisemitism solely as soon as, the place it says Columbia is required to rent an extra workers member to help Jewish college students’ welfare.
Brown’s deal, in the meantime, didn’t contain the college adopting a selected definition of antisemitism. However Brown did decide to providing “research and education about Israel, and a robust Program in Judaic Studies.” Brown already hosts a Judaic Research program, and it’s unclear from the settlement’s textual content what further measures are required.
The offers additionally prolong properly past antisemitism considerations and into questions of gender and the composition of scholar our bodies.
Columbia agreed to offer “single-sex” housing and sports activities amenities, for instance. The college has an non-obligatory Open Housing program that permits mixed-gender roommates and a number of other gender-neutral restrooms.
This locations the college in step with Donald Trump’s January government order that claims an individual’s gender is predicated on their intercourse as assigned at start.
Brown’s deal additionally requires single-sex sports activities and housing amenities. As well as, Brown dedicated to utilizing definitions of women and men that match Trump’s government order.
Columbia, which enrolls about 40% of its college students from different international locations, additionally agreed to “decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.”
The Brown deal says nothing about worldwide schooling.
2. Each offers are costly however obscure about monetary particulars.
Columbia should pay a high quality of greater than $200 million to the federal authorities, whereas Brown will make $50 million in donations to Rhode Island workforce improvement packages.
In each circumstances, it isn’t clear the place the cash will go or how it is going to be used.
Congress handed The Clery Act in 1990, making a authorized framework for fining campuses that failed to guard college students’ security.
Since then, the federal government has reached totally different settlements with universities.
Liberty College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, was required to pay the federal authorities $14 million in 2024, for instance, for failing to research sexual assault allegations.
However Columbia’s cost is way bigger than any earlier college and authorities settlement. Columbia will make three funds of about $66 million into the Treasury Division over three years, in keeping with The Chronicle of Greater Schooling. But it surely isn’t clear how the cash will precisely be spent and what’s going to occur after these three years, The Chronicle of Greater Schooling reported in August 2025.
Solely Congress can legally resolve find out how to spend Treasury Division funds. However Trump has ignored Congress’ appropriation directives on plenty of events.
Brown, in the meantime, won’t pay the federal government something. As an alternative, its deal will go “to state workforce development organizations operating in compliance with anti-discrimination laws, over the ten years.”
The Brown deal doesn’t say what qualifies as certified workforce improvement organizations.
3. Trump needs to affect college admissions.
Whereas the Brown and Columbia offers have a number of variations, the agreements have practically an identical language giving the Trump administration oversight of the way in which they admit college students.
The offers say that the colleges should present the federal government with detailed details about who utilized to the faculties and was admitted, damaged down by grades and check scores, in addition to race and ethnicity. The federal government may then conduct a “comprehensive audit” of the faculties, primarily based on this info.
This info is also used to find out if universities are displaying a preferences for college students of shade. With out offering proof, conservative activists have alleged that selective schools discriminate in opposition to white folks and that it is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Consultants have mentioned that these reporting necessities look like supposed to extend the variety of white college students admitted to Ivy League faculties.
Harvard President Alan Garber greets graduating college students at Harvard’s graduation on Could 29, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass.
Rick Friedman/AFP by way of Getty Photos
4. The offers may open extra doorways to federal intrusion.
Claire Shipman, Columbia’s performing president, mentioned in July that the deal would permit the college’s “research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”
Christina Paxson, Brown’s president, additionally defended the settlement in an announcement, writing that it “enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty in a way that ensures Brown will continue to be the Brown that our students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and friends have known for generations.”
However the offers may invite extra scrutiny from the federal authorities.
Each offers spell out the federal government’s proper to open new investigations in opposition to Brown and Columbia, or to reopen outdated complaints if the administration will not be happy with how the colleges are implementing the settlement.
Trump is now pressuring Harvard, UCLA and different universities to strike offers, additionally primarily based on comparable antisemitism allegations.
The White Home introduced on Aug. 8 that it may seize the analysis patents, price a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, that Harvard holds. Since 1980, universities have been capable of legally maintain, and revenue from, patents ensuing from federally funded analysis.
The federal authorities has lengthy influenced larger schooling by means of funding and regulation. However the authorities has by no means tried to dictate what occurs on campus prior to now.
Greater schooling consultants like me imagine that political targets now drive the way in which the federal government approaches larger schooling. A few of Trump’s conservative allies are actually urging the president to go even additional, saying “we have every right to renegotiate the terms of the compact with the universities.”
Given these and different stress techniques, teachers who research the regulation and authorities warn that the college offers point out encroaching authoritarianism.
