Cornell University announced a settlement with the Trump administration on Friday, becoming the fifth university under investigation by the US government to do so.
The agreement will see more than $250m in federal research funding restored. In exchange, the university will share admissions data with the government, pay $30m and invest $30m more in research programs benefiting farmers – a reflection of the university’s longstanding record of agricultural research. Cornell also agreed to continue to “evaluate the campus climate”, particularly for Jewish students, and use the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws, which views diversity initiatives as unlawful race-based discrimination, in training materials.
The administration’s deal with Cornell – a private, Ivy League university in upstate New York – follows earlier ones with Columbia, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia. Those agreements – in particular Columbia’s – drew widespread accusations of government overreach and criticism of universities’ “capitulation” to Trump’s bullying tactics in the service of his campaign to overhaul higher education in his ideological image.
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The deal comes as several universities have turned down an offer by the administration to join a “compact” that would grant them preferential access to federal funding in exchange for a series of concessions aligning university policy with the administration’s anti-diversity priorities. On Friday, hundreds of students and faculty across the country protested to call on university leaders to reject Trump’s compact and take a more forceful stance against the administration’s unprecedented assault on universities’ independence.
Linda McMahon, the US education secretary, hailed the settlement as a victory for the administration in its effort to “end divisive DEI policies”.
“Universities are refocusing their attention on merit, rigor, and truth-seeking – not ideology,” she wrote in a social media post.
Cornell’s new president, Michael I Kotlikoff, defended the university’s decision and said that the deal allowed it to preserve its independence.
“The agreement explicitly recognizes Cornell’s right to independently establish our policies and procedures, choose whom to hire and admit, and determine what we teach, without intrusive government monitoring or approvals,” he wrote in a statement. “In short, it recognizes our rights, as a private university, to define the conditions on our campuses that advance learning and produce new knowledge.”
The Trump administration has seized on allegations of antisemitism on campus after mass student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as a pretext to place dozens of universities under investigation, turning landmark Title VI anti-discrimination legislation into a tool to force universities into reforms that span well beyond tackling antisemitism.
The education department first informed Cornell that it was under investigation for alleged antisemitism shortly after 7 October 2023, when an anonymous complainant accused a professor there of spreading “hate and lies” and of supporting Hamas.
The complaint was one of dozens submitted around that time which prompted the government to investigate universities and subsequently freeze funding. Critics have noted that those complaints often included no evidence or detail.
“If the Trump admin had evidence that Cornell systemically discriminated against Jewish students in violation of Title VI, it wouldn’t let the university off the hook for a $30m investment in research about AI, robotics and farming,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, referencing the agreement’s stipulation that the university would invest in agricultural programs “incorporating AI and robotics”.
Still, the deal with Cornell appeared to be less severe than some feared it would be. Columbia, for example, agreed to take control of an academic department from its faculty and ban face masks, among other terms.
“Today’s settlement, while unwarranted and punitive, nevertheless demonstrates the Trump administration’s attacks on students, staff and faculty are losing steam,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors. “We’ve already won widespread rejections of Trump’s absurd loyalty oath compacts and we’ll keep fighting until we win an education system that serves the public good, not a dangerously narrow far-right ideology that serves billionaires.”
