The Education Department on Wednesday said it notified Columbia University’s accreditor that it is no longer meeting its standards after failing to protect Jewish students from harassment.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which is responsible for granting the school’s accreditation, that Columbia is violating federal anti-discrimination laws. OCR, in a press release, said this means the institution is no longer meeting the commission’s accreditation standards.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a statement, said Columbia’s leadership “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus” and urged the accrediting body to keep the department informed of any actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards.
“Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid,” McMahon said. “Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards.”
The notification comes as the Trump administration continues to escalate its battle against elite universities that it says are flouting civil rights law with its responses to antisemitism and policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Columbia, which has had some of the most high-profile student anti-war protests in the nation, has faced several probes from the Trump administration over its response to protests on campus since the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Investigations from the departments of Education and Health and Human services have found that the school violated Title VI, the federal civil rights law that bars discrimination against race, national origin or shared ancestry.
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