Columbia University has officially agreed to a $200 million settlement that can only be described as “academic integrity, but make it negotiable.” After a long standoff with the federal government over funding cuts tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, the Ivy League institution has agreed to restore funding—in exchange for agreeing to follow laws that prohibit the very DEI policies it previously defended with the ferocity of a tenured philosophy professor clutching tenure.
You might say Columbia just went from “woke” to “woke-ish,” with a legally binding asterisk.
The Deal: Cash Now, Conscience Later
To be fair, $200 million is a lot of money. That’s enough to build four new STEM buildings, launch a dozen think tanks that say mostly the same thing, or, in Columbia’s case, reclassify bureaucratic compliance as a civil rights victory.
All they had to do was agree to follow the “laws already in place” that limit race-conscious hiring, scholarship allocation, and bias training. Which, in practice, means DEI initiatives will now be relocated to a secure underground location called “Networking Events” and discussed exclusively in passive voice.
They didn’t dismantle the system. They just turned the volume down and changed the font.
From Diversity to Diplomacy: The New Ivy Handbook
Let’s be clear: Columbia didn’t apologize for anything. They just agreed to play ball with the federal government’s definition of “equal opportunity,” which, these days, reads like it was drafted by a school board in Texas.
Officially, the university will “ensure compliance” with statutes already on the books. Unofficially, this is the academic equivalent of nodding at a party host while pouring your flask into their punch bowl.
No more “diversity statements” in job applications. No more mandatory unconscious bias training. No more scholarships designed to address centuries of systemic exclusion. Instead, they’ll now offer “open-enrollment excellence fellowships”—which is Columbia for “same program, now with plausible deniability.”
And What Did Trump Get? A Win, Apparently.
The Trump-aligned faction of the federal government has claimed this as a cultural and financial victory. “Columbia is following the law,” one official declared, as though the university had previously been operating out of a Portland anarchist commune.
It’s all part of the broader campaign to de-wokify American institutions—by which they mean eliminating any mention of identity unless it’s attached to a founding father or someone wearing a powdered wig.
In that context, this settlement is a win: $200 million in restitution, plus an agreement to ghost your own DEI office without technically deleting the contact.
Academic Freedom, Now With Terms and Conditions
Let’s not pretend this is a good-faith compromise. This is a financial decision dressed in the robes of legal compliance.
Columbia didn’t suddenly have a change of heart. They just realized that arguing with the federal government while hemorrhaging funds wasn’t sustainable, especially when tuition’s already $70K a year and half the student body is living off anxiety and oat milk.
In the end, the university did what all elite institutions eventually do: calculated the cost of principle, rounded up, and wrote a check.
Final Grades
- Columbia University: A+ in strategic surrender
- Federal Government: B- in optics, A in budget reallocation
- DEI Advocates: C in morale, but still submitting extra credit
- America: Incomplete. See professor after class.