Cornell University will pay $60 million to the Trump administration to resolve ongoing antisemitism investigations and unfreeze $250 million in federal funds, becoming the fourth Ivy League school and fifth overall to strike such a deal, according to JTA.
The deal came weeks after another agreement signed by the University of Virginia, and also followed the resolution of an ongoing controversy at Cornell involving a Jewish professor’s course on Gaza.
“With this resolution, Cornell looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government that has yielded, for so many years, so much progress and well-being for our nation and our world,” Michael Kotlikoff, the school’s Jewish president, said in a statement Nov. 7 announcing the deal.
In a virtual campus town hall after the deal was announced, Kotlikoff linked the university’s negotiation of the settlement to the broader campus climate in the two-plus years since the Hamas attack on Israel and war in Gaza.
“Universities across the country have made significant progress since disruptions on campus on October 7 in articulating our rules, appropriately enforcing our rules and making sure that everybody’s rights are protected,” he said, as reported by the Cornell student newspaper.
As part of the deal, Cornell will pay the federal government $20 million per year for the next three years in exchange for the unfreezing of several grants to the university, many of which are connected to the Department of Defense. Half of the money will be directed to investments in agriculture programs.
The school also promises to “conduct annual campus climate surveys to ensure that Jewish students are safe and that anti-Semitism is being addressed,” according to a White House release about the deal. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Cornell’s campus dealt with violent threats against Jewish students as well as a faculty member who had praised the Hamas attacks.
The government, in turn, promises to drop its ongoing Title VI investigations into allegations of discrimination based on shared Jewish ancestry or national origin at the school. Kotlikoff further insisted that Cornell would preserve its academic freedom, and would not be forced to abide by White House guidelines on other campus concerns such as diversity-based hiring and transgender athletes.
