By: Fern Sidman – Jewish Voice News

In a landmark development that draws attention to a shifting national approach to higher education governance and civil rights enforcement, the Trump administration has restored $250 million in federal funds to Cornell University following a high-profile settlement that requires the Ivy League institution to pay $60 million in penalties and reforms, with half of the sum earmarked for agricultural research. The agreement, reported by The Algemeiner on Monday brings to a close months of escalating legal and political confrontation between Washington and the Ithaca-based university—an institution long regarded as emblematic of elite academia’s entanglement with progressive social agendas.

The settlement, formalized on Friday, follows the administration’s earlier decision to freeze Cornell’s federal funding after investigators determined that the university had failed to adequately respond to antisemitic discrimination and had violated federal civil rights standards by enacting race-conscious admissions and hiring practices. In January, the U.S. Department of Education issued more than 75 “stop-work” orders, halting federally supported projects and triggering a campus-wide fiscal emergency.

As The Algemeiner reported, Cornell responded to the suspension by publicly acknowledging a dire financial situation, announcing sweeping austerity measures, and promising to “reduce costs immediately and correct our course over time.” Friday’s settlement, therefore, represents both a financial reprieve and a symbolic reckoning for the Ivy League institution, which must now demonstrate compliance with a dramatically altered legal and cultural landscape in U.S. higher education.

According to the Department of Justice, the $60 million agreement requires Cornell to share detailed admissions data with federal authorities to verify that the university has ceased all forms of racial preference in its admissions process. It further compels the school to invest $30 million through 2028 in agricultural and farming research, an allocation widely interpreted by observers as part of the administration’s effort to rechannel federal spending toward “practical and merit-based” initiatives.

That expiration date—2028, coinciding with the next presidential election—has been noted by policy analysts as a strategic provision, potentially allowing the administration to review Cornell’s compliance under a new or renewed Republican presidency.

In a statement quoted in The Algemeiner report, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon framed the agreement as a “transformative victory” for academic accountability.

“The Trump administration has secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEI policies,” McMahon declared. “Thanks to this deal with Cornell and the ongoing work of the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services, universities are returning to merit, rigor, and truth-seeking—not ideology. These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education.”

The administration’s decision to restore Cornell’s funds reflects a broader effort, as chronicled by The Algemeiner, to reshape the moral and intellectual culture of U.S. universities. Over the past two years, the Trump administration has aggressively targeted what it describes as the “ideological capture” of higher education by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies—initiatives critics argue have produced racial discrimination, political bias, and the erosion of academic freedom.

In this case, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, pursued Cornell for alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination statutes. In her public statement, Dhillon emphasized that the settlement reaffirms the government’s “deep commitment to enforcing civil rights law and ensuring responsible management of taxpayer funds.”

“As a result of securing this groundbreaking settlement between the United States and Cornell,” Dhillon told The Algemeiner, “applicants and students will receive fair and equal treatment as required by our civil rights laws, and American farmers will benefit from expanded agricultural innovation. This agreement demonstrates that the federal government will no longer tolerate ideological or discriminatory misuse of public resources.”

The $250 million in restored funds, which the administration had previously frozen, will reportedly flow back into Cornell’s federally supported research initiatives across engineering, biology, and environmental science—programs that were paralyzed for months amid the funding freeze.

The federal probe into Cornell’s alleged civil rights failures gained momentum following a wave of antisemitic incidents that erupted on campus after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. As The Algemeiner report documented, those attacks triggered a cascade of anti-Israel protests and violent threats at Cornell, revealing deep fissures in campus culture and administrative oversight.

Just weeks after the Hamas atrocities, then-student Patrick Dai was arrested and later sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for issuing threats to murder and sexually assault Jewish students. His messages—posted online and directed at members of Cornell’s Jewish community—sent shockwaves through the campus and drew nationwide condemnation.

In the ensuing months, Cornell’s leadership struggled to contain a series of extremist demonstrations. Student activists staged a mock tribunal convicting then-President Martha Pollack of “complicity in genocide,” while the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter repeatedly defied disciplinary measures.

In one notorious incident reported by The Algemeiner, SJP-affiliated students stormed a career fair, physically pushing police officers and breaching restricted areas. Though initially suspended, several of the students were later granted amnesty under “alternative resolutions” crafted by the administration—an act critics described as capitulation to radical activism.

Even Cornell’s faculty became embroiled in controversy when history professor Russell Rickford publicly celebrated Hamas’s massacre as “exhilarating” and “energizing,” remarks that drew international outrage and further tarnished the school’s image.

Cornell’s image suffered another devastating blow when, in October 2024, its student newspaper published an inflammatory op-ed by professor Karim-Aly Kassam, who accused Israel of “genocide” and likened the Jewish state’s war against Hamas to Nazi atrocities.

As detailed in The Algemeiner report, Kassam’s article—titled “Thousand & One Eyes for an Eye”—featured a graphic blending the Star of David with a swastika, a visual metaphor that critics decried as a grotesque example of “Holocaust inversion.” This rhetorical device, in which Israel is cast as a reincarnation of Nazi Germany, has long been a hallmark of extremist anti-Zionist propaganda.

In his piece, Kassam alleged that Israel’s military actions were motivated by “revenge” rather than security, accusing Israeli leaders of dehumanizing Palestinians by referring to them as “animals.” In fact, as The Algemeiner report noted, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had described Hamas fighters, not civilians, as “human animals”—a distinction deliberately blurred by Kassam and his supporters to paint Israel’s war effort as genocidal.

The episode ignited widespread condemnation, with legal scholars and Jewish advocacy groups citing it as proof of institutional complicity in antisemitic rhetoric. Many pointed to it as emblematic of a deeper moral malaise afflicting elite campuses—a space where “academic freedom” is often invoked to protect hate speech and historical falsification.

As The Algemeiner has extensively chronicled, Cornell’s crisis mirrors a broader reckoning unfolding across American academia since October 7. Elite universities—from Harvard and Columbia to Stanford and UCLA—have faced mounting scrutiny for tolerating or even enabling antisemitic activity under the guise of political expression. Congressional hearings, donor revolts, and alumni outrage have compounded the pressure, forcing institutions to reconsider the ideological frameworks underpinning their diversity and equity programs.

Cornell, once considered one of the most academically balanced Ivy League campuses, has in recent years moved sharply leftward, adopting race-conscious admissions policies, radicalized curricula, and DEI hiring mandates. These initiatives, critics argue, have cultivated a campus culture in which identity politics supersedes merit and antisemitism masquerades as anti-Zionism.

The Trump administration’s enforcement strategy—combining fiscal penalties with data transparency mandates—signals an intent to reverse this trend through direct intervention. “The federal government is using its most powerful lever—funding—to compel universities to return to neutral ground,” observed one policy analyst quoted in The Algemeiner report. “Cornell is the test case for whether accountability can be restored without collapsing the very institutions it seeks to reform.”

The implications of the Cornell settlement extend well beyond Ithaca. Federal education officials told The Algemeiner that similar investigations are ongoing at several universities suspected of systemic discrimination or misuse of federal funds for ideological programming. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has reportedly expanded its remit to monitor compliance with new standards that prioritize merit-based admissions and viewpoint diversity.

Cornell’s agreement to share admissions data marks an unprecedented level of federal oversight into the inner workings of elite universities. “For decades, these institutions operated with near-total autonomy,” one DOJ official told The Algemeiner. “That era is ending. When taxpayers fund universities, the public has a right to demand transparency and fairness.”

The administration’s broader objective appears twofold: to dismantle racially preferential systems and to reestablish a national ethos of intellectual meritocracy. In this vision, agricultural research—the focal point of Cornell’s $30 million reinvestment—symbolizes a return to applied science and public benefit over ideological fashion.

While Cornell’s leaders have avoided public comment since the settlement announcement, observers note that the university now faces the formidable task of rebuilding trust with both the federal government and its own Jewish community. “Cornell’s problem isn’t merely bureaucratic—it’s moral,” said a former alumnus quoted in The Algemeiner report. “For too long, the administration treated antisemitism as a public relations issue rather than a civil rights violation. This settlement forces them to confront that failure head-on.”

Others view the outcome as a model for national reform. “This is more than a financial settlement,” said a civil rights attorney involved in the negotiations. “It’s a statement that American universities can no longer cloak discrimination in the language of progress. They must prove, through data and action, that equality and intellectual integrity still matter.”

As the ink dries on the Cornell agreement, questions remain about how the precedent will ripple across higher education. Will other universities face similar funding suspensions? Will administrators preemptively overhaul DEI programs to avoid federal intervention?

Whatever the answers, The Algemeiner report concluded that the Cornell case marks a watershed moment: the reassertion of federal authority over academic institutions once thought untouchable. In an era of ideological extremism and moral confusion, the Trump administration has made clear that no university is above accountability—and no ideology immune from scrutiny.

For Cornell, the $60 million settlement may have restored its funding, but the true price will be measured in how it reforms its culture, redefines its values, and reconciles with a Jewish community that watched in anguish as hatred flourished under its roof.

In the words of The Algemeiner, “The era of moral relativism in academia may finally be giving way to one of moral responsibility.”