Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number. [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/trump-columbia-university-400-million.html

https://archive.ph/Js20b

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million
A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it.
By Matthew Haag and Katherine Rosman
March 21, 2025

Donald Trump was demanding $400 million from Columbia University.

When he did not get his way, he stormed out of a meeting with university trustees and later publicly castigated the university president as “a dummy” and “a total moron.”

That drama dates back 25 years.

Today, these two New York City institutions — the billionaire president of the United States and the 270-year-old Ivy League university that has cultivated 87 Nobel laureates — have been locked in an extraordinary clash involving free speech, academic freedom and the federal government’s role in funding higher education.

The first battle between Mr. Trump and Columbia involved the most New York of New York prizes. It was over a lucrative real estate deal, according to interviews with 17 real estate investors and former university administrators and insiders, as well as contemporaneous news articles.

Some former university officials are quietly wondering whether the ultimately unsuccessful property transaction sowed the seeds of Mr. Trump’s current focus on Columbia. His administration has demanded that the university turn over vast control of its policies and even curricular decisions in its effort to quell antisemitism on campus. It has also canceled federal grants and contracts at Columbia — valued at $400 million.

On Friday, Columbia conceded some of Mr. Trump’s demands regarding its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department. The move alarmed some faculty members who worried that the university agreed to the changes in an effort to win back the full $400 million. The Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment.

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