Over $250M of $400M cut to Columbia is from NIH, agency says

Over half of the approximately $400 million in grants and contracts that the Trump administration said on Friday it’s cutting from Columbia University is from the National Institutes of Health, that agency revealed Monday.

In a 4:32 p.m. Monday post on X, the social media site owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, the NIH posted that “today #NIH is terminating more than $250 million in funding—including more than 400 grants—to Columbia University following directives from the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.”

An NIH spokesperson confirmed that this $250 million is part of the $400 million in cuts announced by multiple federal departments Friday. The departments, which are members of the antisemitism task force, said in a news release Friday that the cuts were “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

In the federal fiscal year 2024, Columbia University received more than $690 million from the NIH, most of which went to its medical center, according to an analysis of data from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.

Neither the NIH’s post Monday nor the NIH spokesperson provided information on what the terminated grants were for. The second Trump administration has repeatedly misstated the dollar amount of cuts it has made in the past.

Columbia spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment early Monday evening. Over the weekend, in response to the earlier announcement of the funding slashing, interim university president Katrina Armstrong told the campus that there’s “no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the university, impacting students, faculty, staff, research and patient care.”