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Jewish employees of Columbia eligible for settlement money, federal agency says

Andrea Lucas, of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, told a student paper that the commission won’t take “a single cent” itself.

Columbia University
Kent Hall at Columbia University in New York, N.Y., Sept. 1, 2024. Credit: Wm3214 via Wikimedia Commons.

Andrea Lucas, who heads the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, told the Columbia Daily Spectator, a student paper, that Jewish employees at Columbia University are eligible to receive money from the commission’s $21 million settlement with the school.

The settlement was part of the Trump administration’s $221 million agreement with the university in July to end its investigations into its handling of Jew-hatred.

The commission will put the $21 million into a fund and email university employees about how to apply for the monies, the paper reported.

Lucas told the paper that any Jewish employee of Columbia between Oct. 7, 2023, and July 23, 2025, is eligible for settlement money. Eligible employees “don’t have to personally be the target of antisemitism to still have experienced the effects of antisemitic conduct happening,” she said.

“Not a single cent will go to the EEOC itself,” she said.

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