On June 24, 2025, an unidentified hacker conducted a cyberattack on Columbia University with the goal of gathering data to show that the university had continued to engage in affirmative action practices even after 2023, when the Supreme Court overturned race-conscious admissions policies in 2023.

During the cyberattack, Columbia University students and staff were locked out of their email accounts, coursework, and video conference software, and an image of President Donald Trump’s face appeared on public monitors across campus. After hiring a cyber-forensics firm to conduct an investigation, the university announced in a statement that student data had been stolen. While the university indicated that it would take more time to determine exactly how much data had been stolen, an anonymous individual wrote to Bloomberg News that they had extracted 460 gigabytes of data on student applications, student financial aid packages, employee pay, and Social Security numbers of employees, applicants, and students. The individual reportedly shared 1.6 gigabytes of this data with Bloomberg News. These claims were not independently verified.

Scholars at Risk is concerned about attacks on university infrastructure, including technological infrastructure, apparently intended to pressure or otherwise to do harm to the university or members of the university community. Such actions undermine academic freedom and institutional autonomy, and harm the ability of universities to perform their essential functions.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/nyregion/columbia-university-hacker.html
https://abc7ny.com/post/columbia-university-student-data-stolen-politically-motivated-hacker-says/16935492/
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/07/01/columbia-data-stolen-in-cyberattack-that-caused-dayslong-it-outage-university-says/