Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private Ivy League research university founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of King George II. Its main campus is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. It is organized into 17 schools and is one of the fifth-oldest institutions of higher education in the United States. As of recent years, Columbia enrolls over 30,000 students, employs approximately 23,000 people (including roughly 7,300 faculty), and maintains an endowment of $15.9 billion (as of June 2025). The university's annual operating revenues are approximately $6.7 billion. In the domain of AI safety and governance, Columbia operates through multiple centers and initiatives. The School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and its Institute of Global Politics (IGP) have emerged as significant actors. The IGP co-leads the ROOST initiative (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), which launched at the AI Action Summit in Paris in early 2025 with over $28 million in funding from philanthropies and technology companies including OpenAI, Google, Discord, and Roblox. ROOST develops and distributes free, open-source safety tools for detecting and mitigating harmful content online. The initiative is led by Camille Francois (associate professor of practice at SIPA) and Maria Ressa (Nobel Peace Prize laureate and professor at SIPA). IGP also runs a Technology and Democracy Initiative focused on AI governance research. The Columbia Center of Artificial Intelligence Technology (CAIT), housed in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, coordinates AI research across more than 70 faculty and serves as a hub for technical AI research across the university. The Data Science Institute coordinates the university-wide Columbia AI initiative and provides seed funding for interdisciplinary AI research projects. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, established in 2016 with a $60 million commitment from the Knight Foundation, conducts research, litigation, and policy advocacy at the intersection of AI, free speech, democracy, and surveillance. Columbia professor David Blei (William B. Ransford Professor of Statistics and Computer Science) received funding from Open Philanthropy for AI alignment research working with deep learning systems. Columbia Business School professor Hongseok Namkoong works on trustworthy and reliable AI systems, distributional robustness, and AI for high-stakes decision-making. The Columbia AI Alignment Club supports students in conducting research on reducing risks from advanced AI and offers a Policy and Governance Fellowship. Columbia also received an NSF grant to lead the AI Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI), a $20 million initiative focused on fundamental AI research drawing on computer science and neuroscience.