Columbia University said a politically motivated hacker breached its information-technology systems on 24 June, briefly shutting down email, coursework and other services across the Manhattan campus. The intruder exfiltrated student and applicant records and caused images of former President Donald Trump to appear on public monitors, the school disclosed this week. Bloomberg News, which reviewed a 1.6-gigabyte file supplied by the attacker, reported that the cache contains data from about 2.5 million admission applications dating back decades. The trove includes citizenship status, university ID numbers and acceptance or rejection decisions. Columbia described the theft as limited to a portion of its network but said the full scope is still being determined. The self-described “hacktivist” told Bloomberg the objective was to learn whether Columbia continues to use affirmative-action criteria despite a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ban. The university said it has seen no ransom demand and has not detected additional malicious activity since the outage. Columbia has engaged a leading cyber-forensics firm to investigate and will notify anyone whose personal information was compromised. The breach comes as the institution remains under separate pressure from the Trump administration, which has threatened to withhold about $400 million in federal funds over the school’s handling of antisemitism complaints.