Columbia professor who joined pro-Hamas protests recipient of $100M in public grants

Days after Columbia University lost millions in government funding for allowing antisemitism on campus, a new report identified a radical professor who received over $100 million in taxpayer-funded grants.

Neuropsychologist Jennifer Manly took part in pro-Hamas protests that swept the campus in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, reported that Manly “marched with pro-Hamas encampment leaders and, according to public records, has been a recipient of $100 million in taxpayer funding for CRT-style research, which claims that racism causes Alzheimer’s in black people.”

This is Columbia University in April 2024. Jennifer Manly marched with pro-Hamas protestors and stood in a human blockade intending to prevent administrators from dismantling the unauthorized encampments, which shut down classes and was the base for illegal building occupations. pic.twitter.com/ny3rZHlGdl

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 13, 2025

“According to the National Institutes of Health and other publicly accessible databases, she has been named in connection with over $100 million in grants over the past 20 years. Much of her research is based on the so-called social determinants of health thesis, which posits that racism, sexism, and homophobia can cause brain disease in ‘Black and Latinx communities’—a thesis that critics have described as pseudo-science,” Rufo noted.

But the real scandal is that Manly has been a recipient of more than $100 million in taxpayer funds for so-called “social determinants of health” research, which posits that racism, sexism, and homophobia cause brain disease in minorities—which critics call pseudoscience. pic.twitter.com/siWfq1zroJ

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 13, 2025

The professor’s work “routinely advances the idea that racism causes physical illness, such as Alzheimer’s disease. She claimed in an interview last year that ‘we shouldn’t blame people for their lifestyle choices in terms of their brain health.’ Rather, ‘systems of oppression’ and ‘discriminatory beliefs’ cause black people to suffer dementia at disproportionate rates,” Rufo explained.

He noted that taxpayers have “lavishly funded” the radical professor’s work, with nearly $700,000 being recently awarded by the National Institutes of Health to research a link between racism and brain disease.

According to Rufo:

As part of this grant, in January 2025, Manley and colleagues published an article implying that blacks living in states with “high lynching proportions” experienced higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a factor associated with greater risk of dementia. The authors claimed that “racism is associated with inflammation and dementia risk” because it “cumulatively taxes the body resulting in worsening biological and cognitive health.” Another paper concluded that “racist U.S. policies” had an “influence on cognitive health over time and dementia risk later in life.”

With the Trump administration’s goal of slashing bloated government budgets and eliminating “woke” practices paid for by American taxpayers, work by Manly and others should be scrutinized, Rufo urged, noting their pursuit of “ideological research rather than medical science.”

Here is the professor agitator pic.twitter.com/B6kcMM7hy4

— Roxanne ER RN (@Roxanne61678758) March 13, 2025

NIH hands out millions of research dollars like green stamps to activists who have no intention of finding truth.

No longer.

— US@ (@Bourgeois1951) March 14, 2025

100 million dollars, that could’ve been spent 100 million ways, toward actual Alzheimers research.
This deeply offends me.

— Bucking Fitches (@buckingfitch50) March 13, 2025

Amazing

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 13, 2025

There are no words to express how outrageous this is.

— Alexander Granin (@graninas) March 13, 2025

If racism causes Alzheimer’s in black people, what causes it in white people?

— Sammy Sutton (@SammyWrites) March 13, 2025

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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