Brown University will fire 48 people and leave 55 vacant jobs unfilled as part of a bid to trim spending by 2.5% and help close a $30 million shortfall in the school’s operating budget for fiscal year 2026 — a gap widened by recent federal actions, the university says.
The cuts were announced in a Sept. 22 letter signed by University President Christina H. Paxson, Provost Francis J. Doyle III, and Sarah Latham, the school’s executive vice president for finance and administration.
Brian Clark, a university spokesperson, wrote in an email Friday that “the reason for these financial measures [is] very clear: the need to offset expected losses in Brown’s budget from ongoing federal impacts. Those impacts include expected declines in federal research funding, the persisting threat of deep cuts to indirect cost reimbursements for research grants to higher education, and other federal policy changes will affect tuition revenue.”
An Aug. 5 announcement sketched a less grim picture for university finances with substantial layoffs and research cuts seemingly avoided. The announcement came six days after the university dispelled heavy and expected declines from cancelled research funding earlier in the year through an agreement with the federal government. The school’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, including more than $50 million owed on active NIH grants, was restored in exchange for the Ivy League school agreeing to certain ideological conditions, such as codifying binary definitions of gender in university athletics and housing and promising to end, in the Trump administration’s words, “unlawful DEI goals.”
University leaders also determined that the impacts of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill will not be as severe as first forecasted: “[T]he tax Brown pays on net investment income (primarily through the endowment) will remain at 1.4%, while previous versions of the federal bill proposed significantly higher rates,” the August announcement reads. “In addition, courts have blocked federal attempts to limit indirect cost reimbursements to 15% for research grants to higher education institutions for now.”
But the improved federal outlook did not convince university leadership that all is well. After borrowing a combined $800 million in April and July as a way to brace for potential federal cuts, the school is reassessing how much debt it needs. Visa delays for international students, possible changes to Pell Grants, and more generalized cuts to research funding led Brown to slash expenses amid fears of a mounting deficit in upcoming years.
The university already approved significant cuts in May while crafting its fiscal year 2026 budget. The fine print of the university’s plan, outlined in leadership’s Sept. 22 letter, splits the $30 million savings evenly, with $15 million in cuts to unit and department budgets and the remaining $15 million from several of the university’s central administrative actions.
Unit heads had to “identify reductions that were not just temporary, but truly resulted in long-term (i.e., structural) cost savings,” the Sept. 22 letter reads, adding that the process and the decisions involved “were not easy” but sought to remain in line with the university’s core mission of academics and research.
Paxson and her colleagues wrote in their letter that affected employees began to be notified last week. The positions affected were all staff, not faculty, across academic and administrative departments on campus. Affected employees will receive severance packages and outplacement services, according to the letter.
“We are committed to ensuring that this transition will be handled with empathy and care, and ensuring that each person is supported and treated respectfully throughout the process,” Paxson and colleagues wrote.
Beyond personnel, some of the spending categories targeted money spent on travel vendors and consultants, and discretionary purchases. Reductions “varied from unit to unit” and university officials considered’ academic activities (and revenue) when considering individual reduction goals.
As for what the university calls “central actions,” which comprises the remainder of the $15 million in savings, that includes consolidating health benefits to one insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and “monetizing” some of the school’s real estate holdings on College Hill and in the Jewelry District in Providence, according to the Aug. 5 announcement. It also prescribes a pause on net-zero spending meant to reduce carbon emissions and “small reductions” to IT and facilities spending.
ACLU attacks Brown’s “previous capitulation”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island (ACLU), meanwhile, is asking Paxson and the university to “forcefully and publicly reject” a new “compact” sent by President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this week to nine universities.
The compact threatens to stir up seemingly settled funding issues and asks the universities to agree to certain conditions to secure future access to things like student loans, federal contracts, research grants, approval of student visas, and “preferential treatment under the tax code.”
The compact comprises 10 sections, and requests universities act on issues relating to equality in admissions, the “marketplace of ideas,” nondiscrimination in faculty hiring, finances, and “foreign entanglements.”
The section on the marketplace of ideas and civil discourse asks universities to promise to change or eliminate “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” and notes that “academic freedom is not absolute.” It also instructs institutions to use “lawful force if necessary” to squash demonstrations, protests, “obstruction of access to parts of campus based on students’ race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.”
The ACLU of Rhode Island’s letter, sent by its executive director Steven Brown to the university on Friday, calls the compact “yet another troubling attempt” by the Trump administration to restrict higher education.
“Among other things, agreeing to this compact would restrict university employees from speaking out on political issues, limit the enrollment of foreign students, and once again require the university to essentially deny the existence of transgender students,” Brown wrote. “The compact makes no serious attempt to hide its real intent.”
Brown also took aim at the university’s July agreement and noted the fierce pushback it encountered from the ACLU and other advocates, who decried what they described as the school’s uptake of the Trump administration’s “narrow, discriminatory definition of sex.”
“We remain hopeful that such a mistake will not be repeated,” Brown wrote. “Just as importantly, we think it is crucial that you immediately, publicly, and unequivocally denounce this blatant attempt to destroy academic freedom at universities. We believe that your university’s previous capitulation has simply empowered and emboldened the Trump administration to demand more.”
Clark, the university’s spokesperson, did not immediately respond to questions about the compact on Friday.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
