The Trump administration plans to cut off more than a half billion dollars in federal funding to Brown University, White House officials reportedly told The Brown Daily Herald and several national news outlets on Thursday.
The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times are among the national news outlets reporting the administration plans to block roughly $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown, citing officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Brown has “no information to substantiate what’s being reported’’ about its federal funding, Brian E. Clark, a university spokesman, said in an email Friday to The Public’s Radio. He shared a message from Provost Frank Doyle to the Brown community in which Doyle referred to the reported federal funding cuts as “troubling rumors” and “unsubstantiated reports by online outlets.’’
“We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants,” Doyle said in the message, “but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Brown is the latest Ivy League college to be targeted for funding cuts by President Trump’s administration. The administration has been using federal money as leverage to force its agenda at colleges. Dozens of universities are now facing federal investigations into allegedly failing to reign in antisemitism following last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and programs designed to foster Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or DEI.
Brown has been the subject of “ongoing monitoring following a voluntary resolution agreement” last July with the federal Office of Civil Rights related to alleged antisemitism. The agreement “resolved an investigation into a complaint filed in January 2024,” Clark said in a March 12 email, in which Brown “denied that we violated Title VI when handling the matters alleged in the complaint but agreed to clarify and enhance existing policies and procedures related to the resolution of discrimination and harassment complaints.”
Brown students joined colleges across the country last year staging pro-Palestinan protests and “solidarity encampments.” Jewish students as well as faculty members have participated in the protests at Brown.
The presidents of colleges and universities targeted by the Trump administration have been mostly silent in response to the attacks. Columbia University, the first to be targeted, lost $400 million in federal money with threats of more funding cuts if it did not concede to the administration’s demands. Columbia agreed to several demands last month, but the funding has not been restored and the university’s president resigned.
The Trump administration has also targeted funding to the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Princeton.
One outspoken critic of the Trump administration attacks is the president of Wesleyan University. Known as an ardent defender of both Israel and freedom of speech, Michael Roth has criticized other college and university presidents for what he described to POLITICO and The New Yorker magazines as a cowardly and misguided attempt at “institutional neutrality.”
