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The University is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights regarding Brown’s compliance with Title VI, according to a Thursday night email from Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 and Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of protected classes, including race, color and national origin.
The HHS originally launched an investigation in February into the Warren Alpert Medical School over Brown’s response to May 2024 pro-Palestine commencement protests, which they claimed saw antisemitic incidents. The inquiry has now been expanded to include the entire University and the time period from Oct. 7, 2023 to now, according to Carey and Guterl.
The investigation was launched in accordance with Trump’s executive order to “combat antisemitism,” which explicitly referenced university campuses.
“We are confident that our actions in response to the May 2024 protest — which occurred outside the church where the medical school ceremony was held and on an adjacent public sidewalk — were in compliance with Title VI,” the Thursday email reads.
This latest move comes as the Trump administration plans to freeze $510 million in federal funding to Brown, citing alleged antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a White House official told The Herald.
HHS will be collecting information and conducting interviews with community members over the coming weeks, Carey and Guterl wrote.
An HHS spokesperson previously told The Herald that the agency “is partnering with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior.”
“HHS strongly condemns antisemitic harassment against Jewish students on college campuses,” they added.
“The University continues to act in good faith as a partner against antisemitism, for which we are grateful,” Daniel Solomon ‘26, chair of the Student Organizing Committee on Antisemitism, wrote in an email to The Herald. “The administration has acknowledged that antisemitism persists on Brown’s campus and has been proactively working to combat it.”
In a faculty town hall on Tuesday, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 criticized Columbia’s compliance with the Trump administration’s requests following a $400 million funding cut.
At the town hall, University officials highlighted their commitment to academic freedom and abiding to the law, but 10 attendees said administrators were vague about whether or not Brown would comply with potential federal demands.
Paxson articulated the University’s commitment to protecting academic freedom and the “spirit of free inquiry” in a March 20 letter to the campus community. If the University faced actions that hindered its academic and operational capabilities, Paxson wrote, Brown “would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms,”
Since late February, at least nine grants to Brown researchers from the National Institutes of Health, totalling over $8 million, have been terminated. It is unclear if these cuts are included in the forthcoming $510 million freeze of Brown’s federal funds. The planned funding cuts would target NIH grants, The Wall Street Journal and Science reported.
In response to questions about the NIH grant cuts, an HHS spokesperson wrote to The Herald that they “will not tolerate taxpayer-funded institutions that fail to uphold their duty to safeguard students from harassment.”
But funding threats are not the only federal action that has rocked Brown’s campus in recent days.
Over the past week, at least one Brown student and a “small number” of recent graduates have had their visas revoked, according to an email Thursday afternoon from the Office of International Student and Scholar Services. The University did not receive direct communication from relevant federal agencies about these revocations, and did not share additional information about the rationale of the cancellations.
A petition, titled “Defend Academic Freedom at Brown University,” has recently been circulated among students, faculty and community members, with the signatories saying they stand with the University “against the Trump administration’s unprecedented and politically motivated attacks on institutions of higher education in the United States.”
A letter sent to Brown on Tuesday and publicly released Thursday from Congressional Republicans alleged that tuition and financial aid practices in the Ivy League may be in violation of federal antitrust laws. The letter, which was sent in similar iterations to the other seven Ivy League universities, requested that Brown provide documents relating to financial aid and pricing practices, with a deadline of April 22.
University Spokesperson Brian Clark did not specify whether the University would produce the documents requested by the letter when asked by The Herald.
Follow The Herald’s latest coverage on how the Trump administration is impacting Brown here.
Elise Haulund is a science & research editor and sophomore from Redondo Beach, CA. Concentrating in English and biology, she has a passion for exploring the intersection between STEM and the humanities. Outside of writing, researching and editing, she enjoys ballet-dancing, cafe-hopping and bullet-journaling.
Sophia Wotman is a University news editor covering activism and affinity & identity. She is a junior from Long Island, New York concentrating in Political Science with a focus on women’s rights. She is a jazz trumpet player, and often performs on campus and around Providence.
