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The Trump administration plans to halt $510 million of federal funding to Brown over alleged antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a White House official told The Herald. This would make Brown the fifth Ivy League university to face federal funding freezes or cuts.
Brown did not provide more information about the federal funding freeze.
“We have no information to substantiate what’s being reported,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
The reason for the planned cut was not made immediately clear by the White House official.
In March, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 outlined how the University would respond to federal attacks on its academic freedom. Brown “would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms,” Paxson wrote in a letter to the community.
At last month’s faculty meeting, Paxson also shared some of the University’s contingency plans if its funding is severely impacted. The plans include layoffs and potentially withdrawing from Brown’s investment in the William A. and Ami Kuan Danoff Life Sciences Laboratories. The University’s planned seven-story laboratory is currently under construction in the Jewelry District.
Brown is also currently facing a $46 million structural budget deficit due to its efforts to transition from a liberal arts institution to a leading research institution. The planned $510 million federal funding threat would be over 10 times the size of the deficit.
The University’s endowment stands at around $7.2 billion, as of June 2024. The endowment is the smallest among all Ivy League institutions.
Brown, along with 59 other universities, was notified by the U.S. Department of Education last month of potential “enforcement actions” if they failed to “protect Jewish students on campus.”
In a Thursday statement sent to The Herald, members of the Corporation and leaders of Brown-RISD Hillel wrote that the University is committed to religious freedom and supporting Jewish life on campus.
“Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives,” the statement wrote. “While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership and the resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
The statement was signed by Brown’s Chancellor and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan ’81 P’14 P’19 and former chancellor and current trustee Samuel Mencoff ’78, among others. The executive director of Brown-RISD Hillel, Rabbi Josh Bolton, also signed onto the statement.
The University has been a site of frequent pro-Palestine demonstrations over the past year and a half. In late 2023, 61 students were arrested across two separate sit-ins calling for Brown to divest its endowment from companies affiliated with Israel. In 2024, the University saw a weeklong encampment, an eight-day hunger strike and other protests making similar demands.
Student protestors agreed to dismantle the encampment in exchange for the opportunity to present their divestment proposal to the Corporation. The Corporation rejected the proposal in October.
In January, President Trump signed an executive order aiming to end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Following that, the Department of Education released a letter threatening to cut federal funding for schools that fail to eliminate “illegal” race-conscious programs.
Amid federal threats to DEI, Brown appointed Matthew Guterl as its new vice president for diversity and inclusion in February. The University’s Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity was also renamed the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in March.
The University has hired two lobbying firms — AxAdvocacy Government Relations and Cornerstone Government Affairs — to lobby Congress and the Trump administration on its behalf. The firms will lobby for Brown’s research and issues related to education and taxation.
This is the first time the University has enlisted external lobbying firms since at least 2002, according to public filings. Lobbyists from AxAdvocacy have significant affiliations with the Republican Party, while lobbyists from Cornerstone have a mixture of backgrounds on both sides of the aisle.
The $510 million freeze would exceed the $400 million funding cut at Columbia in early March. The cancellation of grants and contracts at Columbia came as a result of its alleged inaction in protecting Jewish students from continued harassment and antisemitism following protests last year.
Conceding to many of the Trump administration’s stipulations to restore funding, the university implemented several measures — including banning some masks on campus and putting one of its departments under non-faculty control. Days later, amid backlash from faculty and students, the university’s interim president abruptly resigned.
Harvard’s federal funding is also currently under review as part of an investigation by the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Dozens of grants to Princeton have been suspended, and funding at Penn has been cut due to their policies surrounding transgender athletes.
Cate Latimer and Claire Song contributed reporting
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to include the Trump administration's reason for the funding freeze.
Roma Shah is a senior staff writer covering University Hall and higher education. She's a freshman from Morgan Hill, CA and studies Neuroscience. In her free time, she can be found doing puzzles, hiking or curled up with a book.
