After auditing $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard University, cutting $500 million from Brown University, $400 million from Columbia University and $210 million to Princeton University over alleged mishandling of Jew-hatred on campus, the Trump administration has reportedly frozen $1 billion in federal funding at Cornell University and $790 million at Northwestern University, multiple publications reported.
The White House cited civil rights violations at the New York and Illinois private schools, reportedly. The Trump administration has not commented on the reports. Cornell told Fox News that it learned about the freeze from news reports but hadn’t heard from the administration.
The New York Times reported that two Trump administration officials confirmed that the funding was frozen from Cornell and Northwestern and that the paused monies relate to funding from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services.
The American Jewish Committee stated on Tuesday that universities must take action to prevent Jew-hatred on campus, but “the broad, sweeping and devastating cuts in federal funding that a growing number of American research universities have been subjected to in recent weeks, under the auspices of combating antisemitism, will damage America’s standing as a center of innovation and research excellence.”
“Funding cuts or freezes are essential tools of last resort when addressing discrimination in federally funded programs,” the AJC stated.
“All efforts to remedy problems in educational institutions—including those to rectify antisemitism—must be plainly understood, publicly transparent and specifically targeted to address the problem, and must not curtail the autonomy and academic freedom of higher education institutions that allow them to pursue their essential work,” it added.
As recently as March 31, the U.S. National Science Foundation, an independent U.S. federal agency, stated that researchers at Northwestern and Cornell, supported by the NSF, “used groundbreaking methods to create a revolutionary chainmail-like polymer that could be the future of body armor.”
Both schools were among 60 that the U.S. Education Department notified on March 10 that they could face consequences if they fail to meet their obligations, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to protect Jewish students from harassment.
