In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.
The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.
“Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president, Michael Kotlikoff, wrote on 31 March.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze more than $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.
The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Cornell officials said that they were aware of “media reports” suggesting the federal government was freezing $1bn in federal grants.
“While we have not received information that would confirm this figure, earlier today Cornell received more than 75 stop work orders from the Department of Defense related to research that is profoundly significant to American national defense, cybersecurity, and health.”
Cornell officials said the affected grants “include research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research”.
Northwestern also said it was aware of media reports about the funding freeze but had not received any official notification from the government and that it had cooperated in the investigation.
“Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. This type of research is now in jeopardy,” a Northwestern spokesperson said.
In Cornell’s Tuesday night statement, Kotlikoff and other university leaders defended the school as having “worked diligently to create an environment where all individuals and viewpoints are protected and respected”, and said they were “actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions”.
“We cannot let our caution overtake our purpose,” Kotlikoff wrote in the New York Times piece. “Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy.”
Trump has attempted to crack down on pro-Palestinian campus protests against US ally Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza, which has caused a humanitarian crisis in the territory following a deadly October 2023 attack by Hamas.
The US president has called the protesters antisemitic, has labeled them as sympathetic to Hamas and foreign policy threats.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas. Human rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the crackdown by the Trump administration.
In March, the Trump administration suspended $175m in funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its transgender sports policies.
In March, the Trump administration canceled $400m in funding for Columbia University, the epicenter of last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Columbia sparked condemnation from academics and free speech groups after agreeing to significant changes Trump’s administration demanded, including putting its Middle Eastern studies department under new administrative supervision, banning face masks on campus, giving campus security officers power to remove or arrest people and expanding “intellectual diversity” by staffing up its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s former president, described the situation as “an authoritarian takeover”.
