By Kritika Agarwal
Earlier this month, Princeton University President and AAU Board Chair Christopher Eisgruber sent a message to the Princeton campus community noting that multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Department of Defense, were suspending “several dozen” grants to the university. Eisgruber said that the “full rationale for this action is not yet clear.”
In his message, Eisgruber wrote: “Princeton University will comply with the law. We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism. Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this university.”
Princeton is one of five prominent research universities whose federal grants and contracts the Trump administration has either threatened to cancel, or has already canceled or paused, over allegations of wrongdoing in other parts of campus life. Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania have all been targeted for grant cancellations and reviews by the administration.
The news about Princeton accompanied an announcement by the Trump administration that the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. General Services Administration has begun a “comprehensive review of federal contracts and grants at Harvard University and its affiliates” as “part of the ongoing efforts of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.” Per the announcement, “The Task Force will review the more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates and the Federal Government” and “the more than $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates.”
The task force later sent a letter to Harvard laying out conditions for the university to meet in order to avoid losing federal funding. Among other things, the letter demands that the university eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; ban masks at campus protests; and fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials.
The White House also told reporters on April 3 that the administration is considering freezing $510 million in grants and contracts at Brown University. The university said that it “had no information to substantiate this.”
Last month, the Trump administration targeted Columbia University with approximately $400 million in federal grant and contract cancellations, citing what the administration alleged was Columbia’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The administration sent a letter asking the university to comply with a list of demands “as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.” The university responded by detailing a number of actions it is taking in response. Education Secretary Linda McMahon later said that the university was “on the right track” toward negotiations to unfreeze the funds.
Last month, multiple news outlets also reported that the Trump administration was canceling $175 million in federal grants and contracts awarded to the University of Pennsylvania due to the participation of a transgender athlete on the university’s swimming team in 2022. In an update on the situation last month, Penn President J. Larry Jameson noted that seven different schools at the university had “received stop work orders … on federally contracted research, amounting to approximately $175M.” Jameson noted that the university was “actively pursuing multiple avenues to understand and address these funding terminations, freezes, and slowdowns” and reiterated that the university has always followed NCAA rules regarding the participation of transgender athletes on college teams.
As AAU President Barbara R. Snyder said in a statement last month on the rescission of funding from Columbia University, “It is absolutely critical to root out antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.” But, as she noted, “that is not the issue here.” Cuts in federal funding, she said, do “nothing to end discrimination” and instead hurt university students getting their college degree and the American people by damaging the ability of university researchers to perform groundbreaking medical and scientific research. “Actions such as this will only reduce America’s greatness in the global race for scientific and technological dominance. It is an unforced error and a gift to our potential adversaries,” she said.
Kritika Agarwal is senior editorial officer at AAU.