Trump Administration Set to Pause $510 Million for Brown University

The Trump administration intends to block $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown University, expanding its campaign to hold universities accountable for what it says is relentless antisemitism on campus, according to two White House officials familiar with the plans.

Brown became the fifth university known to face a potentially dire loss of federal funding, leaving other universities that the administration has targeted wondering when their turn might come.

If the administration pauses $510 million, even over a period of years, the consequences for Brown could be significant. In its 2024 fiscal year, Brown received about $184 million through federal grants and contracts.

In an email to campus leaders on Thursday, Brown’s provost, Frank Doyle, said the university was aware of “troubling rumors emerging about federal action on Brown research grants.” But he said that the university had “no information to substantiate any of these rumors.”

The Daily Caller was the first to report the pause.

The newly appointed secretary of education, Linda McMahon, has been explicit about the administration’s focus on elite universities, which Mr. Trump has criticized as bastions of left-wing thought. She has said that taxpayer support is a “privilege” that can be withdrawn if universities do not adhere to civil rights law.

Like many of its Ivy League peers, Brown was the site of clashes over the war in Gaza. But it was also one of a small number of universities that made deals with students to end their protest encampments in the spring, agreements that came under criticism for being too soft on students.

Brown became one of only a handful of universities to agree to a board vote on divesting from Israel. The Brown Corporation, the school’s governing board, ultimately voted against divestment, saying it held no direct investments in companies protesters had named as having ties to Israel.

After the Trump administration threatened to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants and contracts from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania last month, Brown was one of the few universities that released a statement in response, saying that it would not compromise on academic freedom.

In the statement, Christina H. Paxson, the president of Brown, said that some of Mr. Trump’s demands “raise new and previously unthinkable questions about the future of academic freedom and self-governance.” She said that if Brown’s essential academic and operational functions were threatened, the university “would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms.”

Recently, Brown has also been considering whether to adopt a new policy that would limit statements issued by the university on political and social issues that are “unrelated to its mission.” It would join a number of other schools that have moved to adopt “neutrality” policies as they face pressure over their response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Before the Trump administration targeted Princeton University for cuts on Tuesday, its president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, had also been vocal about the federal attack on colleges. He called the targeting of Columbia “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”

The government’s campaign against specific universities began in February, when a new federal task force against antisemitism issued a list of 10 universities that it planned to investigate. The administration cited claims that the schools may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from discrimination during pro-Palestinian protests on campuses in 2023 and 2024.

The education department’s office for civil rights then expanded the list to 60 colleges, including both private and public universities.

Columbia became the first university affected when the government canceled $400 million in federal funding on March 7. Officials at the school, which had some of the most disruptive protests, were left scrambling to find a way to restore it. In the following weeks, the Trump administration announced actions against three more universities. That included a pause of $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania; a review of roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard and its affiliates, including its teaching hospitals; and the suspension of dozens of grants to Princeton.

Universities have said the loss of funding would compromise the United States’ leadership in scientific, medical and technological research.