WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is planning to halt more than half a billion dollars in contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, adding to a list of Ivy League colleges that have had their federal money threatened as a result of their responses to antisemitism, a White House official said Thursday.
Nearly $510 million in federal contracts and grants are on the line, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In an email Thursday to campus leaders, Brown Provost Frank Doyle said the university was aware of “troubling rumors” about government action on its research money. “At this moment, we have no information to substantiate any of these rumors,” Doyle said.
Brown would be the fifth Ivy League college targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration, which is using federal money to enforce its agenda at colleges. Dozens of universities — including every Ivy League school except Penn and Dartmouth — are facing federal investigations into antisemitism following a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last year.
Columbia University was the first one targeted, losing $400 million in federal money with threats to terminate more if it didn’t make the campus safer for Jewish students. The school agreed to several demands from the government last month, including an overhaul of student discipline rules and a review of the school’s Middle East studies department.
The government later suspended about $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania over a transgender swimmer who previously competed for the school. On Monday, a federal antisemitism task force said it was reviewing almost $9 billion in federal grants and contracts at Harvard University amid an investigation into campus antisemitism.
And on Tuesday, Princeton University said the administration had halted dozens of its research grants.
The pressure has created a dilemma for U.S. colleges, which rely on federal research funding as a major source of revenue.
Trump’s administration has promised a more aggressive approach against campus antisemitism, accusing former President Joe Biden of letting schools off the hook. It has opened new investigations at colleges and detained and deported several foreign students with ties to pro-Palestinian protests. An incoming assistant professor of medicine at Brown was deported to Lebanon last month for having “openly admitted” to supporting a Hezbollah leader and attending his funeral, the Department of Homeland Security said.
During last school year’s campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war, Brown stood out for a deal it struck with student activists. In exchange for the students’ dismantling an encampment, the university committed to having its governing board vote on whether to divest from companies that protesters said were facilitating Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
The Corporation of Brown rejected the divestment proposal.
