Columbia University is still trying to get $400 million in federal money returned after its interim president was caught speaking out of both sides of her mouth. Today, the Trump administration announced another freeze on substantially more money at Cornell and Northwestern.
The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools, two administration officials said.
Back in February the Trump administration sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter indicating that discrimination based on race was illegal and would not be tolerated, even in the form of DEI. Here’s a bit of what the letter said.
In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families. These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia. For example, colleges, universities, and K-12 schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming. In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities.
Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them—particularly during the last four years—under the banner of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (“DEI”), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline. But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal.
About a month later, the administration sent letters notifying 60 colleges and universities that the Department of Education was launching Title VI investigations aimed at them.
Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 institutions of higher education warning them of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities. The letters are addressed to all U.S. universities that are presently under investigation for Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
“The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year.
Both Cornell and Northwestern were on that list of notified schools. As with Columbia, the action to withhold federal funds was in connection with those investigations.
“The money was frozen in connection with several ongoing, credible, and concerning Title VI investigations,” a Trump admin official told Fox News.
A billion dollars is a lot of money but some of these schools have large endowments. Last week, former President Obama is encouraging them not to give in to the demands made by the Trump administration.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”
“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”
Cornell has an endowment just shy of $11 billion and Norwestern has one of just over $14 billion. So in theory, both schools should be able to afford the losses, at least in the short term. However, endowments aren’t simply a pot of money with no strings attached. Often they are designated by their donors for specific purposes.
…the stakes are high, and large portions of endowments are often earmarked for specific causes that make dipping into them as a rainy-day fund difficult. Johns Hopkins, for example, has a significant endowment, but still laid off 2,000 workers in the wake of federal cuts.
Many universities have seemed to be at a loss about what to do. But some presidents, including those at Brown and Princeton, which have also been told they will have millions in federal grants canceled, have said that they would fight back against the administration, sometimes framing it as a fight for academic freedom.
So we may have to wait a few days to see how Cornell and Northwestern respond. They could agree with whatever demands the administration makes, like Cornell did, in hopes of getting the funds restored. Alternatively, they could accept the loss and rely on their endowments to carry them forward, essentially telling the Trump administration to pound sand. No doubt there are meetings being held as we speak to discuss the options.
