RHODE ISLAND – Brown University, besieged by the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the country’s most elite schools, struck a deal with the government on July 30, becoming the third Ivy League university in a month to reach an agreement with the White House.
The agreement, a copy of which Brown made public, calls for the university to make US$50 million (S$64 million) in payments to state workforce development programmes over a decade and requires Brown to comply with the Trump administration’s vision on matters like transgender athletes and “merit-based” admissions policies.
The university, which is in Providence, Rhode Island, secured a pledge from the government that the deal would not be used “to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech”. The Trump administration is also required to restore millions of dollars in federal research funding that it had blocked in recent months, and Brown avoided the naming of an independent monitor to oversee the deal.
Government officials had accused the school of harbouring anti-Semitism after it became the site of pro-Palestinian protests over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Brown denied any wrongdoing and hoped that the agreement would end months of turmoil. But it also opened the school to charges that it had capitulated to the Trump administration.
In an open letter on July 30, Brown’s president, Ms Christina H. Paxson, said the agreement “preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation, and it enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty”.
The Trump administration depicted the deal as an ideological victory. In a statement on July 30, Education Secretary Linda McMahon argued that the deal would be part of a “lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come”.
“The Trump administration is successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions,” Mrs McMahon said.
The government had previously reached agreements with the University of Pennsylvania and, last week, Columbia University. White House officials are negotiating with Harvard University and representatives of other schools that have been similarly squeezed by President Donald Trump’s tactic of tying hundreds of millions of dollars – or more – in research funding to a school’s acquiescence to government demands.
Brown has been among the most affected since administration officials said in April that they intended to block US$510 million in funding from flowing to the school. The university never brought a court challenge, but for months leading up to July 30’s deal, Ms Paxson and other university leaders sounded increasingly dire warnings about Brown’s financial standing. Last week, the university disclosed that it had borrowed US$500 million, a loan that came after it had already secured US$300 million.
But Ms Paxson, like other university leaders, faced thorny debates about whether to negotiate with the White House. Many in academia have sharply criticised the government’s tactics, likening them to measures pursued by authoritarians around the world.
Ms Paxson appeared to sense the prospect of a backlash, even as she promoted the agreement, devoting more than 350 words of her letter to explain why Brown had elected to negotiate.
“I have consistently and publicly asserted Brown’s commitment to meeting its obligations to follow the law, as well as our willingness to understand any valid concerns the government may have about the ways in which the university fulfills those legal obligations,” Ms Paxson wrote. “I stated that Brown should uphold its ethical and legal obligations while also steadfastly defending academic freedom and freedom of expression, for both the university as an institution and for individual members of our community.”
The agreement, she said, allows Brown to “meet those dual obligations.”
Brown’s agreement with the government emerged one week after Columbia struck its deal with the Trump administration. The agreements, though similar in many respects, were not exact replicas.
The Brown, Columbia and Penn agreements offer the White House templates for future talks with schools like Harvard, which has been negotiating with the government for more than a month. The agreements, though, also show universities where the White House might budge.
The New York Times reported this week that Harvard was skeptical of agreeing to a Columbia-like monitor. The university had concerns that such a stipulation may infringe on its academic freedom. Harvard officials have also been reluctant to make a settlement payment directly to the government. But the university has signaled a willingness to spend up to US$500 million in connection with a settlement.
Many in Trump’s political coalition scorned Brown for its approach to the protests that roiled campuses in 2024. As part of a deal with demonstrators, Brown became one of the only universities that agreed to consider demands from pro-Palestinian students who wanted divestment from Israel.
Although the university’s governing board ultimately voted against taking that step, the university’s willingness to bargain with protesters infuriated many conservatives.
Before her school came under such direct pressure from the White House, Ms Paxson was more vocal than many higher education leaders about the Trump administration’s tactics against prominent universities. In March, she said that the administration’s “demands raise new and previously unthinkable questions about the future of academic freedom and self-governance for those that are committed to continuing to serve this country as leading research institutions.”
At the time, she vowed that if Brown faced a confrontation “directly impacting our ability to perform essential academic and operational functions, we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms, and true to our values, we would do so with integrity and respect”.
On Jully 30, she said that the agreement with the White House “evolved as Brown was engaged in ongoing interactions with the government relating to two federal agency reviews”; But, she also said, Brown had never “been informed of any finding that the university violated any law.”
Mr J. Timmons Roberts, an environmental studies professor at Brown, said he was relieved that the settlement seemed less onerous than Columbia’s.
“This feels like mostly things that Brown had to do anyway, and had already said it was going to do,” said Mr Roberts, who was among hundreds of faculty members who had signed a petition urging Brown to resist the Trump administration’s demands. “It seems that Brown has navigated this process in a way that maintains its core mission”.
And Mr Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said he liked that the money would go toward workforce projects, not the federal government.
Nonetheless, he said he remained disturbed that universities had been put in a position of negotiating deals with the government.
“We really look forward to engaging with this administration on matters of policy,” he said. “But this isn’t policy. This is simple extortion and dealmaking, which has no place in a democracy.” NYTIMES
