Brown University strikes $50M deal with Trump administration over allegations of campus antisemitism

The school will also renew partnerships with Israeli academics, encourage Jewish day school students to apply, and hire an outside organization to conduct a campus survey on the climate for Jewish students.

By Grace Gilson, JTA

Brown University announced Wednesday it had struck a $50 million dollar deal with the Trump administration to regain its federal research funding after losing it last spring over campus antisemitism.

The announcement comes one week after Columbia University agreed to a $221 million settlement with the Trump administration over funding canceled in March over antisemitism.

A deal with Harvard University reportedly looms. (The University of Pennsylvania, penalized over its inclusion of transgender student athletes, recently reached its own deal.)

As part of the agreement with the federal government, Brown will pay $50 million over 10 years to state workforce development organizations that comply with anti-discrimination laws, and “take steps to improve the campus climate for Jewish students and combat anti-Semitism,” according to the Trump administration.

As part of that effort, the school will renew partnerships with Israeli academics, encourage Jewish day school students to apply, and hire an outside organization — chosen jointly by Brown and the government — to conduct a campus survey on the climate for Jewish students, according to Brown University’s announcement.

While the initial freeze of $500 million in the school’s federal funding in April was ostensibly part of an effort to combat campus antisemitism, the deal struck by the school also requires it to adopt “biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female,’” and not perform “gender reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribe them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.” Brown has a medical school and a hospital.

The university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said in a letter to the Brown community that the school had not agreed to any incursions of academic freedom.

“Beyond the financial stresses of terminated and unpaid research grants and contracts, we have observed a growing push for government intrusion into the fundamental academic operations of colleges and universities, and with the stated purpose of compelling a commitment to comply with laws focused on prohibitions against antisemitism and discrimination,” she wrote, adding, “We applaud the agreement’s unequivocal assertion that the agreement does not give the government the ‘authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.’”