Brown University Strikes Deal to Restore Funding

It is the third Ivy League institution to reach an agreement with the White House

- Alan Blinder, Michael C. Bender, Sharon Otterman and Anemona Hartocollis

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 programs 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 harboring 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, Dr. 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".