Trump vs the Ivory Tower: Antisemitism, Wokeness, and the new Campus War

The Trump administration escalated its campaign against American universitiesby preparing to pull $510 million in federal grants from Brown University, while also laying out demands Harvard must meet to avoid losing billions in government dollars.

Mr Trump is freezing National Institutes of Health grants to Brown while it investigates the school’s handling of antisemitism. University officials said they had not yet been formally notified, but the school was among dozens warned last month that enforcement actions could be coming as the administration seeks to crack down on academic institutions.

In an email to campus leaders on Thursday shared by a Brown University spokesperson, the school’s provost, Frank Doyle, said the university was aware of “troubling rumors emerging about federal action on Brown research grants” but added it had “no information to substantiate any of these rumors”.

“We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now,” he added. Last month, the Trump administration canceled $400m in federal funding for Columbia University, which had been the epicenter of pro-Palestinian campus protests.

Princeton University said on Tuesday the US government froze several dozen research grants to the school, and $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University is under review.

The Trump administration has shown that while supporting Palestine is perfectly legal, even though it goes against US foreign policy, it will not tolerate the widespread antisemitism in the pro-Palestine/Hamas movement. And it will certainly not continue giving grants to schools that tolerate or encourage antisemitism.