Article content
(Bloomberg) — Princeton University said US government agencies have frozen several dozen research grants as President Donald Trump escalates his fight with elite American colleges.
Article content
The “full rationale” for the suspension isn’t clear, Princeton President Chris Eisgruber said in an email to the university community, but he affirmed its intention to combat antisemitism, which the White House has used as a cudgel to force change at other schools including Columbia and Harvard universities.
Article content
“We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism,” Eisgruber said. “Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this university.” The school said it received notifications from agencies including the Department of Energy, NASA and the Defense Department.
Princeton, a science powerhouse where faculty have won Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry in recent years, was on a list of 60 colleges that the Education Department warned in March could face penalties pending investigations into their handling of allegations of antisemitism. The school, which had a $33.4 billion endowment as of June, received $455.8 million in government grants and contacts in 2024, according to its latest Report of the Treasurer.
On Monday, the Trump administration said it would scrutinize billions of dollars of federal funding at Harvard University. The review includes $8.7 billion in grants and $255.6 million in contracts, according to a statement from agencies including the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Article content
The administration in March froze $400 million in funding at Columbia, days after warning the school that it was reviewing the money as part of investigations into potential civil-rights violations. President Donald Trump has warned that he would stop “all federal funding” for any college or school that allows “illegal protests” and threatened to imprison or deport foreign students.
In recent weeks several students or former students have been detained by immigration agents, including Mahmoud Khalil, who led anti-Israel protests at Columbia, and Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, from Turkey, who was snatched off the street by plainclothes officers and has been sent to a facility in Louisiana.
Columbia has agreed to a list of demands to restore federal funding, including a ban on masks, expanded campus police powers and a review of its Middle East, South Asian and African studies department. That infuriated some faculty who saw it as capitulation. Interim President Katrina Armstrong, meanwhile, abruptly stepped down last week to return to her role as chief executive officer of Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, days after media reports that she downplayed the changes in a zoom meeting with faculty.
—With assistance from Sarah McGregor.
(Updates with government departments in third paragraph.)
Share this article in your social network
