Trump administration reaches $50 million deal with Brown University to restore funding

By Betsy Klein and Ethan Schenker, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration has reached a multimillion-dollar agreement with Brown University to restore federal funding – its second major deal with an elite university after last week’s $221 million settlement with Columbia University.

In return for Brown agreeing to several measures aimed at dismantling certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the federal government will reinstate all frozen grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, restore the school’s eligibility for future funding, and close all pending investigations into the university, a White House official said.

But Brown, which was under financial strain even before the Trump administration began slashing research funding at a number of higher education institutions, was largely able to escape the nine-figure settlements the White House reached with Columbia and is seeking with Harvard University.

Under the deal announced Wednesday, the Providence-based school will pay $50 million in grants over 10 years to Rhode Island workforce development organizations, according to the White House official and Brown President Christina Paxson.

Brown is not making “any payments or fines to the federal government,” Paxson said in a letter to the university community.

That’s different from Columbia’s deal, under which the school will pay $200 million to the US Treasury over three years and an additional $21 million to settle US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigations.

Paxson touted the deal as a voluntary agreement that preserves Brown’s mission, noting that it does not give the government the “authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.” And supporting workforce development organizations, she said, is “aligned with our service and community engagement mission.” Workforce development and career training programs have also been a priority for the Trump administration.

Under the terms of the deal, Brown has agreed to “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in admissions or university programming” and will provide the federal government access to relevant data on the matter, the White House official said. The school is also expected to adopt definitions of “male” and “female” from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year for “women’s sports, programming, facilities, and housing.” The school’s health facilities “will not perform gender reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribe them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones,” and the school “will take steps to improve the campus climate for Jewish students,” according to the official.

Paxson said that most of the agreement’s provisions codify existing policies and practices. However, in a nod to the pressure the school was facing, she added in her letter: “There are other aspects of the agreement that were not part of previous federal reviews of Brown policies but are priorities of the federal administration in resolving the funding freeze.”

She noted that Brown “had not previously been informed of a reason for the freeze of its federal research funding, and at no time has Brown been informed of any finding that the University violated any law.”

CNN reported earlier this year that more than half a billion dollars in grant money was on the line at Brown as the Trump administration reviewed the Ivy League university’s DEI policies and its response to alleged antisemitism on campus.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon heralded Wednesday’s deal as a move to “(reverse) the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions.”

White House officials had hoped Columbia’s deal would serve as a blueprint for other universities, pointing to Brown and Cornell University as schools on the cusp of agreements, CNN reported earlier this week.

At the same time, the Trump administration has launched investigations into Duke University, Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Law Journal.

The administration also remains engaged in lawsuits with Harvard, though The New York Times reported this week that the school is open to a potential half-billion-dollar settlement that could resolve ongoing legal battles.

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