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    Trump administration demands $1bn from UCLA to restore federal funding

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    The Trump administration is seeking a $1bn settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said on Friday.The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.The Trump administration has suspended $584m in federal research funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and other agencies, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in a message to UCLA staff and students this week.Last week, the justice department notified the university that an investigation by the department’s civil right division had “concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” in violation of federal anti-discrimination law.“This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system”, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in a statement.UCLA is the first public university whose federal grants have been targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action. The Trump administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against private colleges.The new University of California president, James B Milliken, who oversees a university system of 10 campuses, six academic health centers and three affiliated national laboratories, confirmed on Friday that the university had received notice from the justice department and was reviewing it.“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission,” Milliken said. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.“Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the US economy, and protect our national security,” he added.UCLA recently reached a $6m settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university, arguing it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus.The university has said it is committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations. More

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      Trump signs action forcing universities and colleges to submit admissions data

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      Donald Trump signed an executive action on Thursday forcing colleges and universities to submit data to prove they do not consider race in admissions, as the White House intensifies its scrutiny of higher education institutions that receive federal funding.The Trump administration is accusing colleges of using personal statements and other proxies in order to consider race, despite a 2023 supreme court ruling reversing affirmative action, as part of its wider attack on diversity-, inclusion- and equality-related initiatives at American institutions.“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights,” the presidential memorandum reads, “the persistent lack of available data – paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.”In the memorandum, Trump directs the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to require that higher education institutions submit “the data necessary to verify that their admissions do not involve unlawful discrimination”. McMahon is to overhaul the US higher education database, expand the scope of required admissions reporting and increase accuracy checks to help provide additional “transparency”.In 2023, the conservative-majority US supreme court ruled against the use of affirmative action in admissions, drastically changing the way universities can ensure the diversity of the student body. It allowed only limited use, in that colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservative activists welcomed the ruling, arguing that affirmative action policies discriminate against white students. But it was heavily criticized by those who argue that race-conscious policies create more equal opportunities for students from marginalized groups, including students of color and those from low-income backgrounds, disadvantaged by historical discrimination in the higher education system, given the country’s history.The action appears to codify for all universities the recent settlement agreements the administration negotiated with Ivy League universities Brown and Columbia, restoring their federal research funding in return for the institutions adopting measures including the release of admissions data, with the institutions required to demonstrate that hiring and admissions are “merit-based” and not based on considerations of diversity and race.The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to an audit by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public. More

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      ‘Impossible to rebuild’: NIH scientists say Trump cuts will imperil life-saving research

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      Last week, the office of management and budget (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all outside funding for National Institutes of Health research this fiscal year, but reversed course later that day, leaving the scientific community in a state of whiplash. A senior official at the NIH who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was just the latest in a “multi-prong” approach by the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research.In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to significantly cut cancer research spending as well. Since January, the administration has been cancelling NIH grants, in some cases targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention.“It’s really, really bad at NIH right now,” said the official, who added that researchers working outside the NIH have been unaware of the severity of the situation until recently, even though they have also faced funding upheaval since the winter.“The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, substantially intervening inside NIH to bring it under political control,” the official said. “That’s what we saw this week with the OMB freeze on funding.”“I think the core of it is that they want to destroy universities, or at least turn them into rightwing ideological factories,” the official said, since the majority of the NIH’s grants are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions.In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech entitled The Universities Are the Enemy. The official said they were alarmed at how little universities are fighting back – many have settled with the administration, which has “gotten Columbia to completely knuckle under. One of America’s most significant universities and a place that is a worldwide magnet for talents. Same thing at Penn. Now they’re going after UCLA.”Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have also stayed on the sidelines, refusing to sufficiently resist Trump, the official said.If the administration does manage to freeze NIH funding, it will push to rescind the funds permanently using a rescission motion, the official said. This type of motion only requires a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, instead of the supermajority necessary to beat a filibuster. Republicans would have enough votes to “ram through these motions to effectively cut the budget without Democrats in Congress weighing in. It’s an ongoing disaster.”Researchers at the many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are starting to feel the gravity of the situation, said the official. Carole LaBonne, a biologist at Northwestern, said “university labs are hanging by a thread”, explaining that even though the OMB reversed its decision to freeze outside NIH funding, “the baseline reality is not much better”.Other recent changes at the NIH include allocating research grants all at once rather than over multiple years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions in cancer research funding also mean that only 4% of relevant grant applications will move forward. “This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating,” LaBonne said.The extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research is also negatively affecting scientists’ mental health. “I do not know any faculty who are not incredibly stressed right now, wondering how long they will be able to keep their labs going and if/when they will have to let laboratory staff go,” LaBonne said. “It also very hard to motivate oneself to write grants, a painstaking and time-intensive processes, when there is a 96% chance it will not be funded.”Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona, said: “The chaos at NIH is definitely freaking [faculty and students] out and wasting huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We were emailing about the latest pause, only to find it unpaused hours later.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe senior NIH official found last week’s events unsurprising, they said: “They’re throwing everything at the wall to stop NIH from spending. What struck me was that many of my colleagues at universities were like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re stopping grants.’ And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I hadn’t seen before, whereas a lot of us at NIH thought, ‘Oh, they just did another thing.’”Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. “Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We’re on the path to breaking them.”LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. “My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,” she said.Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, grassroots organizations and individual scientists, including those within the NIH, are finding ways to resist.The senior NIH official said they were most hopeful about grassroots organizers who are resisting the Trump administration openly, rather than relying on older strategies such as litigation and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote science communication, is encouraging scientists to get the word out about the importance of federal funding to their home towns.The Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 NIH staff, directly accused NIH director Jay Bhattacharya of “a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.” More

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      US universities’ settlements with Trump ‘will only fuel his authoritarian appetite’

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      With the Trump administration’s campaign to reshape US higher education in full swing, some top universities have agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle antisemitism claims; others may soon spend more and submit to major restrictions on their autonomy to avoid billions in funding cuts and other crippling measures.The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Brown University have reached settlements with the government in the past month, seeing millions in federal funding restored in exchange for adopting measures that advocates warn severely undermine their independence. Columbia also agreed to pay more than $220m to settle antisemitism allegations, including an employment discrimination claim that may qualify any Jewish employee who has allegedly experienced antisemitism to get a payout.The University of California, Los Angeles, also agreed last week to pay $6m to settle a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests – but that did not stop the Trump administration from citing “antisemitism and bias” to freeze more than $300m of the university’s funding.Harvard University is reportedly considering paying as much as half a billion dollars to restore billions in research funds and fend off further attacks by the government – even though the university’s president, Alan Gerber, has denied the reports.The settlements come amid a flurry of cuts, investigations and other measures designed to curtail the independence of universities that the Trump administration has described as “the enemy”.Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities says they mark “a watershed moment for American higher education” and will “further embolden the administration to use coercive tactics against other institutions”.“The weaponization of federal funds in an effort to enforce ideological conformity through the control of campus policies, the curriculum, research, and discourse inside and outside of the classroom poses a threat to the fundamental mission of US colleges and universities,” she said.UPenn, Columbia and Harvard did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for Brown said the agreement with the administration “preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation and enables us to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty”.The White House is reportedly negotiating with several other universities. About 60 institutions are under investigation over alleged antisemitism and several have had federal funding cut or threatened. Education advocates warn that with each settlement, more universities risk coming under attack.“When one university capitulates to Trump’s hostage-taking strategies it puts pressure on all institutions because it confirms that this strategy works,” said Isaac Kamola, a professor at Trinity College who studies conservative efforts to undermine higher education. “Every institution is now at risk.”Ripple effectColumbia, where pro-Palestinian students staged a 2024 protest encampment that was soon followed by dozens of others nationwide, was the first university to be targeted by the administration.When it reached a much-anticipated settlement after months of negotiations, the US education secretary, Linda McMahon, boasted that the deal would offer “a roadmap” for other universities. Columbia’s reforms “will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come”, she said.Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, called the settlement “a disaster” for “the independence of colleges and universities nationwide”. But he echoed McMahon’s prediction: “The settlement will only fuel Trump’s authoritarian appetite.”The deal sees Columbia submitting to the oversight of an independent monitor reporting to the government, and agreeing to review its Middle East curriculum and expand Israel and Jewish studies. That’s in addition to several measures the university had already taken, including the adoption of a controversial definition that conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel. Notably, the agreement does not preclude the government from issuing more demands in the future.Columbia also agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years, and $21m to settle a class-action lawsuit that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission described as the “largest such settlement” in two decades. That agreement follows a charge brought on behalf of “all Jewish employees” at Columbia, with the funds intended “to remedy alleged antisemitism harassment that may have been experienced by its employees”, the commission said. It added that a claims administrator would reach out to all “potential aggrieved individuals” with a confidential questionnaire to determine eligibility.A spokesperson for the commission said that all Jewish employees were entitled to part of the settlement “if they experienced discrimination, harassment, and/or retaliation” based on their Jewish or Israeli identity, and that they do not need to have previously filed a complaint to be considered. “What matters is their experience with antisemitism at Columbia,” the spokesperson said.Some of Columbia’s Jewish employees questioned the criteria.“Where is my antisemitism money?” James Schamus, a faculty member who previously denounced the university’s actions “in the name of Jewish safety” wrote in a post. He said that he suspected the payouts would be distributed not based on “Jewish-ness” as much as political considerations.But it is Columbia’s agreement to yield to the administration on academic matters that met the fiercest backlash. Last week, the prominent historian Rashid Khalidi announced in an open letter that he would cancel a class he had planned to teach in the fall, citing the settlement and adoption of the IHRA definition, and accusing Columbia’s leaders of having turned the storied institution into “a shadow of its former self” and an “anti-university”.Still, Columbia’s deal with the administration fell short of some of the most restrictive scenarios floated during negotiations, and even those critical of it acknowledge the university found itself in a near-impossible position.“We fully appreciate that the alternatives to settlement would have come with their own formidable costs and risks,” a group of scholars from Columbia’s own Knight First Amendment Institute wrote in an analysis on Monday. “It would be deeply unfortunate, however, if Columbia’s settlement were to become a model for the rest of the academy.”More targetsSo far, that seems to be the case. A week after Columbia’s announcement, Brown followed, reaching a deal with the administration to restore frozen federal funds in exchange for adopting the administration’s definitions of male and female, which advocates say infringe transgender rights. Brown will also pay $50m to Rhode Island workforce development organizations as part of the deal. The university also granted the government access to its admissions data to ensure it is “merit-based”. UPenn made similar concessions when it became the first university to settle in early July.Harvard has been the only university to fight back, suing over $2.6bn in funding cuts and the revocation of its eligibility to host international students. Both cases are proceeding in court, where the university has notched some early victories, even though Harvard is also negotiating with the administration and has passed measures pre-empting some of its demands.At UCLA, part of the largest public university system in the US, administrators also tried to anticipate the administration by issuing a flurry of new policies. They restricted the ability to protest on campus and centralized faculty hiring. A spokesperson for UCLA referred the Guardian to a statement by the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, in which he listed a host of measures it had taken to combat antisemitism.But that wasn’t enough to keep UCLA from becoming Trump’s latest target.“Unsurprisingly, the anticipatory obedience of UCLA administrators has not prevented Trump administration attacks,” the UCLA Faculty Association wrote in a statement. “Each university that falters legitimates the Trump administration’s attacks on all of our institutions of higher education and we must stand up now. To protect our democracy we must protect our universities.” More

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      Trump administration reportedly suspends $200m in grants to UCLA

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      The Trump administration is suspending some research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, claiming “antisemitism and bias”, the school announced in a statement on Thursday.“UCLA received a notice that the federal government, through its control of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies, is suspending certain research funding to UCLA,” Julio Frenk, the university chancellor, said in a letter to the campus. The move means “life-saving research” will be defunded, he said.“It is a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.”Frenk did not say the value of the grants, but the Los Angeles Times reported that roughly 300 grants amounting to nearly $200m were suspended.The federal government has moved to pull billions of dollars from prominent universities across the US after accusing the institutions of failing to adequately respond to antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests, and referred some to the Department of Justice. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has reached agreements with Brown University and Columbia University to restore funding and close investigations into the schools.The agreement with Brown requires the institution to commit to nondiscrimination in admissions and programs, and allow the administration access to admissions data. Meanwhile, Columbia’s controversial deal requires it pay more than $220m, expand its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, review Middle East curriculum and cut programs promoting “unlawful efforts” related to diversity. Harvard remains in a legal fight with the federal government over its move to freeze billions in federal funds.The news out of UCLA comes days after the school reached a nearly $6.5m settlement in a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor who said the university allowed antisemitic discrimination to take place on campus during protests last year.Earlier this week, the Department of Justice notified the University of California that its investigation found that UCLA’s response to a protest encampment in spring 2024 was “deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” and that students experienced “severe [and] pervasive” harassment.In his statement about the grant cancellations, Frenk said the university had taken steps to combat antisemitism, and ensure the school is safe and welcoming for all, including the creation of a new Office of Campus and Community Safety and an Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.He also highlighted the university’s history of research, including planetary scientists who search for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, a Valley Fever Center and the role researchers played in helping create the internet.“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk wrote. More

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      I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

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      Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

      Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More

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      Harvard argues in court that Trump administration’s $2.6bn cuts are illegal

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      Harvard University appeared in federal court on Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn from the storied college – a major test of the administration’s efforts to reshape higher education institutions by threatening their financial viability.US district judge Allison Burroughs heard arguments from Harvard and the Department of Justice. The cuts, imposed earlier this year, have halted major research efforts and Harvard argues they are a politically motivated attempt to pressure the school into adopting federal policies on student conduct, admissions, antisemitism and diversity.A ruling in favor of the university would revive Harvard’s sprawling scientific and medical research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.“This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard,” the university said in its complaint. “All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.”The case is being closely watched by other universities that have seen their research funds axed by the administration, which has suspended or threatened billions in grants and contracts from several institutions. The White House is reportedly close to finalizing a deal with Columbia University – the first institution it targeted for cuts – to restore $400m in funding in exchange for the university implementing a series of measures meeting the administration’s ideological demands.Harvard is the first – and so far only – university to sue.The university has separately sued the administration over its revocation of Harvard’s eligibility to host international students. (Trump has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, but he has taken no action to that effect so far.)Burroughs is overseeing both of Harvard’s cases against the administration and in June issued an injunction stopping the government from barring foreign Harvard students from entering the country.Monday’s hearing was the first time the court heard arguments about the legality of the administration’s funding cuts. The hearing ended without Burroughs issuing a ruling from the bench. A ruling is expected later in writing.Harvard’s lawsuit accuses Donald Trump’s administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an 11 April letter from a federal antisemitism taskforce.The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. For example, the letter told Harvard to audit the viewpoints of students and faculty and admit more students or hire new professors if the campus was found to lack diverse points of view. The letter was meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus.A lawyer for the government, Michael Velchik, said in court on Monday that the government has authority to cancel research grants when an institution is out of compliance with the president’s directives. He said episodes at Harvard violated Trump’s order combating antisemitism.Burroughs pushed back, questioning how the government could make “ad-hoc” decisions to cancel grants and do so across Harvard without offering evidence that any of the research is antisemitic.She also argued the government had provided “no documentation, no procedure” to “suss out” whether Harvard administrators “have taken enough steps or haven’t” to combat antisemitism.“The consequences of that in terms of constitutional law are staggering,” Burroughs said during Monday’s hearing. “I don’t think you can justify a contract action based on impermissible suppression of speech. Where do I have that wrong.”Velchik said the case comes down to the government’s choosing how best to spend billions of dollars in research funding.“Harvard claims the government is anti-Harvard. I reject that,” Velchik said. “The government is pro-Jewish students at Harvard. The government is pro-Jewish faculty at Harvard.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlan Garber, Harvard’s president, pledged to fight antisemitism but said no government “should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”.The same day Harvard rejected the demands, Trump officials moved to freeze $2.2bn in research grants. Linda McMahon, the US education secretary, declared in May that Harvard would no longer be eligible for new grants, and weeks later the administration began canceling contracts with Harvard.As Harvard fought the funding freeze in court, individual agencies began sending letters announcing that the frozen research grants were being terminated. They cited a clause that allows grants to be scrapped if they no longer align with government policies.Harvard, which has the nation’s largest endowment at $53bn, has moved to self-fund some of its research, but warned it can’t absorb the full cost of the federal cuts.In court filings, the school said the government “fails to explain how the termination of funding for research to treat cancer, support veterans, and improve national security addresses antisemitism”.The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the April demand letter was sent. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel contracts for policy reasons.“It is the policy of the United States under the Trump administration not to fund institutions that fail to adequately address antisemitism in their programs,” it said in court documents.Last month, the Trump administration formally issued a finding that the school tolerated antisemitism – a step that eventually could jeopardize all of Harvard’s federal funding, including federal student loans or grants. The penalty is typically referred to as a “death sentence”.While Harvard’s cases against the administration proceeds in court, the university is reportedly also negotiating with the administration for a deal that might end the dispute out of court. More

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      Native American universities and colleges brace for crippling Trump cuts

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      While colleges and universities slow down during summer break, Ahniwake Rose is busy wondering what the fall semester will hold for the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) – and if they will be able to stay open much longer.As the president and CEO of the Indigenous non-profit American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), Rose (Cherokee and Muscogee Creek) braces as the schools she represents face a potential nearly 90% reduction in funding starting in October. President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget includes a proposal to slash operations funding from $183.3m to $22.1m for Bureau of Indian Education post-secondary programs – career and technical schools, community colleges, four-year colleges and universities. On 15 July, a House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation that allotted $1.5bn to the Bureau of Indian Education, though it did not specify how much would go toward post-secondary programs. Congress still needs to finish approving the budget for the Bureau of Indian Education, a subdivision of the Department of Interior.If approved, such cuts will further endanger a system that’s already undernourished. Congress currently underfunds the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities by $250m a year, according to a 2024 ProPublica report.TCUs are heavily reliant on federal funding, which accounts for about 75% of their revenue. Those monies cannot be replaced with endowments or alumni donations as other higher education institutions do due to low wealth in Indigenous communities, said Rose. “There is really no other option, if not to close,” she said, “than to severely reduce the way that our institutions are able to provide services to our students.” Rose added that “there is not one TCU that would be able to walk away unscathed”.While they are on summer recess, faculty and students have expressed concerns about their academic future as they fear that their schools will close next year.“The impact that this is having on the morale of our community and our students has been deeply troubling,” Rose said. Some students are reconsidering whether they will begin school or continue their coursework next year. “Would the staff want to sign a contract for an institution that might not be able to pay them next year or in a few months?”In anticipation of potential budget cuts, some schools have adjusted by canceling internships, fellowships and workforce study, said Rose. AIHEC is working with institutions to guarantee that the cancellations don’t affect students’ abilities to meet degree requirements and graduate. For students who relied on fellowships to support their education, the non-profit is partnering with the American Indian College Fund so that they can complete their education on time.When Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) student Breana Brave Heart (Oglala Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne) learned that the Trump administration was seeking to eliminate her school’s funding, she saw it as a betrayal. “It felt like a direct attack on us as Native students – on our dreams, our cultures and our treaty rights,” Brave Heart said in a statement to the Guardian. “IAIA isn’t just a college; it’s a promise our ancestors secured for us through sacrifice and agreements with the US government.”Rose said that Brave Heart’s school was most vulnerable to a potential closure, since Trump’s 2026 discretionary budget request includes a plan to specifically eliminate funding for the school – without explanation. The four-year fine arts school that focuses on Alaska Native and Native American arts receives $13.5m in annual appropriations. That amount would be reduced to zero if the budget is approved by Congress.“If they were to defund us,” the IAIA president, Robert Martin, (Cherokee) said, “then what would happen to those 850 students? Where would they go at this point?” Native Americans make up 80% of the student population, with 92 federally recognized tribes represented at the school.View image in fullscreenFounded in 1962, IAIA has had an indelible influence on Indigenous arts, Martin said. Some of the most well-known alumni include the former US poet laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee/Creek) and author Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho of Oklahoma), a finalist for the Pulitzer prize for fiction.“With the pandemic and historical trauma to begin with, there’s always been mental health issues [for students], and this adds a little bit more stress to being a college student,” Martin said. “In terms of faculty and staff, they are stressed about their employment outlook in the future, and what that’s going to bring.”In the meantime, Martin is telling staff and students to expect to return to campus in the fall. School leadership has held town hall meetings for faculty and staff to allay their concerns, and they are preparing to increase their fundraising efforts.An obligation to educateMartin and Christopher Caldwell (Menominee), president at College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin, hope that whenever a new budget passes, it will uphold the federal government’s promise to fund Indigenous education. The 1978 Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities Assistance Act and about 150 treaties guaranteed federal funding to higher education, at a base amount of $8,000 per student adjusted for inflation.Since June, school leaders and their allies have lobbied congressional members to continue supporting TCUs so they remain open in the upcoming academic year. Continued funding of the schools, which provides economic vitality to the entire community also allows tribes to govern themselves, said Rose.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“Our tribal colleges are a deep expression of self-determination and sovereignty. These education systems were created to support and build tribal leadership, to create education systems in which Native students can thrive and can build our economies,” Rose said. “Not only are the proposed cuts a direct attack against the trust and treaty responsibility that the federal government has to postsecondary institutions, it inhibits tribes’ ability to direct self-determination in our own education systems.” She added that her organization and the institutions were connecting with the current administration to underscore just how critical Department of Interior funding is to tribal colleges.The Institute of American Indian Arts has been in contact with New Mexico’s congressional delegation and members of the appropriations committee to ensure that they understand the significance of funding for TCUs. “We’ve had bipartisan support for our programs, and it’s all part of the trust responsibility of the federal government,” Martin said. “Our ancestors ceded millions of acres of land to the federal government in return for certain promises, and one of those was education.”Martin continued: “What we’re hearing from our donors and supporters is: ‘How can we help? And what can we do?’ We’re telling them to reach out to the congressional delegation immediately. But we also have to emphasize that we may have to experience some reduction in our funding, so we’re going to have to make that up in some way to continue to offer the quality of programs and really focus on student success.”Students are also part of the campaign to preserve tribal education. Brave Heart, the IAIA student, is working with her peers to reach out to Congress. “We deserve more than to see our futures reduced to a line item crossed out in a budget. We need our elected leaders to honor their commitments to Indigenous students and uphold these sacred obligations.”View image in fullscreenThe potential closures of schools will greatly affect tribal economies, particularly since TCUs are sometimes the largest employers in their locales, said Rose. The non-profit plans to release an analysis that looks at the overall economic impact of TCUs on the surrounding communities around the nation.Along with writing letters to congressional members, AIHEC is also helping the schools review their budgets and identify ways that they can cut costs. But for some institutions, the decreases are so steep it’s hard to plan.Caldwell, the College of Menominee Nation president, said that the school’s federal funding would be reduced from $1.5m to $181,000 if Congress passes the proposed budget.“How do you budget for the coming years when you see that kind of uncertainty?” Caldwell said. “We’re constantly weighing how much of these costs we are able to cover if the government suddenly stops paying their side of what they agreed to.”The school is refiguring their strategic plan for the upcoming academic year and examining whether their academic offerings align with workforce trends.In light of the financial hits that TCUs have faced since Trump entered office in January, including staff reductions at the Bureau of Indian Education, Caldwell said that the College of Menominee Nation had seen an increase in anonymous donations. “It demonstrated that there are people who support the work that we do in tribal nations and surrounding communities.” More

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      Columbia adopts controversial definition of antisemitism amid federal grants freeze

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      Columbia University has agreed to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism as it pursues an agreement with the Trump aimed at restoring $400m in federal government grants frozen over its alleged failure to protect Jewish students.In a letter to students and staff, the university’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said it would incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism into its anti-discrimination policies as part of a broad overhaul.It is the latest in a string of concessions Columbia has made following criticisms – mainly from pro-Israel groups and Republican members of Congress – that university authorities had tolerated the expression of antisemitic attitudes in pro-Palestinian campus protests following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2023.“Columbia is committed to taking all possible steps to combat antisemitism and the University remains dedicated to ensuring that complaints of discrimination and harassment of all types, including complaints based on Jewish and Israeli identity, are treated in the same manner,” wrote Shipman.“Formally adding the consideration of the IHRA definition into our existing anti-discrimination policies strengthens our approach to combating antisemitism.”The definition, which describes antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”, has been adopted by the US state department and several European government and EU groups.However, critics have say it is designed to shield Israel by punishing legitimate criticism of the country. They also complain that it conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism.Among the examples of criticisms accompanying the definition are “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”, “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nations” and “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel … than to the interests of their own nations”.Donald Trump gave the IHRA definition a significant boost during his presidency by issuing an executive order in 2018 requiring all federal government agencies to take account of it when handling civil rights complaints.In adopting it now, Columbia is following Harvard, which agreed to embrace the definition last January as part of a court settlement reached with Jewish students, who had accused the university of failing to protect them under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or ethnic origin in programs or institutions receiving federal funding.While Harvard remains in dispute with the White House after refusing to bow to its demands in return for the unfreezing of federal funding, Columbia has been accused of surrendering vital academic freedoms in an initial agreement with the administration reached last March that will see it reform its protest and security policies, while restricting the autonomy of its Middle Eastern studies department.Shipman has insisted that the university is “following the law” and denied that it is guilty of “capitulation”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionColumbia’s previous president, Minouche Shafik, resigned last August following sustained criticism, including in Congress, over her failure to end months of campus protests, despite calling in New York police to dismantle an encampment.In her letter, Shipman said last March’s agreement was “only a starting point for change”.“The fact that we’ve faced pressure from the government does not make the problems on our campuses any less real; a significant part of our community has been deeply affected in negative ways,” she wrote. “Committing to reform on our own is a more powerful path. It will better enable us to recognize our shortcomings and create lasting change.”However, the New York Times recently reported that the university was nearing an agreement to pay Jewish complainants more than $200m in compensation for civil rights violations that would be part of the deal to have its funding restored.The deal is likely to require further reforms in return for restored funding but stops short of requiring a judge-approved consent decree, which had been in an initial draft and would have given the Trump administration significant control over the university. More