The United States President, Donald Trump, administration has reached a second major agreement with a top-tier university, this time securing a multimillion-dollar deal with Brown University that will restore its access to federal research funding.
Following last week’s $221 million settlement with Columbia University, the new agreement with Brown involves the Ivy League school committing to key reforms around its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in exchange for reinstated grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The deal also restores Brown’s eligibility for future federal support and puts an end to ongoing federal investigations into the university, a senior White House official confirmed.
Brown, based in Providence, Rhode Island, had been grappling with financial pressures even before the Trump administration initiated a broad clampdown on research funding tied to DEI programs across U.S. campuses.
Unlike Columbia, which agreed to a $221 million package, including $200 million to the U.S. Treasury, Brown avoided any direct penalties to the federal government.
Instead, under terms announced Wednesday, Brown will allocate $50 million over a decade toward workforce development initiatives in Rhode Island.
“Brown is not making ‘any payments or fines to the federal government,’” said university President Christina Paxson in a campus-wide letter.
That stands in contrast to Columbia’s deal, which included a $21 million settlement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in addition to its Treasury payments.
Paxson framed the agreement as a collaborative move that maintains Brown’s academic independence, “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 acknowledged, adding that the deal “does not give the government the ‘authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.’”
She also noted that Brown had never been informed of any legal violations nor given a clear reason for the freezing of its federal research grants.
“At no time has Brown been informed of any finding that the University violated any law,” Paxson stated.
The White House emphasized several conditions tied to the agreement, including a prohibition on “unlawful racial discrimination in admissions or university programming” and compliance with definitions of “male” and “female” laid out in a Trump executive order.
The university must also allow federal access to related data and take steps to support Jewish students.
Additionally, the agreement stipulates that Brown’s health services “will not perform gender reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribe them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones,” according to the administration official.
Paxson clarified that many of the agreement’s provisions reflect existing policies, though the university is taking steps to comply with new federal expectations: supporting local workforce training aligns with Brown’s “service and community engagement mission,” she said.
Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, hailed the agreement as a victory for the administration’s broader goals to challenge what she called the “decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions.”
Following the Columbia deal, the administration has used it as a model in discussions with other elite universities. CNN earlier reported that Brown and Cornell were both nearing final agreements.
Meanwhile, federal scrutiny has turned toward Duke University, its School of Medicine, and the Duke Law Journal. Legal disputes with Harvard also continue, though The New York Times revealed that the university is considering a $500 million settlement to resolve the conflict.
Earlier this year, CNN reported that more than $500 million in federal research grants at Brown were at stake as the administration investigated the university’s DEI practices and its handling of campus antisemitism allegations.
