Without warning, Harvard and Princeton are facing big funding threats

(LATEST UPDATE: April 1) The Trump administration continues its mission to punish higher education institutions it deems in violation of recent orders against anti-Semitism, affirmative action and support for undocumented students.

The administration’s most recent and surprising move is its “unclear” rationale for suspending federal contracts at Princeton University.

This is a running article covering President Trump’s impact on higher education during his second term in office and will be updated weekly. For live updates on the fate of the Department of Education under Trump, click here. 

More from UB: How big is the money portfolio in the Department of Education?

Princeton University becomes fourth Ivy League to potentially lose federal funding

An undisclosed number of federal research projects have been cut from Princeton University, following similar funding cuts at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

“[S]everal dozen Princeton research grants” across the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Defense Department have been suspended, university president Chris Eisgruber said in a Tuesday statement.

“The full rationale for this action is not yet clear, but I want to be clear about the principles that will guide our response,” he said.

Harvard and Columbia were targeted for allegedly not protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. UPenn’s policies on transgender athletes were cited by the Trump administration for its funding cuts.

Why Harvard University stands to lose $9 billion

The Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which comprises multiple federal agencies, has threatened to cancel up to $9 billion in federal grants and contracts at Harvard University.

Federal agencies will assess whether they will initiate Stop Orders on the funding, pending their review of institutional policy aimed at protecting Jewish students.

“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination—all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry—has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

Harvard must submit all direct and indirect federal contracts not included in the initial review, according to a Department of Education press release.

“If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” wrote Harvard President Alan Garber in a statement. “Much is at stake here.”

The Trump administration similarly threatened to cancel $400 million at Columbia University for its failure to protect Jewish students. The Ivy League has since capitulated to a wide range of policies and preconditions for a chance to secure its funding.

Trump officials cut college support for undocumented students

Undocumented students in Oregon and California have lost access to federal programs designed to help them apply to and succeed in college. The move rescinds Biden-era guidelines implemented in 2022 and 2023.

TRIO offers admissions counseling, financial planning, tutoring and other measures to help students prepare for college and earn degrees.

“The TRIO Program was designed to provide support and guidance to disadvantaged Americans as they navigate the road to and through postsecondary education,” said Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron. “The Department will not allow the true purpose of the program to be corrupted to advance an American-last agenda.”

Oregon receives approximately $17.5 million annually to manage TRIO programs, according to Salem Reporter.

California universities under investigation for side-stepping affirmative action

The Department of Justice has launched investigations into four California universities for potentially using DEI-related discrimination to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action.

The institutions in question include Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley, Los Angeles and Irvine.

“President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the color of their skin.”

University of California’s fall class reported a 10% increase in admission offers for Black students for fall 2024.

The proportion of admission offers to African Americans increased from 5.6% to 5.9%—an increase of almost 500 offers, or 10% more than last year. However, California banned affirmative action in 1996.

Columbia bows to Trump’s demands, overhauls policy

Columbia University is tightening its campus protest policies, enhancing its Jewish Studies program, and restructuring other academic departments as preconditions to negotiate the restoration of $400 million in federal funding canceled by the Trump administration.

Here is the list of demands it has acquiesced to.

• Reviewing admissions procedures to ensure an unbiased admissions process and specifically studying the decline in admissions of Jewish students.
• Clarifying time, place, and manner restrictions to clearly state that protests in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of university activities, are unacceptable.
• Enforcing a strict anti-masking policy
• Adhering to all student visa and immigration laws in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security
• Reviewing the portfolio of regional studies programs, starting immediately with those that teach about the Middle East and Israel
• Enforcing existing disciplinary policies and completing disciplinary proceedings, with meaningful consequences, for Hamilton Hall and encampments
• Placing the University Judicial Board (UJB) under the Office of the Provost and limiting panel membership to faculty and administrators only
• Expanding the number of Columbia security personnel and granting them the ability to arrest and remove agitators
• Advance Columbia’s Tel Aviv Center

Trump executive order prepares for Education Department shutdown

Core functions like Title I, services for students with disabilities, and Pell Grants will shift to other agencies.

Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon has begun dismantling the agency by laying off about 50% of its staff, but eliminating it entirely requires an act of Congress.

The administration argues the department has spent over $3 trillion since 1979 with no measurable improvement in student achievement. Legal responses from teachers unions are expected. Read more.

UPenn loses $175 million in federal funding

(March 19) The Trump administration is cutting $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania due to its policies related to transgender athletes, according to a White House announcement.

Trump’s executive order last month barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. The Department of Education subsequently opened an investigation into the Ivy League for its potential violation of this directive.

More than 50 institutions probed for race-based violations

(March 14) The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating over 50 colleges for potential Title VI violations.

Forty-five institutions are under scrutiny for partnering with “The Ph.D. Project,” which limits eligibility based on race. Six others face investigation for race-based scholarships, and one for segregating students by race.

The department is cracking down on race-related and DEI initiatives, citing the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-based admissions. Columbia University risks losing $400 million in federal funding. Read more.

Columbia loses $400 million in government contracts

(March 7) The Trump administration is canceling $400 million in federal funds for Columbia University after investigating its handling of campus antisemitism following Israel-Hamas war protests. Canceled contracts span the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education and the U.S. General Services Administration—all part of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Columbia holds over $5 billion in federal grants, with more funding at risk. Read more.

DEI programming ordered to cease at all public institutions

(Feb. 14) All K12 and postsecondary public institutions have been ordered to remove all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs within 14 days, according to a “Dear Colleague” letter sent by the civil rights office of the Department of Education.

Acting Assistant Secretary Craig Trainor emphasized that discrimination based on race, color, or national origin remains illegal, referencing the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned racial preferences in college admissions. Trainor stated that this ruling applies broadly, and any differential treatment based on race violates the law.

The letter serves as a notice of the Department’s interpretation of federal law regarding DEI in education, with further legal guidance to follow. Institutions must comply with civil rights laws or risk losing federal funding.

Schools implementing DEI initiatives, such as increasing enrollment of students of color or hiring diverse staff, may face civil rights investigations. Read more.

DOGE, DOE cut nearly $2 billion in funding

Over $1 billion worth of contracts with education nonprofits have gone up in flames over the past 10 days, and public institutions may soon need to close DEI-related programming, according to another wave of executive orders from President Donald Trump.

On Feb. 10, the Department of Government Efficiency, a federal agency run by billionaire Elon Musk to shrink the federal government, canceled 89 contracts with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) worth up to $881 million.

The IES is one of the country’s largest funders of education research. One of the affected agencies, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), funds research to improve higher education and provides public data on postsecondary institutions across the nation. The College Scorecard, which allows people to search for and compare information about colleges, will not be affected, Pro Publica reports.

Much of the canceled funding had already been allocated and implemented into studies. “If they’re doing this to save government money, they are wasting millions today,” one anonymous employee told NPR. “All the money we have spent working on these products, down the drain.”

Three days later, the Department of Education announced it had canceled 10 contracts with Regional Education Laboratories worth $336 million. Administered by the IES, the country’s 10 Regional Education Laboratories partner with stakeholders to provide “high-quality applied research” and “training, coaching, and technical support to educators and policymakers,” according to the IES website.

“[R]eview of the contracts uncovered wasteful and ideologically driven spending not in the interest of students and taxpayers,” read the press release.

The following week, the Department of Education announced that schools and nonprofits would lose $600 million in grants for training teachers in what it considers “divisive ideologies,” according to a press release.

The grants funded training materials that covered DEI, social justice, anti-racism, white privilege and white supremacy, calling those topics “inappropriate and unnecessary.”

“Many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race,” the agency said.

The department announced the cuts just three days after it gave schools less than two weeks to eliminate all DEI-related instruction, hiring initiatives and other programs.

Sacred Heart University in Connecticut is due to lose a $3.38 million grant, which went toward recruiting and strengthening a diverse workforce of teachers in special education and STEM subjects, The 74 reports. The university was one of 20 recipients to receive the grant. Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for the secretary of education, serves on Sacred Heart’s Board of Trustees.

Five universities under investigation for alleged anti-Semitism

Confusion surges over fate of the Department of Education

Media reports indicated that President Donald Trump is planning an executive order to significantly reduce “all functions of the [Department of Education] that aren’t written explicitly into statute.” Read more.

Transgender athletes: You cannot compete

The NCAA formally barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports following Trump’s executive order that threatens to withhold federal funding from institutions that allow athletes assigned as male at birth to play in women’s events. However, the organization will allow them to practice with women’s teams.

“This national standard brings much needed clarity as we modernize college sports for today’s student-athletes,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement. Read more.

The Department of Education has since opened investigations at the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State University to probe the participation of a transgender woman on a women’s athletic team. Read more.

Title IX reverts to 2020 regulations

To freeze, or not to freeze, federal grants

On Monday of President Trump’s second week, the White House budget office ordered a spending freeze on federal grant programs, potentially pausing hundreds of billions of dollars in aid for nonprofits across the United States. But following a federal ruling that temporarily blocked the order, the Office of Management and Budget released a two-sentence memo rescinding the order.

Democrat advocacy groups celebrated the reversal. But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration still plans to conduct a review of spending to “end the egregious waste of federal funding,” NPR reports. The funding that’s most likely in the crosshairs are activities related to “DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” per the budget office’s original memorandum.

Executive order aims to quash anti-Semitism

President Trump released another executive order in his second week of office to address anti-Semitism in higher education, directing federal agencies to use all legal means to combat campus anti-Semitism and review related civil rights complaints.

Non-U.S. citizens who participated in pro-Palestinian protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel can potentially be deported, per a White House fact sheet. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” it read.

Trump targets DEI, LGBTQ+ policies, immigration and more in first week in office

President Trump did not waste any time after his inauguration reshaping U.S. policy, signing more executive orders on his first day in office than any other. Higher education was not spared from the change; many policies championed by Republicans during Joe Biden’s tenure are now gearing into full swing.

Dismantling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

An executive order now demands colleges and universities end all mandates, policies and programs that fall under the guise of a DEI initiative. The order claims these programs violate the country’s civil rights laws.

“[I]n case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing,” it read.

The order does not define what constitutes a DEI-related initiative or specify the consequences an institution may receive if found guilty. However, it permits federal agencies to open investigations into any college or university with a track record of promoting such initiatives and exposes them to private lawsuits.

State-funded and private institutions alike find themselves at risk. The executive order also asked the Department of Education to investigate nine schools with endowments over $1 billion (predominantly Ivy League institutions) and “deter DEI principles.”

“I would be hesitant to advise a client to just sit pat and see what happens, even if they perceive themselves as not having too much exposure,” says Jack Sharman, internal investigations and compliance attorney with Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC.

The executive order directs the attorney general and secretary of education issue guidance for all federally funded institutions on how to better comply with the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending race-based admissions.

The Department of Education is also gutting all aspects of DEI per another executive order aiming to end all related mandates across the federal government. Here are several actions the department took:

• Dissolution of the Diversity & Inclusion Council and the Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council within the Office for Civil Rights
• Cancellation of ongoing DEI training and service contracts totaling over $2.6 million
• Withdrawal of the department’s Equity Action Plan
• Placement of employees charged with leading DEI initiatives on paid administrative leave
• Removing over 200 web pages from its website housing DEI resources

LGBTQ+ students no longer offered protection from discrimination

A pair of executive orders have furthered the GOP’s efforts to reclaim the issue of gender identity and reinstate biological sex as the only classification relevant in higher education, which affects who is protected from laws prohibiting discrimination based on sex.

The first order strictly enforces U.S. policy to only regard any person by their sex assigned at birth, male or female. As a result, directives by the Biden administration that extended Title IX protections to those experiencing discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity have been rescinded.

“Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept,” one order read.

Underscoring this order is the recent move by a Kentucky district judge to vacate Biden’s more comprehensive Title IX update.

Support for HSIs and Tribal Colleges nixed

The same order that rescinded Title IX protections for gender identity or sexual orientation also revoked previous executive initiatives focused on “Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity” for Hispanics, Native Americans, Black Americans, tribal colleges and universities, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

As a result, federal committees focused on improving the impact of HSIs and advancing their access to STEM fields and teaching positions will be disbanded.

Immigration raids on campus now imminent

Trump’s tough stance on immigration is likely to disrupt college campuses as well. A directive issued by the Department of Homeland Security has rescinded Biden-era mandates that prevented law enforcement from conducting raids on “sensitive areas” such as college campuses, K12 schools and churches.

“The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” according to a Homeland Security spokesperson.

Previous coverage of Trump and higher education before inauguration

• These 3 big campus movements will falter under new administration (published Jan. 9, 2025): A trio of left-leaning campaigns in higher ed have lost momentum as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House.
• How will Trump impact higher ed? Report urges focus on civic engagement (published Jan. 6, 2025): With Donald Trump returning to the White House, higher ed leaders are being encouraged to re-energize programs aimed at keeping students engaged in the Democratic process and civic affairs.
• How a looming Trump presidency is already affecting college life (published Dec. 6, 2024): President-elect Donald Trump’s aggressive stance on immigration has led some institutions and related organizations to begin issuing guidance to students ahead of his inauguration.