More than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and around $790 million for Northwestern University have been frozen while the government investigates alleged civil rights violations at both schools, the White House says. It's part of a broader push to use government funding to get major academic institutions to comply with President Trump's political agenda. The White House confirmed the funding pauses late Tuesday night, but offered no further details on what it entails, or what grants to the schools are being affected, the AP reports. The moves come as the Trump administration has increasingly begun using governmental grant funding as a spigot to try and influence campus policy—previously cutting off money to schools including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
That has left universities across the country struggling to navigate cuts to grants for research institutions. In a statement, Cornell said it had received more than 75 stop work orders earlier Tuesday from the Defense Department related to research "profoundly significant to American national defense, cybersecurity, and health" but that it had not otherwise received any information confirming $1 billion in frozen grants. Last month, the Education Department sent letters to more than 60 universities—including Cornell and Northwestern—warning of "potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations" under federal law to "protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities."
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