The Trump administration has frozen more than a billion dollars in funding for Cornell and $ 790 million for the North West in the midst of civil rights surveys in the two schools, two US officials said.
The financing break mainly involves subsidies and contracts with the departments of agriculture, defense, education and health and social services, according to officials, who spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss the unexpected decision.
The movements are the most recent and most important of a rapid growing campaign against the American elite universities which led to the suspension or the review of the billions of federal funds in just over a month. Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
Cornell and Northwestern are both faced with surveys on anti -Semitism allegations and on racial accusations of their efforts to promote diversity.
Cornell officials said in a statement that they had received more than 75 arrest working orders from the Ministry of Defense on Tuesday, but that they had no information to confirm that more than a billion dollars in funding had been suspended. The affected subsidies, they said, supported the research they have described as “deeply important for the defense, cybersecurity and American health”.
“We are actively looking for information from federal officials to find out more on the basis of these decisions,” said the spouse statement by Michael Kotlikoff, the president of the university; Kavita Bala, the provost; And Robert Harrington, provost for medical affairs.
Jon Yates, spokesperson for Northwestern, said the university had not been informed by the federal government that funding had been frozen.
Northwestern, a Big Ten university, is the first Non Ivy League school to have financed the Trump administration targeted under investigations on alleged discrimination. The university has published a “stage reportLast week, which highlighted his efforts to protect Jewish students, including compulsory anti -Semitism training for all students, teachers and staff.
“The federal funds that Northwestern receive innovative and wild research, such as the recent development by northwest researchers of the smallest cardiac stimulator in the world, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease,” said Yates. “This type of research is now in Jeopardy.”
Mr. Yates added that Northwestern had “fully cooperated” with federal surveys and the congress.
Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, was explicit on the emphasis put by the administration on elite universities, which Mr. Trump criticized as bastions of leftist thought. She said that taxpayers’ support is a “privilege” that can be withdrawn if universities do not adhere to the civil rights law.
Like other universities, Cornell and Northwestern were the infiltration site during the war in Gaza.
Cornell and Northwestern were one of the 60 universities that the Trump administration warned last month of potential application actions on surveys on anti -Semitism allegations. Each school also has investigations awaiting accusations of racial discrimination.
Last month, the Chamber’s Education Committee under republican control reprimanded the northwest in the legal clinics of its law faculty which represented the organizers of an anti-Israeli demonstration.
University officials said legal clinics provided Training for students and did not represent the opinions of the school. In a letter At school, the representative Tim Walberg, president of the committee, and the representative Burgess Owens, president of the subcommittee of the panel on higher education, described training as “illegal and anti-Semitic conduct”.
Cornell has also recently defended against the affirmations that he was not doing enough to stop anti -Semitism. In an attempt at New York Times, Dr. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell, described the universities of the country as institutions built to respect and advance democratic norms, even in the face of climbing political and legal risks.
“A disorderly event that transforms into viral videos causes an understandable concern to administrators and elders, and adds more fuel to already burned fires”, Dr KotlikoF wrote Last week. “But if we want to preserve our value and our meaning, we cannot let our prudence go beyond our goal. Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and pumbs against autocracy. ”
Vimal Patel Contributed reports.