Washington (AP) -more than 1 billion US dollars in federal financing for Cornell University and around 790 million US dollars for Northwestern University were frozen, while the government examines alleged violations of civil rights in both schools, according to the White House.
It is part of a broader advance to employ state funds to maintain huge academic institutions in order to comply with President Donald Trump’s political agenda. The White House confirmed that the financing on Tuesday evening took a break, but did not offer any further details on what it contained or which subsidies are affected by the schools.
The movements are carried out when the Trump government has increasingly started using the financing of the state scholarships as a cone to influence campus policy -previously to reduce money at schools such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
As a result, the universities all over the country have problems navigating cuts to grants for research institutions.
In an explanation, Cornell said that on Tuesday on Tuesday there was more than 75 stop work commands from the Department of Defense in connection with research “deeply for American national defense, cybersecurity and health”, but otherwise it had not received any information that confirmed the 1 billion US dollar of frozen grants.
“We are actively looking for information from federal civil servants to learn more about the basis for these decisions,” says Michael I. Kotlikoff, the university president and other top school officers.
In an e -mail to the northwestern community, University President Michael Schill said that it had not been informed by the federal government about the cuts, according to the newspaper Daily Northwestern, the Campus newspaper.
Last month, the educational department sent letters to more than 60 universities – including Cornell and Northwestern – to “potential enforcement measures if they do not fulfill their obligations under the federal law” to (*1*).
The Trump administration has threatened to reduce federal financing for universities that deactivated the alleged anti -Semitism last year at Campus protests against the Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza Strip -accusations that the universities contested.
Officials have already exchanged Columbia University and have an example of this with threats to hold back 400 million US dollars of federal funds.
The government repeatedly accused Columbia of not stopping anti -Semitism during the protests against Israel, which began last spring at New York City University last spring – a characterization that was contested by the people involved in the demonstrations.
As a prerequisite for the restoration of this money – together with billions more in future grants – the Republican administration demanded unprecedented changes in university policy.
The decision of Columbia to bend these demands, partly to the ongoing research projects in his laboratories and the medical center, was criticized by some faculty and freedom freedom groups that penetrate academic freedom.
