Brown University strikes agreement to restore lost federal funding : NPR

We see people crossing the Brown University campus in Providence, RI, on October 12, 2020.

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Steven Senne / AP

Washington – Brown University will pay $ 50 million to the development organizations of the Rhode Island workforce as part of an agreement with the Trump administration which restores the funding of lost federal research and ends inquiry on alleged discrimination, officials announced on Wednesday.

The university has also accepted several concessions in accordance with the political agenda of President Donald Trump. Brown will adopt the government’s definition of “male” and “woman”, for example, and must remove any consideration of the breed of the admission process.

Brown president Christina H. Paxson said the agreement preserves the academic independence of Brown. The conditions include a clause indicating that the government cannot dictate the study program or the content of the academic discourse at Brown.

“The most important priority of the university throughout discussions with the government remained faithful to our academic mission, to our fundamental values and to whom we are as a community at Brown,” wrote Paxson.

This is the last agreement between an Ivy League school and the Trump administration, which used its control of federal funding to put pressure on the reforms in the colleges that Trump DIMinga as far exceeds by liberalism and anti -Semitism. The administration has also launched surveys on the efforts of diversity, equity and inclusion, claiming that they discriminate American white and Asian students.

The Brown agreement has similarities with a signed last week by Columbia University, which the government called a roadmap for other universities. Unlike this agreement, however, Brown’s does not include an external monitor.

The three -year agreement with Brown restores dozens of grants and suspension contracts. He also calls on the federal government to reimburse Brown for $ 50 million in unpaid federal subsidy fees.

The regulations put an end to three federal surveys involving allegations of anti -Semitism and racial prejudices in brown admissions, without discovery of reprehensible acts. In a letter from the campus, Paxson provided questions about the reasons why the University would set if it did not violate the law. She noted that Brown was faced with the financial pressure of federal agencies as well as “an increasing push for the intrusion of the government” in academics.

The signing of the agreement resolves the government’s concerns without sacrificing university values, she said.

“We solidly support commitments that we have said on several occasions to protect all the members of our community against harassment and discrimination, and we protect the capacity of our faculty and our students to study and learn from academic matters of their choice, without censorship,” she wrote.

Brown has agreed to several measures to fight against anti -Semitism allegations on his campus in Providence, Rhode Island. The school said it will renew partnerships with Israeli academics and encourage students of the Jewish day to apply in Brown. At the end of this year, Brown must hire an external organization – to be chosen jointly by Brown and the Government – to conduct an investigation into the climate campus for Jewish students.

The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, said that the Brown agreement guarantees that students will be tried “only on their merits, not their race or their sex”.

“The Trump Administration successfully reverse the decades of awakening of decades from higher education in our country,” McMahon said in a statement.

The regulations require Brown disclosing a multitude of data on students who apply and are admitted to the university, with information on their race, their notes and their standardized results. The data will be subject to a “full audit” by the government.

He prohibits preferences to candidates because of their race. A decision of the Supreme Court in 2023 already prohibits such consideration, but the agreement seems to go further, preventing Brown from using any “proxy for racial admission”, including personal declarations or “diversity stories”.

The $ 50 million in payments to local labor development organizations contained by Brown must be paid over 10 years.

It is “a step forward” to pay a fine of the government, as Columbia agreed to do so, said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, an organization of major universities. However, Mitchell said, it is not clear if Brown and other universities are away from government pressure.

“Let us remember, they are agreements. They are not policies,” said Mitchell. “I had hoped that the Trump administration, when she arrived, would be interested in having serious political discussions on the future of higher education. They have not yet done this.”

Last week, Columbia agreed to pay $ 200 million to the government as part of its regulations. In negotiations with Harvard, the Trump administration was pressure for Cambridge, Massachusetts, the school to pay much more.

In another agreement, the University of Pennsylvania has undertaken to modify the school files established by the Swimmer Transgender Lia Thomas, an agreement which included any fine.