Cornell and Northwestern Universities have joined five other schools in the Ivy League in facing steep funding cuts from the Trump administration, ostensibly over their handling of campus antisemitism.
Both schools have Jewish presidents. In Cornell’s case, Michael Kotlikoff, who was recently promoted from interim to permanent president, has broadcast confidence about the climate for Jewish students as the Trump administration has embarked on a routine of penalizing schools in order to force policy concessions.
Kotlikoff recently spoke to Jewish publications and penned a New York Times column about his belief that universities can stick to their values while still ensuring freedom from harassment.
“We’ve had a relatively peaceful two semesters this year,” he told JTA earlier this month as part of his media campaign. “We’ve had a couple of situations where individuals who were protesting really went over the line and infringed on other people’s rights, and in both of those cases, there were consequences for those infringements.”
Now, Cornell is poised to lose $1 billion in federal funding, while Northwestern faces $790 million in cuts. Both said the Trump administration had not yet informed them about the cuts. In other cases, the administration has issued demands for universities to meet to potentially earn back their federal funds. The administration has not explicitly announced antisemitism as a reason for the cuts, but it cited a different reason for only one of the seven schools targeted.
In a statement late Tuesday, Kotlikoff and two Cornell provosts said the school had earlier in the day received 75 “stop-work” orders for research programs. “The affected grants include research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research — work of significance for our national defense, the competitiveness of our economy, and the health of our citizens,” they wrote.
The cuts come as multiple major Jewish groups that called for action to curb antisemitism on campuses have ramped up criticism of the Trump administration’s funding cuts.
“American Jewish Committee has repeatedly insisted that universities must take action to counter and prevent antisemitism on their campuses,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday. “However, the broad, sweeping, and devastating cuts in federal funding that a growing number of American research universities have been subjected to in recent weeks, under the auspices of combating antisemitism, will damage America’s standing as a center of innovation and research excellence.”
Other Jewish voices have warned that the Trump administration is weaponizing concerns about antisemitism to repress speech, undercut universities and pursue an anti-immigrant agenda.
The Trump administration warned 60 colleges and universities last month that they were under investigation for antisemitic harassment and discrimination. Northwestern and Cornell were on the list and both occupied positions of prominence in the wave of pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war.
At Cornell, a professor said at a rally that he was “exhilarated” by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel; he apologized and was suspended but now has returned to campus. A student protest leader, meanwhile, recently left the country after losing his visa and being told he would be deported.
Northwestern drew criticism last year after President Michael Schill was the among the first presidents to strike a deal with pro-Palestinian protest leaders. Jewish members of a campus antisemitism committee resigned over the deal, and some national Jewish groups called for Schill’s resignation. He was called into Congress to defend his decision in a tense hearing.
“By engaging students with dialogue instead of force, we modeled the behavior we want to apply going forward,” Schill said during the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing in May.
So far, Columbia University, the first school to face cuts, has announced policy changes aimed at winning back $400 million in frozen funds. Harvard University, which has $9 billion on the line, has not said how it plans to respond to the Trump administration’s demands that it end both diversity initiatives and antisemitism.
Northwestern is the first school outside of the Ivy League to be targeted. Only two Ivy League schools have so far evaded sanctions: Dartmouth College, where a Jewish professor was thrown to the ground when police cracked down on a pro-Palestinian encampment last year, was not on the Trump administration’s list of 60 schools facing investigations, and Yale University, which was. (Vice President J.D. Vance is a Yale Law School graduate who has credited the university with propelling his rise from poverty to politics.)
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