Brown University has cut a deal with the Trump administration to restore research grant funding to the school, in exchange for commitments on women’s sports, antisemitism and admissions practices and a promise to donate $50 million to workforce development programs.
The Rhode Island-based school is now the third Ivy League university to reach a deal with the administration, which has lashed out at a range of colleges. Columbia University agreed to pay the federal government a $200 million settlement earlier this month, and the University of Pennsylvania reached a deal with the government over transgender athletes.
Brown announced the deal in a statement Wednesday and shared a copy of a nine-page agreement with the federal government. The Department of Education also confirmed in a statement that it had struck a deal with Brown.
Under the terms of the three-year deal released by Brown, the federal government agreed to restore frozen Health and Human Services grants to the school and close pending federal non-discrimination investigations into the university.
The school said Wednesday it has lost dozens of federal grants and hasn’t been reimbursed for over $50 million in expenses related to National Institutes of Health grants — and that total is growing by over $3 million a week.
In exchange for the end to the grant freeze, Brown agreed to pay $50 million to local workforce programs over the next decade. It also promised to provide female student-athletes with locker rooms “strictly separated on the basis of sex,” define male and female for athletic purposes in a way that’s consistent with President Trump’s executive orders and not offer gender-affirming medical care to minors.
Brown also said it will not promote “unlawful DEI goals,” would commission a campus survey that asks about — among other things — issues of antisemitism and give the government access to admissions and discrimination complaint data. The school promised not to offer racial preferences in admissions — though the Supreme Court previously barred affirmative action policies in 2023.
The agreement says Brown did not admit to wrongdoing and “expressly denies liability regarding the United States’ allegations,” and specifies that the government does not have the “authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.”
In a message to the school community, Brown President Christina Paxson also says Brown will not promise to make any direct payments to the government. She described it as a voluntary agreement.
Paxson says Brown was under “threat” — Ed. Secretary assails “woke” policies
In her message, Paxson argued that many parts of Wednesday’s agreement line up with commitments Brown had already made to “ensure compliance with federal laws prohibiting discrimination.” She said the provisions on gender and sports are “consistent with NCAA requirements and Brown’s current policies,” and the government is already entitled to ask for demographic data. She also noted that the agreement doesn’t define the term “unlawful DEI.”
But the university president noted that some parts of the deal stemmed from “priorities of the federal administration in resolving the funding freeze.” She said the school “took great care to balance these interests with the core needs of the institution.”
Paxson said the deal “preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation, and it enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty.” She wrote that the school’s mission was “under threat” from financially painful grant cancellations and a “growing push for government intrusion into the fundamental academic operations of colleges and universities.”
In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration is “successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions,” and pointed to the agreement’s measures on antisemitism and women’s sports.
“Because of the Trump Administration’s resolution agreement with Brown University, aspiring students will be judged solely on their merits, not their race or sex,” she wrote.
The White House called the deal a “historic settlement with Brown University to restore fairness, merit, and safety in higher education.”