The president of Brown University said this week that the National Institutes of Health has not reimbursed the university for its expenses associated with active grants since early April.
“These unreimbursed expenses, which amount to millions of dollars per week, represent a significant threat to Brown’s financial sustainability and its ability to conduct federally funded research,” Christina Paxson, the university’s president, wrote in an email sent Wednesday to alumni titled, “Advocating for Brown – What’s at stake.”
Paxson’s note comes after the publication of internal NIH emails saying the agency would be withholding funding from a number of universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration, including Columbia, Brown, Northwestern, Cornell and Harvard. Trump and his allies have claimed that elite universities have fostered antisemitism and suppressed free speech. The other universities named in that email were not immediately available for comment on whether their active NIH research awards have been withheld.
In her email to Brown alumni, Paxson wrote, “It’s important to note that, as of the date of this letter, we have not received official notice of any large-scale or across-the-board funding cuts, nor have we been served with any demands like those Columbia and Harvard have received as a condition for securing funding. However, approximately three dozen of Brown’s grants and contracts have been terminated, and that number is increasing every week.”
The Trump administration announced in early April that it would be withholding $510 million in funding from Brown, after the Department of Education sent letters to the university and dozens of others in February informing them that they were under investigation for “antisemitic discrimination and harassment.” Brown, like other universities, was the site of student protests last spring against the war in Gaza.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, said in an email to NOTUS that HHS does not comment on active investigations. An administration official told The Daily Caller last month that Brown’s federal funding would be “paused” while the university was being investigated.
A spokesperson for Brown, Brian Clark, confirmed in an email to NOTUS that the university has both had grants formally terminated by the Trump administration and not been reimbursed for expenses related to active NIH grants since April 3.
“We continue to have no direct information to substantiate what’s been reported in the news about any large-scale funding freeze for Brown, and we’ve not received explanation for why expenses for active NIH grants are not being reimbursed,” Clark wrote.
Brown is a plaintiff in an ongoing legal challenge to the Trump administration’s proposed cap on NIH indirect cost funds. That legal battle resulted in a judge issuing a pause on the proposed cap.
But Brown has not filed suit against the administration for its withholding of the $510 million in funding. Harvard University filed suit against the Trump administration after refusing to comply with Trump’s demands that it dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
In her email, Paxson told alumni that any donations made to the university’s fundraising arm would “help the University navigate through this difficult time period.” It also introduced a new “Research Resilience Fund,” which Paxson said would provide “direct operational support for research and scholarship facing delay or disruption from instability in federal funding.”
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the day the email from Brown’s president was sent. It was sent on Wednesday.
Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.