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.