The Trump administration has frozen federal funding amounting to more than $1 billion for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
This decision comes in the wake of ongoing civil rights investigations into both institutions. According to two officials familiar with the matter, the freeze primarily impacts grants and contracts from various government departments, including Agriculture, Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services.
The freeze is linked to active investigations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, with one official confirming to Fox News that the money was suspended due to “several ongoing, credible, and concerning Title VI investigations.”
This latest move is part of a broader effort targeting elite universities across the country over their failure to deal with antisemitism on their campuses.
In recent months, the Trump administration has suspended or canceled more than $3.3 billion in federal funding to top academic institutions. Other universities that have seen funding halted include Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton.
Representatives from Cornell have yet to comment on the funding freeze.
In a statement quoted by WBEZ in Chicago, Northwestern spokesman Jon Yates said the school was “informed by members of the media that the federal government plans to freeze a significant portion of our federal funding. The university has not received any official notification from the federal government.”
Both universities have seen more antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
The most egregious incident at Cornell saw a student arrested after threatening to kill Jews on campus.
The menacing messages, posted on a forum about fraternities and sororities, alarmed students at the school in upstate New York and led to students being advised to stay away from the school’s kosher dining hall.
The student, Patrick Dai, later pleaded guilty to posting the threatening messages. He was sentenced in August to 21 months in prison.
In another incident, Cornell History Professor Russell Rickford was placed on “voluntary leave” after widespread public outcry when he was recorded at an off-campus anti-Israel rally cheering the Hamas attack as “exhilarating” and “energizing”.
Rickford later apologized for his comments and was back teaching at the school this past fall.
Northwestern University was recently named as one of five universities being investigated by the Trump administration over alleged antisemitism.
Last month, a professor at Northwestern University, who was involved in pro-Palestinian Arab student protests last year, announced that he was denied tenure and will not have his position renewed in April 2026.