$510m funding cut for Brown University would have ‘a ripple effect throughout our economy,' R.I. officials said

Boston Globe

04-04-2025

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Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, a Democrat who has championed the state's life sciences efforts, told the Globe that a $510 million cut 'will have a ripple effect throughout our economy.'
Brown is 'a strategic partner in the life science efforts that we just started and were seeing some very, very good results,' said Shekarchi. 'This could be a setback. I am concerned.'
Brown is the fifth university to face a potentially dire loss of federal funding. On Thursday, the Trump administration's antisemitism task force sent Harvard University a
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Maey Petrie, executive director of the nonprofit
'The long-term effects on scientific innovation are hard to overstate,' said Petrie. 'The administration may not fully grasp the damage being done for years, but from where we stand, it's already clear: research pipelines are being choked, momentum is being lost, and crucial health equity work is being deprioritized.'
Brown University officials had not been informed of the cuts on Thursday night, even as news reports based on information from unnamed sources were published by The Daily Caller, The New York Times, and Bloomberg.
US Congressman Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat, told the Globe he spoke to Brown president Christina H. Paxson by phone on Thursday. 'She hadn't actually received any official communication from the administration with any specifics,' he said.
In a message sent to university officials Thursday evening and
obtained by the Globe, Provost Frank Doyle said Brown was aware of 'troubling rumors emerging about federal action on Brown research grants,' but that officials had 'no information to substantiate any of these rumors.'
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Some members of Rhode Island's congressional delegation are expected to meet with officials at Brown on Friday, according to a congressional staffer with direct knowledge on the matter.
Representatives for the Trump White House and the US Department of Education did not respond to the Globe's requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Brown University students said the Trump administration's cuts, made in the name of protecting them from antisemitism, did not make them feel any safer.
'As a Jewish student, I do not feel this makes me safer in the slightest,' said Andrew Rovinsky, class of 2025. 'Brown is not a perfect place when it comes to antisemitism, but I have never felt unsafe on this campus and in this community and have always felt free to express myself publicly as a Jewish student. The trump administration is, in my view, weaponizing antisemitism to repress dissent and scholarship that it disagrees with.'
'This is not about Jewish students, but the trump administration's political agenda,' he added.
'I am a proud Jewish student at Brown, and I fully reject the slashing of funds in the name of combating antisemitism,' said Canaan Estes, class of 2028. 'I feel safer in spaces of academic engagement and open dialogue, not censorship and fear.'
Others noted that antisemitism exists at Brown, but the university has worked to combat it.
'At a university where nearly a quarter of the students are Jewish and Jewish life thrives, it's difficult for me to see what could warrant such a response from the federal government,' said Eli Williams, member of the class of 2028.
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Maya Rackoff, class of 2025, agreed. 'The Trump administration is going about it in a counterproductive and authoritative way, infringing upon real and perceived academic freedom,' she said. 'The most ironic part about cutting Brown's funding is that the Brown administration has been uncommonly strong in supporting Jewish and Zionist students, and Jewish life has thrived here over the past year and a half.'
A pro-Palestinian encampment at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on April 24, 2024.
PHILIP KEITH/NYT
The Trump administration has targeted
colleges for their handling of antisemitism after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel's subsequent war against the militants in Gaza.
In late 2023, more than 40 student activists led by the Brown Divest Coalition
Still, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation in 2024 into whether Brown's administration failed to respond to incidents of alleged harassment against students with Jewish ancestry, which would have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In a July 2024 resolution, Brown denied it violated Title VI but agreed to expand nondiscrimination trainings and other measures, including 'ongoing monitoring.'
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The initial complaint that launched the investigation was filed by Zachary Marschall, the editor of Campus Reform, a conservative news organization focused on universities. Campus Reform has filed several lawsuits alleging antisemitism, arguing that schools 'failed to protect students of Jewish heritage following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.'
In March, Brown was one of 60 universities that received a letter from the US Department of Education, warning it could face 'enforcement actions' if they failed to 'protect Jewish students on campus.'
'That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws,' Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said at the time.
Pro-lestinian protestors rally as they march around university hall at the pro-Palestinian encampment at Brown University as they await answers from their delegation who are meeting with school leaders on campus in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 29, 2024.
JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
For the first time since 2002, Brown has hired firms to lobby Congress and the Trump administration on its behalf. Representatives from Cornerstone Government Affairs and AxAdvocacy, which touts its
Even with federal funding on the chopping block, Brown is unlikely to get help from the state. For the last few years, Brown has requested millions in a state budget appropriation to support cancer research. They've never received the funding, and Shekarchi said Trump's latest proposed cuts 'doesn't change my mind at all.'
'It's very hard for my caucus to support Brown University, because there's such a very large endowment,' said Speaker Shekarchi. 'And we have state universities who have just as much of a competing need.
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'Everybody needs help. Everybody's getting cut. The health department's getting caught. Right. The Department of Education's getting cutting,' said Shekarchi. 'Sadly, elections have consequences. And we're going to see a lot more of this.'
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Sofia Barnett, a Globe correspondent and Brown University student, contributed to this report.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at