Brown to Fund Grad Students Who Lost Grants

Brown University will give money to some of its graduate students whose federal research grants were cut by the Trump administration, The Brown Daily Herald reported. 

“We want to make sure that we’re able to give each of you all of the attention and support that you need to get through comfortably [and] well supported,” Janet Blume, interim dean of the graduate school, said at a Graduate Student Council meeting Wednesday. She said the university will honor the financial commitments of M.F.A. and Ph.D. students who lost their grants. 

The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies have terminated thousands of academic researchers’ grants—including many at Brown—that don’t align with the Trump administration’s ideological agenda. 

Blume said Brown is also reducing its graduate student admissions target this year to allow “time to work out issues of the federal financial landscape and also shifts in the job market.”

In addition to canceling research grants, numerous federal agencies have put forth plans to cap the amount of money they reimburse universities to cover indirect research costs, which universities say will hurt their budgets and slow innovation. Brown is among the institutions suing the government over its changes to indirect cost reimbursement rates, which are on pause during ongoing litigation. 

Brown, which had a $46 million deficit before President Trump took office in January, has also faced targeted scrutiny from the Trump administration. The university implemented a hiring freeze in March. In April, the government froze $510 million of Brown’s federal research dollars in retaliation for the university’s alleged failures to address antisemitism on campus.

In June, administrators warned of the potential for “significant cost-cutting” measures amid the “deep financial losses” resulting from grant cuts, increased endowment taxes and threats to international student enrollment.

The following month, Brown and the government came to an agreement, and the frozen grant money is coming back to the university. However, the deal did not restore the grants of researchers whose funding was terminated as part of the broader ideologically driven policy changes.