Trump Admin Freezes Half of Princeton’s Federal Funding

The Trump administration froze about $210 million in federal funding to Princeton University on Tuesday, about half of the university’s total federal grants for this fiscal year, according to reports from various media outlets. 

The university confirmed Tuesday that officials had been notified that dozens of grants were suspended by several federal agencies, including NASA and the Departments of Defense and Energy. In a campuswide email sent Tuesday, Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber said the agencies had provided no reasoning for the funding freeze and did not cite a specific dollar amount. 

Representatives for the university declined to confirm the dollar amount cited in the media to Inside Higher Ed.

The funding freeze comes less than two weeks after Eisgruber published an op-ed in The Atlantic criticizing the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education and calling on college presidents to “speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.”

In his email Tuesday, Eisgruber said Princeton University would “comply with the law.”

“We will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism,” he wrote. “Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this University.” 

The tactic is a familiar one in the Trump administration’s higher education playbook. The administration cut $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University early last month, extracting a number of concessions from the university in exchange for the possibility of restoring that funding. On Monday, federal officials announced a review of almost $9 billion in grants to Harvard University, and on March 19 they froze $175 million in funding at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Maine system is also facing a $100 million funding pause.