MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The White House says it is freezing more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and almost $800 million for Northwestern University. It says the money will be held up while alleged civil rights violations are investigated at both schools. The cuts are part of an effort by the Trump administration to use government funding to force colleges and universities to comply with the president's political agenda. NPR's Elissa Nadworny joins us to tell us more about this. Good morning, Elissa.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So say more about these latest developments. What's the backstory?
NADWORNY: So these private colleges, Cornell University in New York and Northwestern University in Illinois, this large funding pause is stemming from an investigation the Department of Education launched into 60 universities for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students on campus. The administration says the research funds are going to be frozen while it investigates. And I should note that the Department of Education has never fully cut off funding to an institution over civil rights violations until, of course, this year when Trump has done this now at a handful of universities.
MARTIN: How does this affect the ongoing work of these universities, say, doing, you know, research into issues like, you know, cancer, for example? Does the research just stop?
NADWORNY: Well, it does. I mean, for example, take Cornell. In a statement, the University said it had received more than 75 stop-work orders from the Department of Defense related to research in national defense, cybersecurity, health. Those grants, they said, fund research into things like jet engines, superconductors, space and satellite communications and cancer research.
MARTIN: Is this legal?
NADWORNY: So the government has the power to withhold federal funds from universities, but it's the way they're going about it that caused some legal questions. Here's Michael Dorf. He's a law professor at Cornell.
MICHAEL DORF: The answer to the question, can the government do this, is no. The answer to the question, can the government get away with this is unknown.
NADWORNY: So if the government finds that students' civil rights were violated, the law says, like, the next step is to make sure, A, it doesn't happen again going forward, and then, B, there are all sorts of procedural hoops, like making a report to Congress, negotiating with the university. All of that has to happen before funding is cut.
MARTIN: So how might a college or university leader respond to this?
NADWORNY: Well, really, the only way would be a lawsuit. And it's kind of this existential question for universities. Basically, can I survive financially right now if I put up a legal fight? Because a lawsuit could take a long time, and even then, there's a risk that this whole thing could backfire for them. OK, maybe they get their current grant money unfrozen, but what about future grants from the federal government? Are those at risk? Here's Dorf
DORF: I fully understand the trepidation of university leadership because they're not only thinking about, can we win this case, but can we secure our funding going forward into the future?
MARTIN: Elissa, I have a different question here, but are there people who see these cuts and agree with them?
NADWORNY: Well, there is certainly a sentiment among some scholars that universities are profiting off federal research grants, that this system that was set up after World War II to have the federal government fund research through universities has just ballooned too big. I talked with Richard Vedder, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, a libertarian think tank and the author of the forthcoming book, "Let Colleges Fail."
RICHARD VEDDER: It's not perhaps the ideal way to change things. It may be a disruptive way to change things, a chaotic way to change things, in some cases, even an unfair way to change things. But nonetheless, a message is being sent.
NADWORNY: He argues that higher education has a lot of waste and he sees the administration's attempt to reevaluate research grant money as a valid one.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Elissa Nadworny. Elissa, thank you.
NADWORNY: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
