Cornell University on Friday reached a deal with the Trump administration to claw back hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding and end ongoing inquiries into its compliance with civil-rights laws. Cornell is the fourth institution to achieve an agreement with the Trump administration to restore federal money, following Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University. (The University of Virginia recently struck a deal to end five federal inquiries into whether the institution violated civil-rights law.)
The terms require Cornell, a private land-grant institution, to pay a $30-million fine to the federal government and invest an equal amount in agricultural and farming programs. Cornell will also have to provide anonymized undergraduate-admissions data to the federal government — broken down by school, race, grade-point average, and standardized-test scores — on a quarterly basis. In addition, the university agreed to “conduct annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, inluding the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry.” Cornell did not admit to any wrongdoing.
In a statement, President Michael Kotlikoff said he was pleased the discussions with the White House and Departments of Justice and Education concluded in an agreement that balanced a commitment to antidiscrimination law with protections for academic freedom and institutional independence.
“These discussions have now yielded a result that will enable us to return to our teaching and research in restored partnership with federal agencies,” Kotlikoff said.
The White House said in April that it had frozen $1 billion in funds to Cornell, but in his message Friday Kotlikoff said the amount of withheld research funding was “more than $250 million.” A separate message to the community acknowledged the disruptions to the university’s academic mission that “stop-work orders, grant terminations, and funding freezes” had caused.
