President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen $790 million in grants and government contracts for Northwestern University, according to media reports.
The New York Times was first to report the funding halt on Tuesday night, citing information from two unnamed officials. An Associated Press story this morning confirmed the freeze, citing the White House.
The university has not heard from Trump’s administration about the alleged freeze, NU spokesperson Jon Yates told the RoundTable on Tuesday.
“Northwestern was informed by members of the media that the federal government plans to freeze a significant portion of our federal funding,” Yates said in an email.
He added that the university’s “innovative and life-saving research … is now at jeopardy,” referencing the recent development of the world’s smallest pacemaker and studies on Alzheimer’s disease as examples.
“The University has fully cooperated with investigations by both the Department of Education and Congress,” Yates concluded.
In an email to the community sent shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday, Northwestern President Michael Schill said that “we are working closely with members of our Board, deans and our administration to assess the impact,” and promised to keep students and staff up to date on “the implications of these actions.”
The Times and AP reported that the administration has paused $1 billion in funds designated for Cornell University, too. Northwestern is the first non-Ivy League school to be targeted by the administration’s funding freezes, joining Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. In total, the seven schools reportedly have had a combined $3.3 billion in primarily research funds frozen.
The news comes amid both civil rights investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice into alleged antisemitism on Northwestern’s campus. Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is also scheduled to visit Evanston and nine other universities this spring.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-9th District) said that the reported funding freeze for NU “will put life-saving cures and critical research at risk.”
“This freeze won’t protect the Jewish students Trump claims to defend, it will instead undermine their academic endeavors,” Schakowsky said in the post.
Nearly a year ago, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce called Schill to a campus antisemitism hearing on Capitol Hill. The university released a progress report just last week detailing new protest policies, updates to the student code of conduct, discipline for students and staff found in violation of those policies, and data showing an 88% drop in reported incidents of antisemitism from November 2023 to November 2024.
Meanwhile, the same committee sent a letter to Schill and Board of Trustees Chair Peter Barris on March 27 announcing a new investigation into legal clinics at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law, specifically targeting the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic for representing protesters arrested during a demonstration against the war in Gaza that temporarily blocked highway traffic.
The clinic “uses Northwestern’s name and resources to engage in progressive-left political advocacy,” the letter said.
Notably, the letter mentions Northwestern permitting “the return to campus of journalism professor Steven Thrasher, who was criminally charged for obstructing and physically struggling with police officers in an attempt to defend the illegal encampment” that pro-Palestinian protesters set up on Deering Meadow in April 2024.
The Cook County State’s Attorney ultimately dropped those charges, but Thrasher announced in a March press release that Northwestern had denied him tenure and intends to let him go when his contract is up next year.
But he was still scheduled to teach a journalism course on covering the LGBTQ+ community this spring, until Northwestern canceled that class (and all of his future courses) at the last minute on March 31, the night before the start of spring quarter and just a few days after receiving that letter from Congress.
“Your public lobbying, mischaracterizations and efforts to encourage pressure from groups complicate and compromise the process of tenure review, decision making, and appeal,” NU told Thrasher. “Therefore, we are concerned about your presence with students in our community.”
Editor’s note: This story has updated with confirmation from the AP and reaction from Rep. Jan Schakowsky.
Trump administration freezes $790 million in Northwestern funding: reports is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.