Tag: deal

  • Brown Strikes Deal With Trump Administration

    Brown Strikes Deal With Trump Administration

    Brown agreed to donate $50 million to workforce development programs in Rhode Island.

    Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

    Brown University has struck a deal with the Trump administration to restore about $510 million in frozen federal research funds in exchange for various concessions but no payment, officials announced Wednesday.

    The federal government will restore millions in frozen research funding and settle investigations over allegations of campus antisemitism, according to the agreement. While Brown will not pay out a settlement to resolve the complaints like its Ivy League counterpart Columbia University did, the university pledged $50 million over the next decade to state workforce development efforts in Rhode Island.

    Brown is the second university to cut a deal with the Trump administration since Columbia reached a similar agreement last week. Trump officials said the Columbia settlement would be a template for their talks with other colleges, though other higher ed experts argued the deal was unlawful and represented a threat to the sector at large. (Harvard University, which has also been in the administration’s crosshairs over alleged antisemitism, has reportedly considered a settlement of up to $500 million to resolve its ongoing dispute.)

    Still, Brown agreed to multiple other changes. They include adopting the Trump administration’s definitions of male and female, not performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors or prescribing them puberty blockers, providing admissions data to the federal government, and conducting a campus climate survey and sharing the results with the federal government. Brown also agreed to codify prior changes officials announced to combat discrimination on campus.

    The deal does not include restrictions on campus curriculum or programs.

    “At its core, the agreement preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation, and it enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty in a way that ensures Brown will continue to be the Brown that our students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and friends have known for generations,” President Christina Paxson said in a statement.

    Brown announced the agreement shortly after the university took out a $500 million loan, which could have helped plug research funding holes or fund a protracted legal battle. The university also borrowed $300 million in April after the Trump administration froze research funding over allegations of antisemitism connected to pro-Palestinian protests.

    The funding freeze, along with other changes in federal policy, has hit the university hard, and officials warned in June of the potential for “deep financial losses.”

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the deal, asserting in a statement that the agreement would protect Jewish students from antisemitism as well as women’s sports.

    “Restoring our nation’s higher education institutions to places dedicated to truth-seeking, academic merit, and civil debate—where all students can learn free from discrimination and harassment—will be a lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come,” McMahon wrote in a social media post.

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  • UQ vaccine bought in billion-dollar deal – Campus Review

    UQ vaccine bought in billion-dollar deal – Campus Review

    Breakthrough vaccine technology invented by the University of Queensland is at the centre of a landmark deal worth up to $1.6bn struck with global pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

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  • Federal judges deal major blow to Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance

    Federal judges deal major blow to Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance

    Two federal judges issued separate rulings Thursday that together dealt a major blow to the Trump administration’s recent guidance threatening to strip federal funding from colleges and K-12 schools that consider race in any of their policies, including scholarships and housing. 

    U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the U.S. Department of Education did not follow proper procedures when issuing the Feb. 14 letter and postponed its effective date nationwide while the legal challenge against the guidance plays out. 

    The order came in response to a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers and other groups, which alleged that the guidance “radically upends” federal antidiscrimination law and is too vague for colleges and K-12 school officials to understand what conduct is prohibited. 

    The guidance interprets the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious college admissions to extend to every aspect of education, including financial aid, administrative support and graduation ceremonies. 

    According to AFT, the letter also implied that a wide variety of “core instruction, activities, and programs” used in teaching students — from diversity initiatives to instruction on systemic racism — could now be considered illegal discrimination. 

    The Feb. 14 letter asserted that colleges and K-12 schools had “toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices.” 

    The Education Department appeared to walk back some of the strictest aspects of its guidance in a March Q&A document, but Gallagher wrote that the Q&A still lacked “sufficient clarity to override the express terms of the [Feb. 14] Letter.”

    Gallagher, a federal distict judge in Maryland, said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their arguments that the letter exceeds the Education Department’s authority by attempting to exercise control over curriculum. 

    “The government cannot proclaim entire categories of classroom content discriminatory to side-step the bounds of its statutory authority,” Gallagher wrote. 

    AFT Maryland President Kenya Campbell hailed the court’s order on Thursday. 

    “This preliminary injunction pauses the chaos caused by targeting and attacking vital communities and temporarily protects the critical funding schools, from our K-12 schools to our higher education institutions, rely on,” Campbell said. 

    The order came the same day as another federal judge made a similar ruling in a separate case brought against the Feb. 14 guidance. 

    The National Education Association, its New Hampshire affiliate and the Center for Black Educator Development sued the Education Department in early March, arguing the guidance undermines the free speech rights of educators. 

    Although the plaintiffs had sought a nationwide injunction, federal Judge Landya McCafferty, ruling for New Hampshire district court,  only blocked enforcement of the guidance for federally funded colleges and schools that employ or contract with the plaintiffs’ members. NEA alone has about 3 million members, including higher education workers.

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