By Grace Gilson
Princeton University has become the latest in a string of Ivy League universities to have its federal funding threatened by the Trump administration amid investigations of antisemitism on campus.
The university’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, announced the cuts in an email to the Princeton community Tuesday morning. He wrote that the reasoning behind the cuts had not been explained yet, but suggested that they could be related to antisemitism.
“Princeton University will comply with the law. We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism,” wrote Eisgruber.
Princeton was one of 60 schools that received letters last month from the Trump administration informing them that they were under federal investigation for allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
Several dozen research grants were cut, including from the Department of Energy, NASA and the Defense Department, according to the email. Eisgruber, who discovered he had Jewish heritage in 2008, also alluded to plans to fight the funding freeze.
“Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this University,” Eisgruber wrote.
The announcement comes just one day after Harvard had $9 billion in federal grants and contracts threatened by the administration as part of its campaign against claims of antisemitism.
Last month, $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University was also frozen by the Trump administration, but the school has since agreed to a series of demands in a bid to release the funding, including a provision banning masks at protests.
The University of Pennsylvania also had $175 million in federal funding suspended last month by the Trump administration following an investigation into the school’s swimming program over a transgender athlete.
The school did not announce the total amount of funding that has been frozen, but a report from the Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, placed the figure at $210 million.
Princeton received $455 million in federal grants during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, according to the school’s most recent report.
The Department of Education opened an investigation into Princeton last year after a Jewish conservative activist unaffiliated with the school, Zachary Marschall, filed a Title VI complaint against the school. Jewish leaders at Princeton disputed his allegations at the time.
“Princeton certainly does not deserve to be singled out in this way,” Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, a Jewish chaplain at Princeton, said to The New York Times. “I want to say very definitively that antisemitism does not define the experience of campus life for the Jewish students.”
