The Cosmic Watchdog

The Trump administration moved this week to suspend dozens of federal grants to Princeton University, the fourth Ivy League school that has seen its financial support from Washington reduced or explicitly threatened since March.

Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, told the university community in an email late Tuesday morning that “several dozen” grants had been suspended.

“The full rationale for this action is not yet clear, but I want to be clear about the principles that will guide our response,” Mr. Eisgruber wrote. “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. Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this university.”

Mr. Eisgruber said that the university had been told on Monday and Tuesday that it was losing at least some research support from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and NASA. The university did not immediately announce the value of the affected grants.

The White House did not immediately comment, but the Trump administration has eagerly pursued elite universities in recent weeks.

The administration stripped Columbia University of $400 million in grants and contracts in March and later suspended about $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania. On Monday afternoon, the administration said it was reviewing approximately $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard University and its web of affiliates.

The government attributed its moves involving Columbia and Harvard to accusations of endemic antisemitism on campuses — assertions that have been contested by many at those schools. The administration said it paused funding at Penn because the university had allowed a transgender woman to participate on its women’s swim team in 2022.

But even as the government has taken steps against elite universities, this week’s turn toward Princeton was something of a surprise. Although conservatives have vilified the university, a new federal task force focused on antisemitism — the driving force behind the funding fights at Columbia and Harvard — did not include Princeton in a February list of 10 colleges that it planned to investigate.

Princeton, however, was one of 60 colleges that received letters last month from the Department of Education that warned of “potential enforcement actions” against schools if the government concluded that they did not do enough to protect Jewish students.

As the war in Gaza unfolded, Princeton had managed to avoid much of the turmoil that engulfed other prominent universities, like Columbia and Harvard.

Princeton was quick to shut down efforts last April by pro-Palestinian demonstrators to erect tents on campus. Some demonstrators occupied a building in the center of campus, and several students were arrested and charged with trespassing. Unlike at other universities, the president of Princeton was not called to testify about antisemitism before Congress.

Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, a chaplain and the executive director of Princeton’s Center for Jewish Life, bridled at the federal action, saying that the Trump administration was looking in the wrong place if it wanted to combat antisemitism.

“Princeton certainly does not deserve to be singled out in this way,” he said. “I want to say very definitively that antisemitism does not define the experience of campus life for the Jewish students.” If members of the Princeton community expressed antisemitic views, they were “largely marginalized,” he said.

Mr. Eisgruber said the affected grants at Princeton involved research. Princeton, like Columbia, Harvard and Penn, receives far more federal research funding than many colleges.

According to Princeton’s most recent financial report, the university received more than $455 million through government grants and contracts during the fiscal year that ended in June 2024. That money accounted for roughly 18 percent of the university’s revenues.

Since the start of World War II, the federal government has had an outsize role in supporting research on American campuses. University leaders have warned in recent weeks that the Trump administration’s tactics were endangering the nation’s economic competitiveness.

In a statement on Monday evening, the board of the Association of American Universities, an industry group, warned that cutting off research funding “for reasons unrelated to research sets a dangerous and counterproductive precedent.”

The board, currently chaired by Mr. Eisgruber, urged the government to follow “established procedures” to investigate accusations of discrimination, arguing that those protocols were “the best way to ensure accountability by universities and to preserve our nation’s place as the global leader in science and innovation.”

Robert P. George, a legal scholar and well-known conservative thinker at Princeton, said it seemed likely that the federal actions against university funding were heading for a showdown in court.

“If the government’s going to take action against any university, not just Princeton, we have to be sure they’re following the proper procedures,” said Dr. George, director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton who teaches a course on civil liberties.

“I am one of the founders of the Academic Freedom Alliance,” he added. “I believe that the protection of academic freedom is crucial to the mission of the university.”

Princeton did not detail on Tuesday how it might respond to the government’s grant suspensions. But Mr. Eisgruber, a lawyer, previously signaled his discomfort after Columbia agreed to a set of demands that the government imposed as preconditions for talks about lifting the funding suspensions there.

“Academic freedom is a fundamental principle of universities — it has to be protected,” Mr. Eisgruber told “PBS NewsHour” last month. “And so I have concerns if universities make concessions about that. And I think that once you make concessions once, it’s hard not to make them again.”