The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Threatens To Cut Federal Funds For Colleges And Universities

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Dozens of American universities are under investigation by the Trump administration for use of DEI initiatives and alleged anti-Semitism on campuses. The message is clear: comply with federal executive orders and policy changes or lose federal funding. How are educational leaders responding? This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, correspondent Elissa Nadworny, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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12 36 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, April 8 of 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. But hopefully I will have finished my salmon and fresh spring asparagus. Enjoy the show. I love that so real because that's how I listen to podcasts sitting in my kitchen waiting for the oven to be done. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. American universities are under immense pressure from this White House. A number of schools are under investigation for claims of anti-Semitism on campus and DEI initiatives. And the Trump administration is threatening to cut a lot of federal funds to those schools. So today on the show, we dig into the Trump administration's threats to American universities. And to help us do that, we're joined by a very special guest, our colleague Alyssa Nadwerny. She's been covering this story. And Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

I'm so happy to be here. So I want to begin by asking you to explain the scope of this crackdown on academic institutions, which schools are being targeted. So so far, the kind of big buckets of investigation that the Trump administration has opened among colleges include 60 universities for alleged anti-Semitism and this range includes private institutions, Ivy League schools, big state systems all across the country. So the second bucket is about 45 schools that are accused of failing to follow the Trump administration's guidance on

diversity, equity, and inclusion. So the Trump administration put out a number of executive orders, essentially banning DEI from campuses and in the classroom. Okay. And what does it mean for these colleges to lose federal dollars? I hear what you're saying when you talk about big public universities, though I also presume some of these are private institutions who, you know, I think some folks would assume maybe don't rely as much on federal funds, but maybe you can clarify that. Yeah, fair, fair.

Colleges and universities get a lot of money from the federal government for a lot of different things. So you've got kind of the bucket of grants. Those are, couldn't be anywhere from supporting an international writers' institution, say at the University of Iowa. They fund soybean research, like at the University of Iowa. They fund soybean research like at the University of Illinois, but they also fund research in pharma, you know, new drugs and development and cybersecurity or national security. At a small liberal arts college they would fund financial aid. So we're talking about Pell grants for

low-income students, we're talking about work-study programs, even student loans. So when I talk to small liberal arts schools or small private colleges, yeah, they don't get a ton of money for research in these kind of big NIH grants, but they get a large amount of money from financial aid, things like Pell grants, things like work study grants. Mara, this attack on universities, I would say, is not necessarily something that is uniquely distinct from this administration. We have seen them pressure law firms, frankly, even some news organizations. And I'm curious if you can help us understand what exactly the mission is from this White

House. Yeah, I think the overall mission is pretty clear, even though if you take each institution in turn, it's really not clear what he wants. Just like with tariffs, what is pretty clear, even though if you take each institution in turn, it's really not clear what he wants, just like with tariffs, what is the purpose, their conflicting goals. Universities, does he want them to stop teaching the history of the civil rights movement or does he want them to sign a certain kind of pledge about anti-Semitism? It's very unclear.

What is clear is that this is about domination, this is about defunding what he and his MAGA supporters think are the power centers of the left, whether they're law firms that represent his political opponents, news organizations that report on him in a way he doesn't like, universities that have protests on campus. So I think this is all about defunding the left, downsizing it. The universities are seen as the enemy. We know that that JD Vance and others have described them that way. So I think that's the way to understand this. These institutions, big research universities are seen as enemies of Trump. I want to ask you, Alyssa, about how colleges are responding to this moment.

Over the weekend, I interviewed the president of Princeton University, Christopher Icegruber, and he has described this moment as the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare and spoken rather vocally about what he sees as threats to academic freedom. I know you have been speaking to a lot of leaders at colleges and universities. What are they telling you? Yeah, I've been talking with presidents and chancellors at university systems and small liberal arts colleges all across the country.

The thread I'm seeing is really this bafflement at this moment where the federal government and the university systems and colleges are at odds with each other. I mean, this is a partnership that these presidents have watched their entire career be kind of symbiotic. The federal government and the universities working together to strengthen the United States. And so what I heard over and over again is fear, yes, but also marking that this is kind of unprecedented. I served 38 years in the Navy. I flew in 125 under fire combat missions. People ask me all the time, do I miss flying? I say, no, the job that I'm in right now is as dynamic as it can be without actually being fired at. I'm trying to be a calmly beating heart in a moment of swirling chaos. We're in a moment with great uncertainty. This is uncharted waters for us.

So that was Ted Carter, the president of The Ohio State University, Mary Dana Hinton at Hollins University in Virginia, and Andrew Martin, the Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, which is a private university but gets a ton of federal funding for things like science and health. You know, one of the things that's so interesting about this, you talked about the federal government and the universities working together in so many different ways. This is a huge shift. It's almost as big a shift as the end of globalization, which he wants to accomplish with tariffs or a change in the Western alliance, which he wants to downgrade NATO.

After World War II, the federal government made a policy decision that it would, instead of creating its own research institutes like the NIH, which they have some, but instead of creating a whole bunch more of them, they would fund this research on university campuses. And that's how America became the scientific and technological juggernaut of the world. And I guess some people would argue, well, the private sector can do that. SpaceX can hire all those scientists. Sure, but where are they going to get their PhDs? Emma Cieslik-Selzy Alisa, President Trump has made it clear that

he is trying to shrink the size of government. He has been slashing government programs across the board and a whole lot of different departments and agencies. So I guess some folks would be wondering, why should colleges and universities be immune from that effort? Yeah, I think that this is a concern that I've heard in my reporting as well. When I mentioned this to college presidents, the pushback was kind of that they had hoped the federal government would be more strategic in what it cut and why. Many of these grants that colleges have applied for were a competitive process.

They outlined what they were going to research, then those grants were assigned often multi-year so that then institutions can plan, you know, I'm going to hire this research, I'm going to expand this institution. That said, the Supreme Court just agreed with the Trump administration on two specific programs that the federal government cut that they say violated their interpretations of DEI policies. So they were these two diversity teacher training programs. And that money basically goes to higher ed institutions, many high need institutions,

like historically backed colleges, to help educate soon to be teachers. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's actually totally OK to cut because those don't align with the goals of the federal government. And I think people can disagree with that interpretation, but at least the idea is we're going to be specifically targeting programs that we don't think

help us anymore versus we're just going to cut 400 million from Colombia across the board. Mara, we heard Alyssa a moment ago describe the fear and uncertainty that a number of university and college presidents feel. But we are also seeing, though, Mara, some of them willing to play ball, willing to bend the knee and acquiesce in this moment. And that feels different than President Trump's first term in office. Yes, it's very different from the first term. First of all, the threats are much, much tougher.

Donald Trump didn't know how to do this in his first term, and he had a lot of people inside his administration that didn't want him to do these things. But now he has a unified administration. The Republican Party is not pushing back against him. And so he's carrying out the program of retribution and revenge that he promised to do during the campaign. This should not be a surprise to anyone. And you see a lot of law firms or universities trying to negotiate. Columbia wants to keep that $400 million in research grants.

So it's willing to make concessions to the president, get rid of all mentions of DEI, put certain academic departments into receivership. The question is, will any of that satisfy the president? That was exactly my question, right? Yeah. As a long-time political observer, right? We don't know. We don't know. He hasn't said, I'll give you the $400 million if you do X, Y, and Z. He's saying, you have to do these things and then we can talk. If he really wants to destroy the power centers of the left, he's not going to stop at just making a deal around some research grants.

All right. Let's take a quick break and lots more to discuss when we get back. And we're back. And Alyssa, there's a big picture philosophical question I have for you. And that is that President Trump has made it clear that he wants the United States to be able to compete with China. You know, American universities are known as some of the best in the world and a lot of the federal funds are used for science and technology and innovation. And so if you cut that money and you weaken these institutions, I mean, what happens to that mission of competing with China and the strength of higher education? Well, this is a concern I heard over and over again from the presidents and the chancellors

I talked to. And when I asked them about that, they basically said that they feel like it's their mission to communicate this with people in Washington, people in power. So nearly every administrator I talked to said they were sending groups to Washington to talk with lawmakers, to talk with what's left of the education department, to make sure that those threads are connected for the folks in power. But I think it's a great question. And it also speaks to kind of higher ed is like the place where people from around the world come to and we'll get to the role for international students.

But this is one of the kind of shining stars of what America has to offer. Well, that's what some people think. I mean, maybe it's naive to think that if only universities pled their case and explained how much they contribute to America's competitiveness, especially with China, that the administration would say,

oh, thanks for telling us and we changed our minds. If you don't get the hundreds of million dollars in research grants, do you become a community college in effect? Or are there some colleges whose endowments are big enough that they can fund this stuff on their own? I mean, where does this go? Kasey Panetta So basically, like, the only institution that would maybe be able to do this is Harvard, who has the largest endowment. But the way endowments work, you kind of take out a very small amount from your endowment

every year. Like it's not like you could just totally sub in your current budget with the money you have in investments. That's kind of not how they're structured to work. What begins to happen first is you start to see layoffs. So we've already seen that at a place like Johns Hopkins. They eliminated 2,000 positions already in just the last couple of weeks.

So you make the university smaller. You lay off researchers, you lay off professors, you cut programs, you try and make whatever budget you have right now in place work. The second thing I guess that happens is then you start to think about, okay, we are using a lot of our money or our grants to kind of subsidize financial aid. So we allow people to come because we

give them merit grants or we do need-based scholarships. So that's kind of the next thing that happens. And then do they make it so that only people who are paying full price are the ones that are going to universities because they're going to need money from that. Danielle Pletka If you get money from the federal government, you are vulnerable to all sorts of policy changes. And don't forget the thing about foreign students not coming here anymore for a variety of reasons, including the administration's immigration policies, is that foreign students pay full

fare, full freight, and that will also hurt these universities. Alyssa, I do want to ask you more about international students because Tamara's point, in the last couple of weeks, we've heard reports of foreign students being detained. We've heard reports of some of them having their student visas abruptly revoked. Has that impacted the health of these institutions or the enrollment numbers at all that you're seeing at some of these schools? I mean, it's certainly a worry. International students pump about more than $40 billion into higher ed in terms of enrollment.

I mean, there's more than a million students that come from abroad that come into our higher education institutions from community college, you know, all the way up to Ivy League schools. So it's all across the sector. But that number has been growing. I mean, the latest kind of data we have is from the fall. So we're really not going to know the impact of the policies right now in terms of how many people enroll for next school year. That said, many of the administrators I talked to said that their applications were up for international students. But again,

that would have been something that happened over the fall or over the winter. I have one final question for you all here. And that is that in this moment, it feels like the reactions that we are seeing from university colleges and presidents are somewhat scattershot. And as a result, we're seeing greater and greater pressure from this administration, right? We saw Colombia willing to be deferential, and then we saw the president take additional moves, right? Say with Harvard that were bigger and bolder in terms of the dollar amount. And I'm just curious, Mara, why you don't see collective action from universities in this moment?

Well, the collective action problem is very widespread among human beings. Why didn't Republicans band together and stand up for all the things that they believe in? Why didn't corporations stand up about the tariffs until the markets started tanking? The collective action problem is really big. Most people don't want to spend the time and effort seeing if they can get all of their compatriots or the other universities to, you know, band together. They want to take care of their own personal or institutional interest. I think in terms of the higher ed sector, it's just so many institutions

are so different from each other. And that is one of the issues is kind of like from a small liberal arts campus, what is the benefit if they kind of team up with Ohio State? Their priorities are so different, their budgets are so different. That said, I think we are starting to see some collective action among universities that are similar. So I'm thinking there's a group of research universities that include the Ohio State, Rutgers, and they recently put out a statement kind of saying, whoa, let's kind of like take a breath and see what's

happening here. And you know, the American Council on Education, a big lobbying firm, they're starting to put out statements, but I think it's been, it's a trickle. All right. Well, we are going to leave it there for today's show. Elissa, thank you so much for being here. Happy to be here. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.