(New York) Cornell University has agreed to pay $60 million to settle a dispute with the Trump administration, which will allow it to recover $250 million in federal funding, the institution announced Friday.
Cornell, one of eight elite Ivy League universities, is one of the higher education institutions the president campaigned against after returning to the White House.
His administration launched investigations against dozens of universities, alleging that their Jewish and Israeli students suffered discrimination during protests against the war in Gaza.
In this context, Cornell indicated that it was subject to work stoppage orders, grant terminations and funding freezes.
Under the terms of the agreement, the university must invest $30 million over three years in research benefiting American agriculture and pay $30 million to the government over the same period.
It must also provide anonymized data on its admissions, information on its sources of funding abroad and continue to conduct surveys on the atmosphere on campus.
In exchange, the investigation into respect for civil rights within it was put to an end.
The agreement revealed Friday “does not constitute an admission of guilt,” the university insisted in a statement.
Its president, Michael Kotlikoff, adds that this agreement “recognizes the government’s commitment to applying existing laws against discrimination, while protecting our academic freedom and our institutional independence”.
Donald Trump initially sought to control admissions and recruiting at targeted universities, but Cornell emphasizes that the agreement allows him to continue making these decisions “on the basis of merit.”
Three other Ivy League institutions (the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia in New York and Brown in Rhode Island), as well as the University of Virginia, have reached agreements with the administration, on very varied terms.
The government has also proposed to several universities, in exchange for financial advantages, an agreement on priorities in terms of higher education: adherence to “biological” definitions of “masculine” and “feminine”, exclusion of factors such as “sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political opinions, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliations” from their admissions and scholarship award processes.
They refused.
