Brown capitulates
Brown University caves to Trump's academic extortion. It makes a deal to preserve funding that guts civil rights protections and academic freedom.
Another Ivy League institution has caved to the Trump administration' war on higher education (New York Times /Boston Globe). Brown University announced yesterday that it has struck a deal with the White House. It becomes the third elite school in a month to capitulate to academic extortion.
The price of "peace"
Brown has agreed to pay $50 million over ten years to state workforce development programs. This creative workaround avoids writing a direct check to Trump's government, unlike Columbia. But the financial cost pales in comparison to what Brown has surrendered. It has ceded its institutional integrity and gutted civil-rights protections.
Erasing trans students from campus
This "resolution agreement" buries provisions that will make Brown's campus actively hostile to transgender students. The university has committed to:
- Enforcing sex-separated athletic facilities based on biological sex
- Providing only "female-only" and "male-only" housing options using the Trump administration's restrictive definitions
- Maintaining single-sex bathroom and locker room policies
- Prohibiting any gender reassignment procedures for minors—effectively making Brown complicit in denying healthcare to trans youth
This isn't just policy—it's state-sanctioned discrimination dressed up in legalese.
The return of Jim Crow in admissions
Even worse, Brown's has agreed to dismantle any consideration of race or ethnicity in its admissions process. The university has pledged to:
- Maintain "merit-based admissions" without any racial preferences
- End all race-based programs, quotas, or diversity targets
- Stop using diversity narratives or any reference to racial identity in admissions decisions
- Provide detailed racial breakdowns of admissions data to federal overseers
Think about that last one for just a minute. If the federal overseers don't like the percentage of whiteness? What then?
This represents a fundamental rollback of decades of progress toward educational equity. Brown has agreed to pretend that systemic racism doesn't exist and that "merit" exists in a vacuum. This pollyanna vision ignores the historical and social reality. What consititutes merit. Did Trump "merit" admission to Penn? Or did the money make the merit?
The death of academic freedom
Brown President Christina Paxson tried to spin this capitulation as preserving Brown's "academic foundation." But actions speak louder than press releases. When faced with the loss of $510 million in research funding, Brown chose money over moral leadership. Surely, Brown has a large endowment to help weather such storms?
The university borrowed $800 million rather than fight these demands in court. This reveals the complete succes of the Trump administration's extortion tactics. As one critic noted, "This isn't policy. This is simple extortion and deal-making, which has no place in a democracy."
A domino effect
Brown's surrender follows similar deals by Penn and Columbia. This has created a model for the Trump administration's war on inclusive higher education. Harvard is reportedly next in the crosshairs. While initially steadfast in it's resistance to such extortion, it is in negotiations ongoing over a potential $500 million settlement.
The Trump administration has also targetedd Duke University, freezing $108 million in research funding. The federal government accused the school of racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action.
On other fronts, George Mason and UVA have undergone attacks from a different direction. In these cases, the government has attacked the Presidents of the institutions to make changes there. It worked at UVA.
Each capitulation makes it easier for the administration to squeeze the next target. What we're witnessing isn't just policy disagreement—it's the methodical destruction of institutional independence in American higher education.
The ultimate cost for society
Yes, Brown avoided an independent monitor and kept some control over how their penalty money gets spent. That may be all well and good on its surface. But they've also agreed to actively discriminate against trans students and abandon any commitment to racial equity in admissions.
For these elite universities, your civil rights are negotiable when enough federal dollars are on the line. I'm not so worried about our alma mater. It's pretty adept at keeping its head down, but still.
This is how fascism works—not through dramatic overnight changes, but through incremental surrenders. They eventually hollow out the institutions that once stood as bulwarks against discrimination. Universities are the first against the wall.
Brown University became the latest casualty in Trump's war on inclusive education.
How quickly have all the institutions that were built to withstand these things have surrendered.
The question now is whether any institution will have the courage to stand firm. Or will they all eventually fold under financial pressure. And if they do, marginalized students will bear the cost of their institutional cowardice. Because it won't end with the other. It will ensure the elites thrive. And the rest of us? We can pound sand.
Non in cautus futuri.
