Northwestern University agrees to pay $75 million as part of deal with Trump administration that restores frozen funds
· Yahoo NewsNorthwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million as part of a settlement with the Trump administration which restores previously frozen federal funding and ends a monthslong investigation over government allegations of “unlawful discrimination,” including “race-based admissions” and a “hostile” environment for Jewish students, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
The agreement requires Northwestern to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws, overhaul its policies on campus demonstrations, and implement mandatory antisemitism training for students, faculty and staff, conditions similar to those imposed on other campuses. The university will pay the settlement through 2028.
The university’s $790 million of federal funding was suspended earlier this year amid a Title VI civil rights investigation, part of a broader administration effort to scrutinize university policies and campus speech. The freeze was one of the largest and most disruptive imposed on any campus during the administration’s push against elite US universities.
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Under the settlement, the government will “close pending investigations and treat Northwestern as eligible for future grants, contracts, and awards,” the DOJ said.
The university said it expects payments to resume within days and full funding to be restored within 30 days, according to a statement to the school newspaper The Daily Northwestern. That includes overdue payments on all non-terminated, federally funded grants and contracts, the paper said.
CNN has reached out to Northwestern and the White House for further information.
Northwestern is among the few universities making direct payments to the federal government under these settlements. The deal with Brown University, by contrast, determined its payment will fund Rhode Island workforce development groups. And unlike Columbia University, which is subject to external monitoring, Northwestern will oversee its own compliance.
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The agreement places Northwestern among several universities facing federal scrutiny, including Columbia, Brown and Cornell, which have made multimillion-dollar payments, and the University of Virginia, which accepted strict, multi-year reporting requirements through 2028 to regain federal funds.
The federal funding freeze and related investigation brought significant upheaval at Northwestern, including the resignation of president Michael Schill in September, citing “serious and often painful challenges” and warning that “difficult problems remain, particularly at the federal level.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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