Brown University President resigns after battling Trump over federal funding

Brown University President Christina Paxson said she will step down at the end of the academic year. Her exit follows months of disputes with the Trump administration over campus policy, academic freedom and the varsity's response to a deadly shooting.

In Short

• Paxson delayed her departure by a year to manage funding turmoil
• Brown recovered $510 million in grants through a July 2025 deal
• The agreement mandated an external review of campus climate concerns

Brown University President Christina Paxson said on Monday that she would leave her post at the end of the academic year, following a difficult period in which she clashed with President Donald Trump's administration over its threats to slash the Ivy League school's federal funding.

Paxson said she had planned to leave her job one year earlier, but extended her tenure at the university, located in Providence, Rhode Island, to "navigate a federal funding freeze that imperilled our mission," according to an open letter published on the school's website.

Brown was an early target of the administration during Trump's second term in office as it cracked down on US universities over what it called anti-semitic student protests against Israel's war on Gaza, diversity policies and a host of other issues.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, have said the administration has wrongly labelled criticism of Israel's assault on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories as anti-semitism and advocacy for Palestinian rights as support for extremism.

After administration officials threatened to block $510 million in federal grants for Brown, Paxson reached a deal in July 2025 to restore the funding. The terms required the university to conduct a third-party evaluation of its campus climate, including for Jewish students, and propose actions to improve it.

In October, though, Paxson declined an administration offer sent to nine elite universities, which said schools would be favoured for federal funding if they capped the number of international students, defined gender based on biology and banned the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions.

Accepting the deal would "restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown's governance," Paxson said at the time.

In her farewell letter on Monday, Paxson wrote that "while the federal landscape remains volatile for all colleges and universities, Brown is receiving major grants for pioneering research that will lead to tremendous innovation for this country."

Paxson also helped the university navigate tragedy during her tenure.

In December, a former student opened fire on campus, leaving two students dead and nine wounded. The shooter went on to kill a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor before being found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Federal authorities subsequently scrutinized Brown's emergency notification and campus surveillance systems.

- Ends