As the Trump administration examines Brown University’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policy and its response to antisemitism, more than half a billion dollars in grant funds are at stake, a White House official said.
The Department of Education is looking into more than 50 colleges, including Brown University, for alleged infractions “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”
The action follows the deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor and physician at Brown University, from Boston to Lebanon last month after federal agents discovered images of Iran’s supreme leader and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on her cell phone, a source familiar with the case told.
Since President Donald Trump took office, Brown is the most recent Ivy League school to experience funding halts or reductions.
The White House and the Department of Energy announced Tuesday that the Trump administration had halted $210 million in research funding to Princeton University as part of an ongoing inquiry into antisemitism on campus.
As part of the president’s threats to stop providing federal support to universities suspected of allowing antisemitism in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war that started in October 2023, Columbia University was the first university to have its funding cut by $400 million.
The school has made it clear time and time again that antisemitism will not be tolerated.
Then, in late March, Columbia announced broad policy changes, seemingly as a surrender after President Donald Trump withdrew federal funding due to protests on campus.
In March, the Trump administration also put more than $9 billion in grants and contracts under review at Harvard University and halted $175 million in government funding to the University of Pennsylvania.
As Columbia became the focal point of the nationwide protests, the previous academic year saw widespread campus disturbance, including pro-Palestinian protests and encampments, counterprotests, building takeovers, arrests, and shortened graduation ceremonies.
Alawieh, 34, is an assistant professor at Brown University who “went to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah – a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree,” according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson in March.
In mid-March, Stephanie Marzouk, an attorney representing Alawieh’s family in a federal complaint challenging the deportation, told reporters outside a Boston courthouse, “Our client is in Lebanon, and we’re not going to stop fighting to get her back in the US to see her patients, and we’re also going to make sure that the government follows the rule of law.”
According to a person familiar with the investigation, Alawieh admitted to federal officials that she had attended Nasrallah’s funeral on February 23, which was a public event that drew thousands of people.
According to the source, she told authorities that Nasrallah was a well-respected religious figure and that she adheres to his spiritual and religious practices but not his political views.
This information has been sourced from CNN.
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