What effects has the Trump administration had on Northwestern? On this special episode of The Weekly, The Daily dives deep into the past few months of news since Trump was elected into office with Managing Editor Jerry Wu.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: This week on the Weekly, something different. As the effects of the Trump administration and the $790 million federal funding freeze continue to ripple on, they’ve been taking up a large spotlight in The Daily’s recent reporting.
It felt important to provide a longer segment explaining the ways the federal funding freezes and the administration at large are affecting Northwestern. On today’s episode, we’ll hear from only one guest, Managing Editor Jerry Wu, who has been on the Trump administration beat for many months, to explain and recap the past few months of the news surrounding the administration.
From the Daily Northwestern, I’m Dov Weinstein Elul.
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Jerry, thanks for being here. To kick us off, even before the federal funding freeze, there were signs of fear towards the Trump administration from the moment he was elected into office.
Explain some of these signs of the school’s fear and what they meant. How did they symbolize what was to come?
JERRY WU: Yeah. I mean, Northwestern, in addition to a lot of other elite universities, they were thrown into the public spotlight drawing national attention following the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses last year. And since then, we’ve seen how top university officials, including presidents, chancellors, have been called to testify in congressional hearings. They’ve been subject to a lot of scrutiny from federal officials on issues specifically on how universities have protected their Jewish students on campus.
And since then, NU has been subjected to various investigations. Previously, NU was one of five universities that the Education Department announced it would investigate as a result of antisemitic harassment. Earlier this year, NU was also one of the 10 universities that the federal government’s Task Force to combat antisemitism was announced that they would visit. And yeah, I mean, I think since then, we expected things would change under the Trump administration, but his administration has certainly used threats and all other things to hone in on this agenda to combat antisemitism on their campuses.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So, along with the scrutiny that the administration was putting on NU for its antisemitism on campus, there were also some other actions taken by the school, such as NU turning to the debt market in March in order to borrow an additional $500 million in taxable fixed rate bonds just weeks before the federal funding freeze was enacted. They also scrubbed some of their DEI websites.
Can you explain some of these actions from the school a little bit?
JERRY WU: Yeah, absolutely. We found out that NU had drawn, like you mentioned, over $500 million in taxable fixed rate bonds last month. It was a pretty stark discovery considering that the last time NU took to the debt market was I believe in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously during that time, NU experienced major losses from board and room fees with students not being on campus. And so, I talked with a lot of different experts who explained to me that oftentimes universities have taken to the bond market in order to raise capital with more liquidity for them to use. And in this case, it sort of lines up in terms of what a lot of universities have been doing. We’ve seen it at Harvard, we’ve seen it at Princeton who’ve also taken loans out for them to raise extra capital in the face of these funding threats from the Trump administration.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Have those been helping NU throughout now that the funding has been frozen temporarily?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean a lot of experts have told me that the sale of these bonds from the University provides sort of this immediate solution in the sense that the University is able to raise liquid capital versus taking other financial measures such as extracting donations which, you know, might not be a more feasible or quick and effective solution at the time.
But, yeah, I would say the bonds have probably helped NU. We’re uncertain whether or not the University has directly used those funds necessarily from the sale of these bonds, but you know, in the case that they do utilize this pool of extra funding that they’ve been able to raise, it would certainly help them, especially when they’re dealing with so many funding freezes at the University so far.
Besides that, I mean, yeah, of course, back a few months ago, NU took pretty extreme measures in terms of scrubbing any diversity, equity, inclusion related materials off of the majority of their web pages. I thought The Daily did an incredible job in terms of following and tracking what websites were affected. One of the first signs that I noticed was on the Feinberg School of Medicine’s website. They scrubbed pretty much everything tangentially related to diversity, inclusion. And sort of the same patterns ensued in the next few weeks impacting almost every undergraduate and graduate school at NU. So yeah, we’ve seen those were some of the things that kind of predated the federal funding freeze.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Are the websites still currently scrubbed with all their references to DEI?
JERRY WU: As of right now, it still seems to be that case. During that purge a few months ago, there were also some web pages for organizations or centers including the GSRC and the Women’s Center that we also reported were wiped out. But it appears that some of those websites have been brought back. So, I think the University is also towing a line where, on one hand, the University is trying to satisfy the Trump administration’s executive orders, but also respecting a lot of long-term institutions on campus.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: One more thing I’d love for you to explain for us before we get into the funding freeze itself is how does NU’s funding work exactly? You recently did a story breaking down the pieces of its federal funding and just looking at how that compares to similar schools to NU. Break down the funding for us.
JERRY WU: Yeah, I think that is a very important question. I think for the story that I did, I mainly looked at NU’s research and development expenditures, which basically means the amount of spendings they’ve allocated for various kinds of research and developmental programs across campus. We were able to find out that about 60% of NU’s research and developmental expenditures came from the federal government. And, you know, that is a huge chunk and I mean with the current federal funding freeze that’s very detrimental. I mean, so in that year specifically, I forgot to clarify that was 2023 which we were able to pull from the latest data, NU received about $678 million in federal funding. The rest of it sort of came from the University pocketbooks.There were also some funding from nonprofit organizations and other state and local governments.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So how do those numbers look in comparison to other similar schools?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean, we were able to see how NU, at least in comparison to other universities that have seen federal funding freezes, NU sort of fell into the middle of the pack. NU pretty much rivaled — at least in their federal funds that they received for research and science — pretty much rivaled Harvard and Cornell and some of the other various Ivy League schools that have seen federal funding freezes as of late.
And I think it’s also important to flag that like many other universities, the majority of NU’s federal funding comes from the HHS. The HHS issues thousands of grants to universities to fund various essential and vital research. And we’ve seen how the HHS funding in NU has received the brunt of the freeze.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Now, the big number everybody’s been talking about — the $790 million funding freeze itself. How has this affected operations and programs at NU?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I think the biggest hit has been to a lot of research that the University does. I mean, there was a message that University leaders released last week explaining how there’s been frankly “significant impacts,” this is their own words, to research funding and research all across the University. I mean, we’ve seen the University receive close to 100 stop work orders from the Department of Defense, at least 50 grant terminations, many of which have come from the HHS and were issued before the funding freeze, but they’ve continued to trickle down and cascade from the federal government in the past few weeks.
Majorly, officials also confirmed that researchers have yet to receive payments from NIH grants since March, indicating that those funds may have been frozen. And so, I mean, on the research side of things it’s been disastrous. A lot of graduate students have told me that, you know, their labs have been shuttered, they’ve received these stop work orders. Although the University has pledged to fund research that have received stop work orders, but at the same time there’s so many grant terminations, millions of dollars that have been erased in the past few weeks and they’ve left a significant dent in the University’s research and personnel.
There also has been a lot of problem-solving in that sense. I mean a lot of other professors have in fact used some of their own grant money to re-allocate to their other colleagues who’ve been affected. So, I think there’s been problem solving — it’s been very reactionary as this funding state has left many researchers struggling finding labs committing to the research that they had received federal funding grants to pursue, but a lot of them have now considered finding other research avenues, maybe considering potential career shifts. This is a very, very unprecedented time in the research funding world, and it’s caused a lot of folks to reconsider their career trajectories.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Other than the research, how has the funding been affecting the school?
JERRY WU: I think it’s honestly led to a lot of cost cutting, precautionary measures from the University. We’ve seen various programs get terminated. We’ve seen grant programs been also affected where less folks are being approved to receive grant money for their academic pursuits in the undergraduate school. One of the big news that we were able to find out was that NU had shuttered its San Francisco campus, which has been home to a lot of very important programs.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: This federal funding freeze has disrupted a lot of the normal programs and offerings that NU has. How have various groups responded to this? I’m curious about University President Michael Schill, some faculty, and how have students also been feeling about that? And why don’t you just take those one at a time?
JERRY WU: To start off with Schill, I mean, University administrators have still to this day maintained that they have not received any official communication from the Trump administration of any federal funding freeze. However, in the past few weeks, we’ve seen acknowledgements from them explaining that we’ve seen impacts already, from the federal government, that have affected a lot of important operations of the University.
Notably, about two weeks ago, Schill along with about 200 other academic leaders signed onto this statement that essentially condemned the Trump administration of overreach in higher education. It was the first sign of opposition that we saw, frankly, from the University in the past few weeks since the federal funding freeze and I think a lot of folks were happy to see NU join in the mix. But besides that, we have not seen any other statements from University leaders that have been more outspoken or have publicly condemned the Trump administration. Nothing conspicuous of that nature.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Now, why don’t you take us to students?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean students, I think a lot of the anger and frustration came from The Graduate School. You know, as mentioned before, all this research funding being taken away has really affected the livelihood and the careers of these graduate students who are trying to figure out what to do because of the federal funding freeze.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Now, why don’t you explain some of the faculty response?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean, it’s been similar. A lot of faculty that have been involved in research, they’re stressed. They’re incredibly frustrated by the current situation. You know, in just one single day, many of them have seen their lifeblood, their research grants terminated. And frankly, a lot of them have told me how distressed they are because they’re also working with so many different folks on their teams that they’ve used the grant to fund their salaries.
And I mean I think there’s also this avenue where a lot of faculty members aren’t exactly pleased with the Trump administration’s agenda and what exactly their motives have been for these federal funding freeze. We reported on how there was a group of more than 100 Jewish faculty members who signed a statement in late April condemning the Trump administration for making these threats to NU under the false pretense of protecting Jewish students. In that statement, faculty members said that they condemned the administration for, in their words, making unwarranted threats to NU and taking the rights of students, faculty, researchers in their words “in the name of Jews.”
In addition to that, NU faculty members, a lot of them have been very active in terms of making known their displeasure towards the Trump administration. A lot of faculty members have held these University Under Threat town halls across campus. You know, a lot of the organizers have encouraged faculty members to get out there, get mobilized and I suppose get educated about what exactly the Trump administration has done to NU and how faculty members can respond.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So based on what you said, at the present moment, it seems like there’s a lot of unrest from students, faculty and even the leaders of NU alike. Has either NU or the Trump administration given us an indication of what might be next and if any of this is going to go back to normal?
JERRY WU: Like I mentioned, the University officials have up to this point maintained that they have not had any official communication from the federal government about the federal funding freeze, but they’ve acknowledged these things. These things are real. They’re affecting folks in the community. One thing they’ve told is they’re seeking potential legal representation. This was mentioned in one of their University-wide messages last week that was about them acknowledging that they’ve been impacts to University research, but anywho, I would say right now, it’s unclear what exactly we can resolve.
Similar situations are panning out across universities nationwide. We’ve seen various other universities get into litigations. NU, in fact, I don’t think has gotten into any litigation with the Trump administration, but anywho, a lot of other universities have been more vocal and conspicuous with their attempts to fight back. But, so far, I would say there doesn’t seem to be a very near end in sight. So I think our job right now is to really monitor and see how things see how things kind of develop in these coming months.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Jerry Wu, thanks so much for being here. You’ve been a very loyal guest to The Weekly these past few weeks and thanks for breaking down the whole story for us today.
JERRY WU: Thank you.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Northwestern dining workers picket, allege Compass violated labor laws.
U.S. Department of Education launches discrimination investigation into District 65.
Students express mixed feelings about Dillo Day headliner Natasha Bedingfield.
Feinberg announces closures, merging of nearly a dozen research centers.
And Northwestern run-rules Ohio State 12-2 at Wrigley Field.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Dov Weinstein Elul.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Dov Weinstein Elul and Jerry Wu and produced by Dov Weinstein Elul.
The audio editor is Isabella Jacob. The multimedia managing editors are Anavi Prakash, Misha Manjuran Oberoi and Danny O’Grady. The editor in chief is Lily Ogburn.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
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Related Stories:
— By the numbers: The Trump administration has frozen millions in federal support for Northwestern. Here’s what it means for science funding on campus.
— Northwestern officials confirm ‘significant impacts’ on university research due to funding freeze
— Federal government freezes $790 million in funding for Northwestern
