SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLX, ISSUE 11
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2025
$8 million in research funds slashed
HHS places Brown under investigation
BY ELISE HAULUND & CLAIRE SONG SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITORS At least nine grants awarded to Brown researchers, totaling over $8 million, have been terminated since Trump took office, freezing studies in their tracks and leaving some participants without treatment. Affected researchers told The Herald they had to lay off some staff from their studies, marking the first reports of layoffs from projects due to recent federal funding cuts. These grants, the most recent of which was terminated Monday, funded research related to a variety of issues, ranging from youth HIV prevention to COVID-19 testing for incarcerated people. Across these awards, over $3.5 million in funding had yet to be disbursed. It is unclear if the National Institutes of Health grant terminations of the last 40 days since the first grant was cut are related to the Trump administration’s planned freeze of $510 million in Brown’s federal funds. The Wall Street Journal and Science reported that the funding freeze would target grants from the NIH. When asked about whether these nine grants were part of the larger freeze, a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told The Herald that the agency “is partnering with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior." As of March 31, around one percent
SEE GRANTS PAGE 7
BY ELISE HAULUND & SOPHIA WOTMAN SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
“no official information to provide” about the reasoning behind the visa cancellations. “When considering revocations, the department looks at information that arises after the visa was issued that may indicate a potential visa ineligibility under U.S. immigration laws, pose a threat to public safety or other situations where revocation is warranted,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in an email to The Herald. Although the State Department notifies the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it is “not generally required” to notify visa holders that their visa has been revoked, according to the spokesperson. Students whose visas have been revoked have been notified of their status by the University, according to Univer-
House and Senate Republicans believe that the Ivy League’s tuition and financial aid practices may violate federal antitrust laws, according to a letter sent to Brown on Tuesday and publicly released on Thursday requesting a slew of documents related to each school’s financial aid and pricing practices to be received within the next two weeks. Similar letters were sent to the other seven Ivy League colleges. When asked by The Herald, University Spokesperson Brian Clark did not specify
The University is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights regarding Brown’s compliance with Title VI, according to a Thursday night email from Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 and Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of protected classes, including race, color and national origin. The HHS originally launched an investigation in February into the Warren Alpert Medical School over Brown’s response to May 2024 pro-Palestine commencement protests, which they claimed saw antisemitic incidents. The inquiry has now been expanded to include the entire University and the time period from Oct. 7, 2023 to now, according to Carey and Guterl. The investigation was launched in accordance with Trump’s executive order to “combat antisemitism,” which explicitly referenced university campuses. students from discriminatory behavior.” “We are confident that our actions in response to the May 2024 protest — which occurred outside the church where the medical school ceremony was held and on an adjacent public sidewalk — were in compliance with Title VI,” the Thursday email reads.
SEE VISAS PAGE 4
SEE CONGRESS PAGE 3
SEE HHS PAGE 3
ELLIS ROUGEOU / HERALD
State Dept. revokes visas for Brown, Congress probes RISD students and recent graduates Brown, Ivies BY SOPHIA WOTMAN, ANIYAH NELSON & SANAI RASHID UNIVERSITY NEWS & METRO EDITORS At Brown, one current student, several recent graduates At least one Brown student and a “small number” of recent graduates have had their visas revoked over the past week, according to a Thursday email from the Office of International Student and Scholar Services. This comes amid the Trump administration’s recent targeting of international students for pro-Palestine activism. Following a similar pattern at other schools, the University did not receive notification from the relevant federal agencies about the revocations, adding that they had
BY ELISE HAULUND & SOPHIA WOTMAN SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
ARTS & CULTURE
BCA announces Spring Weekend 2025 artists Offset, JT, Ravyn Lenae and Zack Fox to perform on April 26 BY ANN GRAY GOLPIRA & TALIA LEVINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER AND ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Offset, JT, Ravyn Lenae, Zack Fox and the Undertow Brass Band will perform at Spring Weekend 2025, the Brown Concert Agency announced at a midnight release party on Friday. “I am fucking excited,” said Mahir Arora ’25 in an interview at the party. The Herald also spoke to Ava Filiss ’25, who added that she is “so excited for Ravyn Lenae.” Paula Romero ’28 said that she understands “why people were excited for the lineup.” She added that while she only knows about “one song” per artist “all from TikTok.” Romero added that she thinks “Offset is huge,” pointing out that he was a member of the hiphop group Migos. This year’s festival will be a one-day event on Saturday, April 26. In preparation for the event, members of the BCA spent much of the year negotiating prices and sending bids to artists.
KENDRA EASTON / HERALD
In an interview with The Herald, BCA Co-Head Tanya Qu ’25 emphasized the agency’s attempt to incorporate student feedback into their decision-making process. “We really wanted to take into account what we were seeing with last year’s Spring Weekend and the feedback we got,” Qu said. A poll sent to students last fall asked whether respondents would prefer a one-day festival with more prominent performers or a two-day festival with more affordable performers. After 52.8% of the 1,348 respondents
voted in favor of the former option, the BCA announced that the 2025 festival would be a one-day event with three to four artists. The one-day format of this year’s festival was a “choice rather than something we were forced to do” because of budget cuts, BCA Co-Head Vincent Moroz ’25 told The Herald. Spring Weekend was also a one-day festival in 2024, when the BCA faced budget cuts of over $250,000 from the previous year and could not afford to
SEE SPRING WEEKEND PAGE 12
The Herald’s Spring Poll SEE POLL PAGE 8
postMagazine SEE POST- PAGE 14