Since President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign kicked off last year, he has pervasively promised to “reclaim” top U.S. universities “from the radical Left.” While NYU’s status as a private institution makes it less susceptible to a government crackdown, many students still rely on federal aid and loans that require the university to comply with national policies.
NYU receives around $1.5 billion from the national government annually, $750 million of which supports student loans and financial aid. However, in order for federal backing to be possible, universities must be approved by a federally recognized accreditation agency. In a May campaign video — and at several subsequent rallies and speeches — Trump promised to use his authority over the accreditation system as a “secret weapon.”
“The time has come to reclaim our once-great educational institutions,” Trump said in the video. “When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical-left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”
The campaign video was released amid a wave of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept colleges nationwide and left many members of the Republican Party critical of higher education, bringing universities to the forefront of political debate. Just this September, the House of Representatives passed a bill restricting demonstrations at public colleges, and the far-right proposal Project 2025 outlines plans to entirely eliminate the Department of Education. However, experts have said this is unlikely. Still, Trump’s rhetoric on accreditation has consistently called for the withdrawal of university autonomy.
Accreditation agencies are required to evaluate universities’ academic rigor, financial capacity and compliance with the Higher Education Act, a 1965 law that governs standards for privacy, civil rights and other considerations for higher education institutions. When detailing his plans to revamp the accreditation process, Trump said he will employ agencies “who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
DEI initiatives and Title VI
Throughout his campaign, Trump has promised to pull funding from schools with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming — including offices, certifications and initiatives, some of which NYU has spearheaded in recent years. Teboho Moja, a Steinhardt professor who focuses on socio-political inequalities in higher education, said she found this potential restriction to be especially concerning.
“We’re going to see a more high-control, high-interference steering of institutions moving away from DEI initiatives,” Moja said. “In order to get quality and meaningful higher education, we need those kinds of programs.”
Moja added that NYU’s research relating to DEI and sociological stratagem will struggle to maintain its current funding and that national policy will inevitably influence the university’s practices via the HEA. Trump has also said that his efforts to limit DEI will be a major component of his revamp to accreditation agencies’ standards for both public and private institutions.
In 2019, Trump amended Title VI — a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin — to also prohibit antisemitism, citing concern over criticisms of Israel on college campuses. The provision came days after an alum sued NYU for allegedly creating a “hostile environment” for Jewish students, and it mandated that universities implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
The IHRA definition — which includes “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” among other conditions — has been the subject of ongoing criticism from students, and a pro-Palestinian faculty group has requested that NYU instead define antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews.” The university reaffirmed its commitment to the definition in a July statement regarding its settlement of another antisemitism lawsuit. In the same statement, NYU also announced that it will be among the first universities to hire a Title VI coordinator — who is set to take office next semester.
Almost 40% of schools in right-leaning states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee have recently renamed their DEI offices in an effort to comply with Republican bans on funding. While many offices and departments rebranded as “community engagement” and “student development” to adhere to statewide restrictions, they have maintained the programming, faculty and responsibilities of a traditional DEI office.
During his first term, Trump hired the Supreme Court judges and justices that inflicted last summer’s nationwide ban on affirmative action. While NYU has more recently said that it practices “restraint” speaking on political events, administrators have issued several statements condemning the decision. In NYU’s most recent admissions cycle, Black and Latino enrollment sharply dropped — a trend the university called “concerning.”
Title IX
Among the most politically contested components of HEA is Title IX, a 1972 amendment that bars gender-based discrimination on college campuses. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s administration rewrote parameters for the law, broadening its scope of applicability — however, Biden’s provisions are unlikely to withstand the new White House.
The update added “gender identity” to a list of protected characteristics, expanding rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community and allowing students to play on sports teams and use bathrooms that corresponded with their gender identity. However, state-level restrictions to these contentions in Texas, Louisiana and three other states brought the revisions to the Supreme Court and blocked their implementation in 26 states. NYU is currently subject to the injunction and reported that it has revised versions of the policies in a safety evaluation earlier this month.
“We will be able to share the documents and policies when they are final and we are permitted to do so,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement to WSN.
NYU’s Title IX policies will likely remain tied up by the 2020 standards under Trump’s administration — if not restricted further. At a town hall in October, the president-elect said he would use an executive order to ban all transgender athletes from competing on teams in accordance with their gender identity, and House Republicans have introduced at least three bills to write the ban into law.
Biden’s Title IX revisions also redefine what constitutes sexual harassment and make incidents easier for students to report. Trump’s policies only allow universities to investigate sexual harassment incidents they deem “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive,” making it more challenging for students to report misconduct. They also limit the degree to which universities are required to respond and omit requirements for timeliness.
International students
Concerns about NYU’s international presence have circulated the university community, citing Trump’s proposed crackdown on immigration and raise in tariffs. Trump warned that he would revoke visas from students who participate in on-campus protests, and several GOP members — including new Secretary of State Marco Rubio — have echoed the sentiment.
“We are more likely to see international students impacted one way or another,” Moja said. “We anticipate that students from other parts of the world will really feel it.”
In an email sent to students yesterday, Senior Vice President for Student Life Jason Pina and Vice President for Student Engagement & Dean of Students Rafael Rodriguez offered consolation in the aftermath of the election and said the university would bolster its resources for international students. It said administrators from NYU’s Office of Global Services will monitor immigration-related “proposals, laws and actions that could be of concern.”
“Given the prominence of immigration as an issue during the campaign, it is understandable that many members of our global community may have questions,” the email read. “As a global institution, we believe that the cross-border mobility of our students and scholars is of critical importance.”
At a University Senate meeting two days after Trump’s reelection, NYU administrators said Trump could increase visa restrictions for international students, potentially decreasing the amount of international students the university is able to host. In 2023, the university ranked No. 1 in international students enrollment according to the Institute of International Education. At the meeting, Provost Georgina Dopico also mentioned that Trump’s raised taxes on foreign countries could limit the university’s international research partnerships.
In 2020, Trump mandated that NYU disclose $40.4 million it had received in 15 gifts from foreign governments. The requirement was part of an effort to amend Section 117 of the Higher Education Act that lowered the minimum value of gifts that universities must disclose, and specifically requested information from five universities, including NYU.
Federal funding for NYU
In 2023, NYU received more than $700 million in deferral research grants, a substantial increase from $406 million in 2020. In both cases, the majority of the funding was from the Department of Health and Human Services. However, Biden’s administration allocated a significantly larger portion of its other research funding toward the humanities.
While NYU received $788 million and $750 million under Trump and Biden, respectively, in federal student aid and loans, funding was allocated in slightly different ways. Biden’s administration spent $32 million on Pell Grants — need-based aid for undergraduates — for 24% of students, while Trump’s administration spent $27 million, for 21% of students. Trump’s administration instead allocated more funding to grants for medical and nursing students — whose aid was taxed as income — and he has called for billions in cuts to Pell Grants. Under Trump’s new administration, the budget’s implementation could be much more feasible.
In the past four years, the Biden administration has put forth progressive debt relief policies, its most recent program stating that the Department of Education can waive up to all of an individual’s outstanding loans if they are unable to fully repay them due to personal hardships. Last month, Biden announced that federal student loans will be paused for around 8 million Americans for at least six months. However, the program’s future is now at risk under the incoming Trump administration, which has been extremely critical of the debt relief program.
Contact Dharma Niles at [email protected].
