Brown University became the latest college to strike a deal with the Trump administration to restore its federal funding on Wednesday and the third Ivy League school to do so this month.

Brown University found itself in a financial crunch after Trump administration officials announced in April that it would cut off $510 million in funding. As part of the deal, Brown will make payments of $50 million over the decade to Rhode Island work development programs and comply with the Trump administration’s mandate on transgender athletes and admissions policies. In exchange, the school’s research funding will be restored, and it received a commitment from the government that it wouldn’t “dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.”

Recommended Stories

• Parents refusing to buy school supplies ignite heated back-to-school debate
• DOJ finds UCLA violated Jewish students' civil rights
• Judge blocks Youngkin's Virginia university board appointees in win for Democrats

Brown and the Trump administration both spoke positively of the deal in their respective statements. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the deal would constitute a “lasting legacy of the Trump administration, one that will benefit students and American society for generations to come.”

“The Trump administration is successfully reversing the decadeslong woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions,” she added.

Brown President Christina Paxson said the deal “preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation,” and enables the university to move forward “after a period of considerable uncertainty.”

Preempting criticism of academic hardliners who decried any attempt to negotiate with the Trump administration, Paxson argued that the deal preserved the school’s academic freedom while addressing reasonable concerns.

“I have consistently and publicly asserted Brown’s commitment to meeting its obligations to follow the law, as well as our willingness to understand any valid concerns the government may have about the ways in which the university fulfills those legal obligations,” she wrote. “I stated that Brown should uphold its ethical and legal obligations while also steadfastly defending academic freedom and freedom of expression, for both the university as an institution and for individual members of our community.”

Some prominent skeptics accepted the argument. Brown environmental studies professor J. Timmons Roberts, who signed a petition urging the school to resist the Trump administration’s demands, gave a favorable assessment to the New York Times.

“This feels like mostly things that Brown had to do anyway, and had already said it was going to do,” he said. “It seems that Brown has navigated this process in a way that maintains its core mission.”

Observers noted that the deal appeared to be less favorable in some of its assurances than that struck by Columbia University last week. While Brown only ensured the government’s noninterference in curriculum and “academic speech,” Columbia received assurances against government interference in “faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech.”

UPENN, BROWN SUBPOENAED OVER ALLEGED TUITION PRICE FIXING

However, Brown’s deal is notable for avoiding a direct payment to the Trump administration, a move that could provide a template for other schools still in negotiations.

So far, Brown, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have struck deals with the Trump administration. Harvard, the most defiant of the Ivy League schools, remains locked in negotiations.