Similar but different

Columbia - as blog readers will know - got a letter from the feds with various demands and appeared to concede after funds were frozen. So far, however, the funds have not been unfrozen. Columbia's endowment is $14.8 billion, which, as we have noted, is much smaller than Harvard's. Harvard did not concede when it got a letter (which may or may not have been sent by mistake).

Northwestern has an endowment of $14.2 billion, similar to Columbia's. Its total enrollment is around 23,000, compared with around 31,000 for Columbia. So it is more similar to Columbia than it is to Harvard.

Northwestern has received "stop orders" from the feds on various grants. But it hasn't received a letter of demands. In response, it announced it would backstop the funding for the grants with stop orders using its own resources. 

...In a letter to the university community, Board of Trustees Chairman Peter Barris and President Michael Schill said... the university will step in to fund the research subject to those stop-work orders as well as research threatened by the federal funding freeze. Barris and Schill said the move intends to keep the projects going until they "have a better understanding of the funding landscape." ...

Full story from CBS News-Chicago at:

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/northwestern-research-grants-trump-federal-funding-freeze/.

In short, Harvard said it would not comply with the letter and would take legal action. It did not say it would backstop funding for frozen grants. Northwestern said it would for now backstop funding. But it hasn't said what it would do if it got a letter similar to those received by Columbia and Harvard.