From Stat: Long before she became president of the University of Minnesota, Rebecca Cunningham trained in emergency medicine. She draws on that experience often these days...
You proposed a $5.1 billion budget for the university, which the board approved. The budget allows for merit raises, but it also raises tuition and calls for a 7% cut to academic programs. How did you settle on that budget?
To move ahead strategically, you need to double down on your strengths and invest, but this is also a time of resource constraints with federal funding reductions. We [also] have a flat state budget this year, and a flat budget is a reduction of 3%, essentially, with inflation. We made the decision this year, like many universities did, to take a hard look at areas where we could indeed trim some, and we did that specifically with the focus of being able to then invest in our people, in our workforce, and invest in our operations and buildings moving forward, and our infrastructure.
The Trump administration has terminated grants for studying vaccine hesitancy, health disparities, and other topics. How are you supporting affected researchers?
We have about 100 grants that have been stopped, and about $40-plus million of funding. The difficulty with that really is the suddenness at which it happens and the inability to plan. We’re trying to address that issue specifically in using some university funds that are modest, with some donor support. Instead of having a [sudden] stoppage of their labs and firing of all their people, [we] try to give [faculty] some funds for a respectful ramp down over more months so that we can fully try to gain and utilize at least some portion of the data and not lose the workforce of postdocs, grad students, and junior faculty that are on those grants, so that we can help them transition to areas then that may have more funding.
Despite those efforts, have there been layoffs?
Absolutely. You can’t lose $40 million in grants without layoffs and terminations. And just this past week, we had SNAP-Ed [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education] terminated across the country. University of Minnesota Extension administered that program in all 87 counties, helping to provide education around food assistance to predominantly rural Minnesotans. That program was ended, and we laid off 80 people. So that is not one that we are able to continue, and that will be felt in the communities directly...
Full story at https://www.statnews.com/2025/07/21/university-minnesota-president-rebecca-cunningham-q-and-a/.
From the NY Times: The Trump administration has frozen $108 million in federal funds for Duke University’s medical school and health care system, according to two administration officials, after the government accused the university of “systemic racial discrimination.” Duke University is the latest high-profile school, from Columbia University to Harvard, that the Trump administration has targeted and stripped of a large amount of federal funding, based on vague accusations that the university abets antisemitism or supports diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The move comes amid a wider pressure campaign from the Trump administration to shift the ideological tilt of American higher education.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, sent a letter to Duke administrators on Monday expressing concerns about “racial preferences in hiring, student admissions, governance, patient care, and other operations” in the university’s health care system.
In the letter, the officials accused Duke of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race and nationality in programs receiving federal funding. Mr. Kennedy and Ms. McMahon called on Duke Health, the university’s health care system, to review all policies “for the illegal use of race preferences” and to create a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that would work with the federal government. The $108 million cut could be permanent, if the government concludes the university violated the Civil Rights Act...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/us/politics/trump-duke-university-frozen-funding-discrimination.html.
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