“It’s true that institutions of higher education are not entitled to federal funding, which, after all, is paid by taxpayers. The Trump administration, or any administration, could decide, in a moment of unusual frugality, that the U.S. is too indebted to continue sending billions of dollars to wealthy private organizations that have their own massive endowments. But the government shouldn’t use the threat of a funding cut as a form of coercion.
…
a provision of the settlement that permits the feds to collect and read Brown faculty course evaluations, and that’s legitimately concerning. In fact, it speaks to the most troubling aspect of the settlement: It lends itself toward the creation of a campus antisemitism police that will be laser-focused on identifying, cataloguing, and eliminating uncomfortable and offensive speech that is nevertheless clearly protected by the First Amendment. In other words, the Trump administration is directly encouraging the formation of campus safe spaces.
The settlement instructs Brown to survey students on their feelings of emotional safety. The survey questions are really something, and include: “whether they feel welcome at Brown; whether they feel safe reporting anti-Semitism at Brown; whether they have experienced harassment on social media.” These are vague questions that will prompt subjective answers. Social media harassment is a particularly fraught topic; what constitutes harassment? If one student is being unkind to another student on Instagram or TikTok, is it really the university’s job to intervene?”
https://reason.com/2025/07/31/safe-spaces-are-coming-back-to-brown-university-all-thanks-to-trump