By By David Wignall Eagle correspondent The Berkshire Eagle
WILLIAMSTOWN — As the spring semester wound down and students completed their final exams, faculty at Williams College received an unexpected email. Williams, the email said, had temporarily stopped accepting funds from new grants issued by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Unlike large research universities, Williams receives just a handful of NSF and NIH grants each year. But for some Williams professors, those few grants are essential: They pay for expensive research equipment, support multi-school collaborations and help researchers qualify for tenure. Many professors therefore felt alarmed as they read the May 30 email.
They also felt they were in the dark. The brief initial message said only that the school would pause acceptance of new grants pending a legal review of new clauses added by the Trump administration which targeted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Many professors didn’t understand why, exactly, the pause had been put in place, nor how long it might last. Dozens signed a petition which expressed “deep concern” about the situation and asked for more information.
At a Williams College town hall event on June 10, administrators stressed that the pause for legal review was temporary — and necessary. Many faculty members told The Eagle that those explanations from school leadership had assuaged their fears.
Yet the sudden pause — and the legal review, faculty petition and press coverage that followed — still reflects the uncertain new era that Williams has entered.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, public attention has generally focused on federal actions which directly target institutions of higher education, like the cancellation of billions of dollars of grants and the attempted removal of visas for international students. The situation in Williamstown is different. As part of its broader pressure campaign against universities, the Trump administration has also created a treacherous legal environment, full of fast-changing regulations and ambiguous terms.
“The real story is that the Trump administration is trying — through the use of legal tricks and cutting funding and making other funding more difficult to get — to create booby traps so that higher education institutions will be unable to execute their missions,” said Sarah Jacobson, an economics professor who chairs Williams’ environmental studies program.
Navigating those legal “booby traps” has created costs for Williams — including the sudden pause on new research grants and the frayed nerves that followed.
“Broadly, faculty just want to make sure they can still do what they came here to do,” said mathematics professor Leo Goldmakher. “Part of that is teaching, and part of that is research. For most faculty, being a researcher is an integral part of their identity.”
NSF and NIH grants serve a number of important functions for researchers. Most obviously, funds from federal grants pay for lab equipment, student salaries and overhead expenses. But grants also facilitate collaboration.
“All of my grants have been collaborative with other institutions,” said Luana Maroja, a biology professor. “If you remove our ability to apply, why will other institutions collaborate with us? We’re going to turn into an island.”
Federal grants are also a way for faculty to advance their careers. External grants “signify your importance within the greater research community,” said Goldmakher. In their petition, many STEM professors went further, saying the disruption could harm Williams’ academic reputation and its ability to hire and retain faculty.
In a statement, the college said it paused acceptance of federal funds for “a thorough review amid the rapidly evolving federal enforcement environment. We take our legal obligations seriously, including those related to compliance with federal antidiscrimination laws and the receipt of federal funding.”
Meike Kaan, chief communications officer for Williams, said the school’s legal review is underway. “We are hopeful that we’ll resume grant acceptances in the fall of 2025,” she wrote in an email to The Eagle.
A climate of heightened scrutiny
After the initial May 30 announcement, several professors told The Eagle that they did not understand what, exactly, had necessitated the pause.
According to college communications, part of the sticking point stemmed from certain clauses added to new NSF and NIH grants. In particular, administrators highlighted one piece of language: “By accepting the awards, the recipients [Williams] are certifying that … they do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Crucially, the new grant language did not explain what constituted “discriminatory equity ideology.”
“The administration uses the term ‘illegal DEI,’ but doesn’t define what that means,” said Zach Cunha, a lawyer who served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island from 2021 until 2025.
Simply due to this ambiguous language, even schools who believe themselves to be in full compliance with civil rights laws could face investigations or lawsuits, Cunha said.
Another concern, Kaan said, is a Civil War-era statute called the False Claims Act.
For decades, the False Claims Act has been used by federal prosecutors to target companies and organizations suspected of committing fraud. For example, in 2016 a False Claims suit was brought against Booz Allen Hamilton, a federal contractor, for inflating the sums it charged the federal government.
But only in recent months has the False Claims Act been used to target schools which allegedly violate civil rights laws, Cunha said.
On May 19, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that he would launch a new initiative focusing on civil rights violations. The initiative would rely heavily on the False Claims Act and, in part, target schools.
“The federal False Claims Act is probably the federal government’s premier civil anti-fraud enforcement tool,” Cunha said. “It’s an extraordinarily powerful anti-fraud lever.”
The False Claims Act is powerful for two reasons, Cunha explained.
First, the law says an institution which knowingly submits a false claim — like accepting a grant while violating one of its contractual terms — can be held liable for triple damages.
Second, the False Claims Act includes a “qui tam” provision, which allows private individuals to file a lawsuit on behalf of the government — and potentially receive a share of the reward. Because the government does not have the resources to identify all sources of potential fraud — especially across a sprawling higher education landscape — this provision allows whistleblowers, regardless of motive, to allege misconduct as well.
Several legal experts previously told Undark that universities are “well-positioned to prevail in court” against False Claims Act challenges. But going through extensive litigation proceedings — the primary way to concretely resolve ambiguously worded clauses — is costly and time-consuming. And the whistleblower provision increases the likelihood that such lawsuits are filed, Cunha said.
The legal environment is growing more treacherous for colleges in other ways, too. The federal government is also investigating schools for antisemitic discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and for gender-related issues under Title IX. And the government is cutting grants, targeting international students and pushing for an endowment tax.
“We’ve seen instances where the federal government is bringing to bear pretty much every lever that it has to try and change behavior,” Cunha said.
An uncertain future
The pause, if it is lifted by the fall as the Williams administration hopes, may not seriously affect research. Yet the disruption in the grant pipeline could presage more serious issues in the future. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year slashes 55 percent of the NSF budget and 44 percent of the NIH budget. In total, the cuts will remove roughly $25 billion from the two agencies.
“I think a lot of faculty on campus have a lot of anxiety about what’s going to happen next, both about what’s going to hit us as an institution, and what is happening to our country and our world,” said Jacobson.
Williams was the first institution of higher education to publicly pause its acceptance of new NSF grants, a move that administrators repeatedly stressed was temporary and motivated by legal due diligence. Undark later reported that the University of Michigan, which received $750 million in NIH funding in 2024, had quietly frozen incoming NIH grants dating back to late April.