BERKELEY >> The morning after violent protests outside an event featuring far-right Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos forced UC Berkeley to cancel the event, President Donald Trump took to Twitter and threatened to yank federal funds from the prestigious research university:
“If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”
The loss of federal funds would have devastating effects for Cal’s research enterprise and for its students. Nearly one-third of UC Berkeley’s 27,000 undergraduates count on federal Pell Grants to pay for college, according to College Scorecard data from the U.S. Department of Education, and research labs across the 10-campus system receive more than $1 billion in federal grants to do their work. Nearly $200 million in federal student aid and $400 million in basic research grants flow to the UC Berkeley campus alone each year, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof.
Such a move would be unprecedented, experts say — perhaps for a simple reason: The president, and even Congress, do not appear to have the legal authority to carry it out.
“There’s nothing I’m aware of in federal law that would allow the federal government to strip financial aid funds or research funds from a university because the government claims they aren’t respecting First Amendment rights,” said Don Heller, the University of San Francisco provost and an expert in federal financial aid.
“But maybe the president’s plan is to change the law and get Congress to change the law,” Heller said. “Maybe that’s his intent.”
Bob Shireman, a former undersecretary of education during the Obama administration, said that if Trump and Congress wanted to punish UC Berkeley by pulling its federal funding, “I’m not sure what authority they would use.”
“It would take a lot,” he said, “for the federal government to get anywhere close to that.”
The federal government can cut off Pell Grants and federal student loans from a school suspected of engaging in fraud or providing a substandard education — as happened with the for-profit college giant ITT Tech last year before the company “saw the writing on the wall” and closed its doors, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs for the American Council on Education.
Similarly, Hartle said, federal agencies that award research grants, such as the National Science Foundation, can cut off federal grant funding to an institution found to have engaged in research fraud or scientific misconduct.
But, he said, “There is no law on the books that would allow the federal government to shut off funds to a university for a suspected First Amendment problem.”
