Three universities touted restoration of federal funding as the crux for striking deals with the Trump administration, but it's unclear to faculty and onlookers whether all the benefits have panned out for these institutions.

While leadership at the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and Columbia, along with the Trump administration, have said funding was restored, some researchers still see their money cut and others have received no communication from administrators when asked about the details of restored funds.

The fallout is a warning sign to other campuses looking to make deals with the administration, such as Harvard and the University of California.

Michael Thaddeus, professor of mathematics at Columbia and vice president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said his institution has become more secretive in recent years and university leadership has not given details to the restoration of money at the school.

"My main thought is that it's very hard to find out what's going on, even for insiders, even for Columbia faculty, it's very opaque,” he said.

Federal money for academic research is a complicated process, making it difficult to fully understand how the money has been processed.

"The funding agency, such as the National Institutes of Health, awards the grant. Then the General Services Administration disperses the money to the central administration of a university like Columbia. The central administration tells lab administrators or........

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