When Ellen Granberg became George Washington University’s president in 2023, she stepped into history as the first woman and the first out lesbian to lead one of the capital’s most prestigious private institutions. Two years into her tenure, she’s facing a crisis that’s testing not only the university’s financial resilience but the very identity and purpose of American higher education.
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On Tuesday, Granberg announced sweeping new austerity measures at the private university to close a deepening budget deficit, including significant cuts to administrative and academic budgets, a hiring freeze for staff and faculty positions funded by operational dollars through at least October, and the potential for staff and faculty layoffs, calling it “a step we have tried to avoid but cannot any longer.”
Related: Meet George Washington University’s pioneering lesbian president Ellen Granberg
“This is a rapidly evolving situation, and thus the measures announced in our April 30 communication will not be sufficient to balance the FY26 budget and to assure the sustainability of the university,” Granberg and her team wrote in a message to the campus community.
“By collectively pursuing our shared aspirations, we know we can make substantial progress toward stabilizing our financial health,” she wrote.
The measures follow initial budget cuts announced in April and reflect a storm of pressures battering GW and universities nationwide, a storm now supercharged by politics.
In recent months, President Donald Trump and his administration have launched an unprecedented assault on elite universities, accusing them of harboring antisemitism and ideological indoctrination. Under Trump’s second term, federal agencies have moved to strip billions in funding from schools like Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and GW.
George Washington University is one of 10 universities named by a Trump administration task force for particular scrutiny, placing it squarely in the crosshairs of the federal government’s investigations.
Granberg explicitly cited those pressures in Tuesday’s statement. “Like so many of our peers, we are facing strong political, economic, and demographic headwinds,” she wrote. “We know the challenges facing GW are unsettling, even more so because new ones keep emerging.” She pointed to “continued reductions in indirect cost recoveries on federal research grants,” “significant changes in the overall federal research landscape,” and “constraints on our ability to enroll international students, including recently announced travel bans and slowdowns in visa processing,” among other threats.
University leaders across the country warn that the consequences reach far beyond balance sheets, threatening the independence and free inquiry at the heart of American academia.
Even before the federal assault, GW was grappling with declining enrollments in master’s degrees, a drop in international students, and a sluggish local economy in the Washington, D.C., area. From fiscal 2022 through 2024, GW’s revenue grew at an average annual rate of 6.1 percent, while expenses rose 6.8 percent, Granberg said. “While this difference might not seem significant,” Granberg noted, “its cumulative effect is an unsustainable compounding deficit.”
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GW will impose deeper spending reductions, scrutinize all contracts over $50,000 for possible savings, cut nonessential travel and events, reduce planned capital improvements, and implement temporary pay cuts for the university’s leadership team, including Granberg.
Positions mainly funded through external grants or endowed gifts remain exempt from the freeze. Student hiring can continue, though university leaders cautioned schools not to substitute student workers for lost staff.
Though Granberg said the university does “not anticipate a significant downsizing of staff or faculty,” she made clear that reductions in positions are increasingly likely. “We cannot depend on substantial growth in personnel to meet our needs,” she wrote.
Granberg has become a symbol of possibility and vulnerability — an out LGBTQ+ leader navigating a deeply polarized era.
In a 2024 interview with The Advocate, Granberg described how her journey, from corporate telecommunications in San Francisco to academic leadership, shaped her vision for GW as a haven for queer students and scholars. “I can confidently say that this is a wonderful place to go if you are a queer youth, particularly if you want a place that’s going to be very affirming,” she said, recalling the welcome she and her wife, Sonya Rankin, received upon moving into GW’s historic F Street House.
But the political storms roiling campuses nationwide have hit GW with particular force. Last spring, pro-Palestinian protests over the Israel-Hamas war escalated on campus, culminating in police removing an encampment and arresting 33 people. Granberg said she tried to strike a balance between free expression and institutional stability. “GW has a long and deep tradition of protest,” she said, “but what feels a little different now is the focus on disruption.”
In Washington, a city deeply connected to the levers of power, universities like GW have always existed in a delicate balance between scholarship and politics.
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