> He remembers when that building came up, back in 2001, replacing a grove of elm, beech, and oak trees on campus. The old arts center hadn’t been cheap: $17 million was real money at the turn of the millennium.

They tore down a building less than twenty five years old to build a fancier one with fewer actual teaching spaces. There are many "temporary" Quonset huts around here twice that age. This institution is the top recipient of federal research funding. Their fiduciary responsibility with our tax dollars appears to be in name only.

As the article states, the funds came from an external donor.

It's not how I would choose to use $250M+ of my money, but it appears to have nothing at all to do with federal funding (nor would it even if the building was financed by the school, but especially not in this case).