“Although we cannot absorb the entire cost of the suspended or canceled federal funds, we will mobilize financial resources to support critical research activity for a transitional period as we continue to work with our researchers to identify alternative funding sources,” Garber and Manning wrote.
The recent grant terminations from the federal government are “stopping lifesaving research and, in some cases, losing years of important work,” they said. “Although these actions were specifically targeted at Harvard, they are part of a broader campaign to revoke scientific research funding. . . . It is crucial for this country, the economy, and humankind that this work continue.”
Psychology professor Matthew Nock, one of the researchers affected by the cuts, focuses on suicide, “trying to better understand why people become suicidal,” and how to better predict it and prevent it from happening. Though he was relieved to learn Wednesday that Harvard will be contributing “at least temporary resources to continue the work that we‘re doing” in the sciences, there‘s also no guarantee the emergency funding will go toward supporting his team members specifically, or their research.
“The president makes funding available to different parts of the university, and then our deans work with our faculty to make decisions about how to best allocate the resources we have,” Nock said.
Now, the participating committees must make “incredibly difficult decisions,” he added. “You know, do you support suicide research or cancer research? Do you support diabetes research or heart disease? These are impossible decisions, but they’re ones that we‘re having to wrestle with.”
Sarah Fortune, a tuberculosis researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the university’s stopgap measure “will protect critical scientific capacity,” but she doesn’t expect it to save her research, which is conducted at more than a dozen sites in the United States and Africa.
Fortune was one of the first Harvard researchers to receive a stop-work order last month after the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force began freezing research funding.
Her contract with the National Institutes of Health was worth $60 million over multiple years, and much of that funding flowed to other universities that had partnered with her Harvard lab. “You can appreciate that Harvard, in this moment, when facing such severe cuts internally is going to [prioritize] saving capacity at Harvard,” she said. A larger network of research branching out from Harvard could be “irrevocably damaged” in the end, she said.
Other projects at the Harvard School of Public Health affected by the grant terminations include research on drug resistance in malaria and tuberculosis, and antiviral treatment gaps for pregnant women living with HIV, Fortune said. “My branch is only one part of a large portfolio of grants that were trying to improve the lives of people around the world.”
Jeffrey Flier, a Harvard professor and former dean of Harvard Medical School, applauded the announcement and said it was “necessary for the university to show some fiscal support for the lost funds.” But the future of Harvard’s research enterprise remains uncertain, he said.
At least for a limited period of time, “Harvard could fully replace the lost funds,” he said. “Whether that is the right thing to do and for how long is a very complicated matter.”
Harvard’s endowment is worth more than $50 billion. But much of it is restricted, and the university relies on earnings on the assets to fund operations and student financial aid.
In addition to mobilizing financial resources for scientific research, Harvard’s press office confirmed that Garber will soon take a voluntary 25 percent pay cut. The university has not given a figure for his current salary, but previous Harvard presidents have earned around $1 million a year.
The salary reduction for fiscal year 2026 is a gesture of solidarity against the very real threat the Trump administration poses to the nearly 400-year-old university. Nock sees it as “a demonstration that he cares, he takes this very personally, and he‘s willing to sacrifice for the university.”
Harvard expanded its lawsuit against the Trump administration Tuesday after the administration’s antisemitism task force announced that another $450 million in grants had been canceled.
The number of agencies terminating grants to Harvard has grown to nine.
In finding temporary financial solutions, Harvard is following other colleges and universities working to sustain stalled researchers who’ve seen billions in funding disappear. However, members of academia have stressed that federal funding is not charity or even a subsidy — but a fee for services with benefits for the public good.
Harvard receives approximately $700 million in research funding from federal agencies in a given year, in addition to around $300 million in sponsored research funding from other sources. The university also contributes around $500 million of its own funding to research every year.
As is stands, the NIH, the country’s biggest funder of scientific research, has frozen $2.2 billion of grants and contracts for Harvard researchers, effectively stopping scientific trials such as a seven-year, $12 million prevention program studying near-fatal food allergies in 800 infants across the United States that’s currently in its fifth year.
President Trump has vowed to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a move Garber has said would be “highly illegal” as well as “destructive to Harvard.” House Republicans, in the meantime, are engineering a major expansion of taxes on college and university endowments.
Other agencies are focused on investigating alleged discrimination by the university against white people, heterosexual people, men, and Asian Americans.
The Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism has led the pressure campaign at Harvard. The task force on Tuesday said the latest round of cuts demonstrate “the entire administration’s commitment to eradicating discrimination on Harvard’s campus.”
Garber previously, as provost, took a 25 percent voluntary reduction in pay in 2020 as the university faced financial challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the university said. His new salary reduction — first reported by The Harvard Crimson — comes after dozens of Harvard senior faculty members pledged in April to give up 10 percent of their pay to fight for academic freedom, and to counter the financial pressures the university is facing.
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser. Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.