The Trump administration is freezing more than $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard University after the school defied the administration’s demands for radical change at the university.
“The joint task force to combat anti-Semitism is announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to Harvard University,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in an April 14 statement.
The lost funds risk halting research on cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and more, according to a Harvard webpage.
Harvard has yet to issue a statement in response to the funding cuts. A spokesperson for the university directed Fierce Biotech to an April 14 statement from Harvard President Alan Garber, M.D., Ph.D.
“No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber said in his statement.
The government pulling back from its partnerships with Harvard and other universities, Garber said, “risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”
Harvard received a letter of demands (PDF) on April 11 from the Trump administration calling on the university to implement multiple wide-reaching changes, including reducing the power of students and untenured faculty in university governance, reporting international students who are “supportive of terrorism” to the federal government and bringing in an external group to audit multiple programs accused of antisemitism.
"Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment," the government said.
In response, the Massachusetts college said it was "committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry in its community,” according to an April 14 statement.
“Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community," the response reads. "But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
On the same day the Trump administration sent its demands, Harvard professors and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) sued the administration (PDF) over the threats of funding cuts, calling the ultimatums an existential “gun to the head” for a university.
The suit, filed in federal court, challenges the government's "unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus," according to the court complaint.
The Trump administration announced earlier this month that it was reviewing $9 billion in funding to Harvard. Other schools facing funding cuts from the administration include Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, Cornell University, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania.
On March 10, all the targeted schools except for Penn were included on a Department of Education list of 60 universities that were “under investigation for Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” Penn was instead targeted because a transgender athlete competed on the school’s women’s swimming team in 2022, in full compliance with NCAA rules and applicable laws.
The federal government is also facing legal action from AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers over the $400 million in funding cut off to Columbia University last month.
Unlike Harvard, Columbia took steps to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s demands, including committing to institutional neutrality and implementing new restrictions on protests. The university is now in negotiations about the fate of the $400 million in canceled funds, with the administration allegedly making further demands, according to The Wall Street Journal.
As Harvard squares up for a legal battle with the Trump administration, one notable alum has spoken out in support of the university: former President Barack Obama.
“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect,” Obama wrote in an April 14 post on Bluesky. “Let’s hope others follow suit.”
With federal funding in peril, universities are seeking alternative sources of cash. In March, the Trump administration announced plans to slash indirect costs allowed on grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from about 29% to 15%, sparking a legal back-and-forth that resulted in a federal judge permanently blocking the NIH from implementing the caps on research grants. The NIH is now appealing the decision.
In response to this potential decrease in indirect costs, which funds things like facilities maintenance and administrative expenses, a group of national organizations representing medical and research institutions convened on April 8 to “spur the development of a more efficient and transparent model for funding indirect costs on federal research grants.”