On Monday morning, President Alan M. Garber wrote that Harvard will “implement a temporary pause on staff and faculty hiring,” among other austerity measures, in response to “substantial financial uncertainties driven by rapidly shifting federal policies.” The freeze comes a little over a month after the Trump administration announced a change in federal support for research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on terms that could substantially affect the University and affiliated hospitals, and three days after the White House announced the cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Throughout the past month, Northwestern, MIT, Stanford, and Yale have unveiled similar belt-tightening initiatives.
Updated March 12, 2025, 9:45 a.m.: On March 11, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Emma Dench, and the divisional deans notified FAS faculty colleagues that effective immediately, all graduate students on the waitlist for admission next fall would be denied admission. Students who have received formal offers of admission will still be admitted, and their offers of financial aid will be honored. This action is less draconian than that taken by other schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, which has reduced graduate admission cohorts outright, given the risk of reduced federal grant funding essential to supporting the costs for such students. But the practical effect is likely to be smaller entering cohorts in at least some Harvard graduate programs this fall, as not all admitted students accept Harvard’s offers. Separately, the Crimson reported that the School of Public Health (the Harvard unit most dependent on grant funding, which accounted for 59 percent of its revenues in fiscal year 2004), has reduced the number of entering graduate students in its biostatistics and population health doctoral programs.
The NIH funding cut represents a serious threat to Harvard’s budget. The NIH is by far the largest source of sponsored support for research, and some Harvard units are acutely dependent on it for their basic operations. In fiscal year 2024, 35 percent of Harvard Medical School’s operating revenues of about $900 million came from sponsored research, as did 59 percent of the Chan School of Public Health’s. Not all of these revenues come from federal sources or are affected by the NIH announcement. But, crudely estimating, the NIH’s prospective cuts to indirect cost reimbursement represent a reduction of more than $100 million in annual support for Harvard’s current and new research work—more than two-and-one-half times the University’s consolidated operating surplus in fiscal 2024.
The Trump administration’s actions against Columbia due to allegations of campus antisemitism could extend to Harvard, too. Columbia has been the epicenter of student protest following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Middle East. Last April, pro-Palestine protesters occupied a Columbia campus building; the New York Police Department arrested 112 people in and around Hamilton Hall. Protests returned to Columbia’s campus during the past few weeks following the expulsion of two Barnard College students who disrupted a Columbia course on the history of modern Israel. The March 3 announcement by several government agencies of “a comprehensive review” of Columbia University’s federal contracts and grants was based on “ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” The recently established Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, responsible for imposing the announced cut, will also visit and investigate Harvard (among the 10 institutions subject to such scrutiny).
In recent weeks, Harvard leaders have warned about looming austerity measures. At a March 4 Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting, Dean Hopi Hoekstra told the faculty, “We need to prepare for significant financial challenges.” FAS, she noted, is already in a “structural deficit,” meaning that the faculty is drawing down its unrestricted cash reserves to support current operations.
Garber wrote that alongside the hiring freeze, he asked leaders of Harvard’s schools and administrative units “to scrutinize discretionary and non-salary spending, reassess the scope and timing of capital renewal projects, and conduct a rigorous review of any new multi-year commitments.” He emphasized that the hiring pause is temporary and does not replace broader budgetary measures. Harvard also limited hiring in 2009 in response to the Great Recession and instituted a salary and hiring freeze in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the full announcement (signed by President Garber, the provost, the executive vice president, and the vice president for finance/chief financial officer) here.
