An endowment launched in February to fund Ph.D. students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has reached its fundraising goal of $100 million, the division announced Thursday. In a letter thanking donors, FAS Edgerly Family dean Hopi Hoekstra said the money would support fellowships for 50 doctoral students across all three segments of the school (science, social science, and arts and humanities), as well as in the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
Hoekstra also announced a new round of fundraising, with the goal of raising another $100 million to support 50 more Ph.D. fellowships. “This initiative has reaffirmed something fundamental about the FAS,” Hoekstra wrote in her letter, which was emailed to division faculty, staff, and researchers. “Our Ph.D. students are indispensable partners in discovery.”
The initial fundraising effort—a matching-gift challenge seeded by $50 million in donations from a group of alumni—was launched early this year amid deep financial and political disruption. Last November, the division had announced that it would cut the number of students admitted to its science doctoral programs by 50 percent (initially, FAS leaders had discussed cutting admissions by 75 percent, before scaling back the plans). Those cuts came partly in response to ongoing uncertainty about federal funding; in 2025, the Trump administration froze more than $2 billion in research grants and contracts to Harvard. Although a court ruling later ordered the funding restored, the legal fight continues and some funding has been slow to return.
These political upheavals exacerbated financial problems at FAS that were already longstanding. Since last fall, division leaders have been working to address what they describe as a $350 million structural deficit. As part of that effort, the FAS underwent a sweeping reorganization this summer that included a significant number of layoffs. A total of 165 staff positions were eliminated, equivalent to approximately 10 percent of the FAS staff, and an additional 24 percent of staff were moved into new or restructured roles.
In her letter and a FAS press release this week about the new endowment for Ph.D. students, Hoekstra expressed gratitude to donors for their response to what she called a “critical priority.”
“Completing this challenge in just four months is remarkable,” she said in the release. “These funds not only support Ph.D. students but also strengthen our broader academic community; graduate students work closely with faculty on research and play an essential role in teaching and mentoring our undergraduates.” The new $100 million fundraising effort is also a matching-gift challenge, sparked by contributions from a second group of donors who agreed to match fundraising dollars, according to a FAS spokesperson.
The endowment for Ph.D. students will support tuition, health insurance, and a stipend “to meet increasing need,” according to a FAS statement about the fund. More than 2,500 Ph.D. students work across the FAS and SEAS as part of GSAS, in classrooms, laboratories, libraries, archives, museums, and field sites. “As the future of traditional research funding remains uncertain,” the statement said, “the FAS will continue to prioritize innovative approaches to securing new support.”
