Harvard Redirects $250 Million to Research Amid Federal Funding Freeze

University leaders said the additional funding does not fully make up for the loss of federal dollars.

People walk on the Business School campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on April 15, 2025. Faith Ninivaggi/Reuters

Harvard University will allocate $250 million over the next year to support campus research, after the Trump administration suspended more than $2.6 billion in federal grants and awards to the Ivy League school.

The money will help sustain “critical research activity for a transitional period,” Harvard President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning said in a joint statement on Wednesday, pledging continued support for faculty, postdocs, students, and staff affected by the cuts.

The money will be drawn from a pool reserved for Harvard’s central administration, which includes the offices of the president and provost, rather than from the university’s endowment. This supplement adds to the roughly $500 million Harvard allocates to research every year.

Still, the university leaders acknowledged that the additional funding will not fully offset the loss of federal dollars. According to Harvard’s financial report, in fiscal year 2024, the federal government provided $686 million for university research, while non-federal sources such as private foundations contributed $326 million. Harvard itself contributed about $500 million.

Warning of “difficult decisions and sacrifices” ahead across Harvard’s schools, Garber and Manning said deans and academic leaders have been asked to make “informed, prudent” decisions to adapt their programs to “a changing funding environment.” They promised support in helping researchers identify alternative funding sources, but did not outline any specific strategy.

“We understand the uncertainty that these times have brought and the burden our community faces,” they wrote. “We are here to support you.”

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of budgetary steps Harvard has taken to manage the fallout from the federal funding loss. In March, the university implemented a hiring freeze, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences denied admission to all applicants on its waitlist for admission. In April, Harvard turned to Wall Street to borrow $750 million in taxable bonds.

The federal funding freeze stems from escalating tensions between the university and the Trump administration. The dispute initially centered around campus anti-Semitism and later broadened to include concerns over ideological bias and Harvard’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, which the administration says run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.

In a letter dated April 11, the administration accused Harvard of failing “to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” The letter outlined sweeping demands, including shutting down all DEI offices, overhauling the international admissions process to screen out applicants deemed “hostile to American values” or “supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” and commissioning an external audit of faculty, students, and leadership to assess “viewpoint diversity.”

The administration also called for an audit of specific programs—most notably the Center for Middle Eastern Studies—that allegedly “fuel anti-Semitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” The audit would need to identify any faculty who had “discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students” or “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules” following the Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s response in Gaza, which triggered a wave of campus protests across the United States.

On April 16, Harvard publicized both the administration’s letter and Garber’s response, in which he categorically rejected the proposed conditions, stating that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

That same day, the administration announced it was freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year federal grants to Harvard. Since then, the total suspended or canceled funding has exceeded $2.6 billion.

Harvard has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the funding freeze, seeking to halt and declare unlawful the $2.2 billion suspension as well as any future freezes imposed based on what it describes as “unconstitutional conditions.”