Harvard is clearly starting to feel the effect of going toe-to-toe with the Trump administration.
The Ivy League university has notified its researchers and students that they will dip into their saving accounts to help cover the gap caused by frozen research funding withheld after the school refused to bow before the whims of the federal government — and the school’s president is apparently taking a voluntary pay cut.
“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,” Harvard President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning wrote in a joint letter addressed to members of the university community.
Garber will take a voluntary 25% pay cut during the upcoming fiscal year, according to a spokesperson for the university. Garber’s current salary is not publicly available information.
The university will also “dedicate $250 million of central funding to complement School-based resources and strategies to support research affected by these recent suspensions and cancellations” to help defray grant funding lost after the school chose against complying with President Donald Trump’s attempts to coerce the school into compliance with his demands they abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and do more to combat antisemitism on campus.
Their fight has already cost them.
According to the university, the federal government has frozen more than $2 billion in research funding meant for use by Harvard scientists. In just the last week, Garber and Manning wrote, “The University has received a large number of grant terminations from the federal government, stopping lifesaving research and, in some cases, losing years of important work.”
In a letter sent by Trump’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism to the university on Tuesday, the administration informed Harvard that another $450 million in grants were on the chopping block because the school has allegedly become a “breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination.”
“This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement,” the letter reads.
According to the task force, “There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus” at present, where they claim administrators are “prioritizing appeasement over accountability,” and as such have “forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support.”
“As a result, eight federal agencies across the government are announcing the termination of approximately $450 million in grants to Harvard, which is in addition to the $2.2 billion that was terminated last week,” they wrote.
The most recent grant terminations come after the school, on Monday, informed Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the university is not willing to “surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government,” especially while progress toward admittedly necessary reforms takes place.
Garber acknowledged the university has some work to do in order to “combat antisemitism and other bigotry through policy and discipline reforms, academic investments, community support initiatives, and educational programs,” but said that their efforts are being “undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law.”
Earlier this week, Harvard amended a lawsuit they’ve filed against the Trump administration to include the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism’s apparent determination to strip Harvard of grant funding.
“On May 13, 2025, the Federal Task Force issued a press release claiming ‘Harvard University has repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus,’ and stating that ‘[t]he Task Force fully supports the Trump Administration’s multi-agency move to cut funding to Harvard, demonstrating the entire Administration’s commitment to eradicating discrimination on Harvard’s campus,’” the amended suit informs the court.
According to the suit, the Trump administration is deliberately ignoring the “meaningful reforms” the school has taken to “eliminate antisemitism and other forms of hate” seen on campus.
U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, along with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, have condemned the Trump administration’s war on Harvard as an unconstitutional and authoritarian overreach.
“The Trump administration is demonstrating astonishing disregard for not only the students, faculty, and staff that these cuts impact, but also for the general public who benefit from scientific breakthroughs and the global standing of the United States,” they said in a joint statement.
Herald wire services contributed.
