8 agencies to terminate $450 million in grants to Harvard

Eight federal agencies will be terminating approximately $450 million in grants to Harvard University, according to a May 13 press release from the US Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The task force, formed in February in response to an executive order, says the funding cuts are a result of Harvard’s failure “to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus.”

The $450 million hit is in addition to the $2.2 billion in multiyear grants that the Donald J. Trump administration ended April 14 after Harvard president Alan M. Garber rejected a list of government demands. They included implementing admissions and hiring reform and discontinuing programs focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on April 21 after the first round of cuts. In a press release announcing the suit, the university says the funding freeze is “unlawful” and goes “beyond the government’s authority.”

Harvard has since amended its lawsuit to reflect the new grant terminations. In a May 14 statement, Garber and Provost John F. Manning say the school is working to provide support for its research community amid the cuts.

“We will continue to fight the unlawful freeze and termination of our federal grants and to advocate for the productive partnership between the federal government and research universities that has for more than eighty years resulted in pathbreaking scientific discoveries, innovations, and advances in engineering, medicine, and public health,” they write.

The anti-Semitism task force’s statement announcing the new cuts doesn’t specify the eight agencies that will be terminating their funding to Harvard. But the university’s amended lawsuit says that since May 6 it has received cancellation letters from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), among others.

C&EN reached out to the DOE and NIH for comment on the termination letters, but neither responded before this article was published.

NSF spokesperson Michael England did not explicitly confirm that the agency has or will be terminating grants it has awarded to Harvard researchers. In an email, England says the NSF “has undertaken a review of its award portfolio. The agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.”

But an NSF employee says that about 200 Harvard awards will be terminated in another round of grant cancellations this week. The NSF will also not fund any new awards to Harvard, the person says, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their job.

The NSF has canceled around 1,500 grants since April 11, including a handful to Harvard. Those awards are primarily focused on topics that the agency says no longer align with its priorities, such as those pertaining to DEI or misinformation and disinformation. On May 14, that list was updated to include environmental justice.

That focus appears to not apply to the latest Harvard cancellations, however. A partial list of the 200 new awards slated for termination and reviewed by C&EN comprises nine from the NSF’s division of chemistry, including ones involving organic photochemistry, quantum entanglement, and asymmetric catalysis.

The NSF source points out that quantum research is being canceled even though quantum information science is one of Trump’s research priorities.