Since the beginning of 2025, our research enterprise has faced tremendous instability due to several federal funding cuts targeted at Harvard. More than 350 federal grants and contracts at HMS were terminated, representing approximately $230 million in funding each year. These terminations also jeopardized more than 230 outgoing HMS subawards to hospitals and academic research institutions in 23 states and in Washington, DC – including more than 100 at HMS-affiliated hospitals and the Broad Institute – who have specialized expertise and equipment needed to collaborate on and carry out this important lifesaving and life-altering research.
On Sept. 3, a ruling by Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston said that the government had broken the law by freezing research funds at Harvard. Since that ruling, Harvard has received notices of reinstatements of many of the terminated federal awards, as well as payments for the vast majority of the expenditures incurred on the unlawfully frozen and terminated awards. These payments are reimbursements for past work.
Continued uncertainty
However, the future status of federal research funding at Harvard remains uncertain. The Trump administration has said it will appeal the judge’s decision on the terminated grants. Harvard also faces a reduction in its negotiated rate of essential research support costs (“indirect costs”), changes to the selection criteria for new grants, and threats to our eligibility to apply for and receive future grants and federal funding. The earnings on Harvard’s endowment are now subject to an unprecedented tax, which erodes our capacity to support our missions of research, education, and service.
Collectively, these uncertainties continue to threaten Harvard Medical School’s research enterprise. The future of this work – funded by taxpayers and done in service to humanity – hangs in the balance and threatens to disrupt the promise of new discoveries, medicines, devices, and improvements in clinical care that benefit patients and families everywhere.
As we navigate this period of instability and uncertainty, gifts to Harvard Medical School help to bridge critical funding gaps and sustain independent research.
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