Harvard freezes hiring as Trump threatens to pull funding

Harvard University will temporarily freeze hiring as the risk of federal funding cuts by the Trump administration threatens the finances of some of the most prestigious American colleges.

Harvard, the richest U.S. university with a $53 billion endowment, is one of several schools under scrutiny for alleged failures to tackle antisemitism on campus. Last week, the administration said it's canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, citing harassment of Jewish students since the eruption of the war that began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

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"We need to prepare for a wide range of financial circumstances, and strategic adjustments will take time to identify and implement," Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement Monday. "Consequently, it is imperative to limit significant new long-term commitments that would increase our financial exposure and make further adjustments more disruptive."

Harvard said the pause is meant to preserve financial flexibility until leaders "better understand how changes in federal policy will take shape and can assess the scale of their impact."

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The move is the latest fallout for universities confronting an increasingly skeptical Republican Party as well as threats to the billions in federal dollars that flow annually to higher education through programs like the National Institutes of Health. Harvard received about $700 million in federal funding in the past academic year. Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell have already announced hiring freezes, citing similar uncertainty about government funding.

Even before the administration threatened funding cuts, Harvard signaled it needed to curtail spending. In its most recent financial report, the university's finance chief warned that cost increases were outpacing revenue growth. Operating expenses grew 9% compared with a 6% increase in operating revenue, the second straight year in which costs expanded more quickly. Cash gifts fell 15% to less than $1.2 billion during the most recent fiscal year amid a surge in alumni anger over the school's handling of antisemitism.

While Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% in the last fiscal year, its long-term performance has lagged behind peers.