Harvard joins colleges moving to self-fund some research to offset federal funding cuts

Harvard University is putting up $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts amid a federal funding freeze imposed by the Trump administration, but the school’s president warns of “difficult decisions and sacrifices” to come.

- By COLLIN BINKLEY

The university joins a growing number of colleges moving to self-fund research as a way to compensate for at least some of the money lost to federal funding cuts.

Johns Hopkins University has started offering grants of up to $150,000 a year to faculty facing “unexpected federal research funding disruptions.” Northwestern University said it’s covering the cost of research projects that received stop-work orders from the federal government in April.

In a campus message Wednesday, Harvard President Alan Garber laid out a plan to maintain some research operations affected by the university’s loss of more than $2.6 billion in grants. Harvard has been fighting the government in court over the cuts.

Harvard’s plan will redirect $250 million as an initial stopgap for the coming year while officials explore other options, Garber wrote. He called it a transition period for critical research programs, noting the Ivy League school “cannot absorb the entire cost of the suspended or canceled federal funds.”