Hundreds of Harvard researchers have fallen victim to the freeze on funding by the Trump administration.
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‘Underlying technology issue’ resolved after United Airlines departures grounded across the nationHouston man living with cognitive disability has his ‘lifeline’ of SNAP benefits stolenHarvard University professor Alberto Ascherio opens a liquid nitrogen freezer used to store blood samples used for research at the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025 in Boston. Blood samples used by Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio to study the cause of neurodegenerative diseases are stored in a freezer at the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025 in Boston. FILE - People walk between buildings on Harvard University campus, Dec. 17, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio opens a liquid nitrogen freezer used to store blood samples used for research at the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025 in Boston. Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of“It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don’t have money to launch it,” said Ascherio. “We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof. You're being cut off.'”The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything fromThe government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment., accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” “Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint. “But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical,The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons. The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or scramble to find non-government funding to replace lost money. In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts, but university President Alan Garber warned of “difficult decisions and sacrifices” ahead. Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay his researchers’ salaries until next June. But he’s still been left without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work. Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said.“It’s really devastating,” agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact ofon heart health, how pandemic-era policies in over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia. At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130 scientists. “Just thinking about all the knowledge that’s not going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding freeze continues for a few more months."It’s all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day." John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts. In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about $1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that funded training of doctoral students also were cancelled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said. “I’m in a position where I have to really think about, ‘Can I revive this research?’” he said. “Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?” The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism. Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary. Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and drug use, said she’s happy to see the culling of what she called “politically motivated social science studies.”Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed reform at the university, where several programs of study have “really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that is not representative of the country as a whole.” But Madras, who served on the President’s Commission on Opioids during Trump’s first term, said holding scientists’ research funding hostage as a bargaining chip doesn’t make sense. “I don’t know if reform would have happened without the president of the United States pointing the bony finger at Harvard," she said. “But sacrificing science is problematic, and it’s very worrisome because it is one of the major pillars of strength of the country.”by the Trump administration that puts the country's reputation as the global research leader at risk. Support for students and post-doctoral fellows has been slashed, visas for foreign scholars threatened, and new guidelines and funding cuts at the NIH will make it much more difficult to get federal funding in the future, they said. It also will be difficult to replace federal funding with money from the private sector.is going to be jeopardized,” Quackenbush said. “We’re going to face real challenges in continuing to lead the world in scientific excellence.” Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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