Harvard’s Researchers Take Center Stage in Funding Showdown With Trump

David R. Walt, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, lost hundreds of thousands in research funding from the Trump administration last week — just two months after receiving the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement.

By Monday afternoon, Walt and his lab at the Wyss Institute were front and center on Harvard’s home page as the face of the University’s campaign to present itself as a defender of science against funding threats from the White House.

The harvard.edu page, now titled “Research Powers Progress,” has been entirely made over to display the development of Harvard-affiliated technologies and scientific breakthroughs — ranging from wearable robotic devices for stroke survivors to CRISPR treatment for sickle cell patients.

The website remodel was part of a media rollout accompanying a forceful Monday declaration by Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 that the University would not negotiate with the Trump administration over its federal funding. Hours later, the administration paused $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts.

“My lab is involved in developing new diagnostics tests for neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS), cancer (breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and others), and infectious diseases,” Walt wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

“We are making incredible progress and cancellation of funding would set these projects back and would significantly delay their availability to diagnose, predict drug effectiveness, and monitor relapse,” he added.

If funding is revoked, many scientists at HMS and affiliate hospitals could lose their labs, their teams, and their careers. Several researchers declined to comment publicly for fear their funding would be targeted by the federal government.

The projects currently on the chopping block — unlike $110 million of NIH grants cancelled since late February — appear to have no underlying political motivation. The contracts identified cover everything from pediatric cancer treatment to particulate matter exposure’s effects on military veterans.

Joren C. Madsen, director of the Mass General Hospital Transplant Center, said his lab — where the first-ever successful pig kidney transplant was performed last year — relies heavily on federal funding.

“Since my research requires significant overhead, it wouldn’t take much of a loss to shut my lab down completely,” Madsen wrote.

A government antisemitism task force memo obtained by The Boston Globe listed more than 60 contracts worth a total of $255 million dollars that the Trump administration identified for termination.

But with a total price tag of up to $9 billion — and possibly even steeper consequences as prominent Republican politicians call to revoke all federal funding — researchers are left to watch the showdown between Garber and Trump as the funds that keep their labs’ lights on hang in the balance.

Several researchers whose contracts were included in the memo were not aware their projects were in jeopardy until they were contacted by The Crimson. But despite the mounting risks, more than a dozen lab directors said they support Garber’s decision to stand firm.

Harvard’s lawyers addressed the risk to University research in their letter to the Trump administration refusing to comply with demands, describing the threats as a condition that Harvard “accede to these terms or risk the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding critical to vital research and innovation that has saved and improved lives and allowed Harvard to play a central role in making our country’s scientific, medical, and other research communities the standard-bearers for the world.

“These demands extend not only to Harvard but to separately incorporated and independently operated medical and research hospitals engaging in life-saving work on behalf of their patients,” they added.

Five independent HMS-affiliated Boston Hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center — received more than $1.56 billion in funding from the National Institutes of Health alone during fiscal year 2024. Now, they are poised to bear the brunt of the administration’s potential cuts.

Although these hospitals are deeply entwined with Harvard through shared faculty and collaborative research, they operate independently. They are not governed by the University, nor do they benefit from Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment. Instead, they function as financially independent nonprofits, with federal funding making up a significant portion of their research support.

“This would potentially cause a large number of people to be laid off, as the teaching hospitals have much smaller endowments than Harvard University, and those funds also have to support a patient care mission that they cannot ignore,” HMS Neurology Professor Clifford B. Saper wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

But in a letter to researchers Monday night, Mass General Brigham CEO Anne Klibanski said she believed the funding threats to Harvard were “not applicable to our separately incorporated and independently operated medical and research hospitals.”

“The impact of the federal investigation to Mass General Brigham and all Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals remains unknown,” Klibanski wrote.

Dyann F. Wirth, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote that federal funding also sustains graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who “represent the best and brightest and the future of scientific discovery.”

“Our graduates go on to lead their own research groups, join the private sector fueling the biopharma industry and teach the next generation.” Wirth wrote. “We could lose a generation of scientists.”

The University reflected this sentiment in an analysis of the long-term impacts of Harvard’s research arm, noting that Harvard researchers had reported 402 innovations, 155 U.S.-issued patents, and one Nobel Prize in 2024.

While researchers could turn to non-governmental sources for funding, most told The Crimson that contingency plans were up in the air.

“I am working to diversify my funding sources, but there simply is not enough industry of philanthropic support to make up for the loss of federal funding,” wrote HMS professor Evan D. Rosen.

But Rosen — like dozens of his colleagues across the University and its affiliated hospitals — said Garber’s decisive action was the right move, regardless of the consequences it could have on his work.

“My lab, my life’s work, stands to lose a lot. But it needed to be done,” Rosen wrote.

—Staff writer Avani B. Rai can be reached at avani.rai@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @avaniiiirai.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.