Harvard Staff Union Urges University To Draw on Unrestricted Funds to Support Research

The executive board of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers called on the University to draw on its unrestricted endowment funds to sustain campus research amid funding cuts in an open letter to Harvard affiliates on Monday.

The letter, sent before Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration for the funding freeze, urged Harvard to make use of more than $9 billion in unrestricted funds to support researchers affected by federal funding cuts.

Harvard-affiliated researchers began receiving stop-work orders hours after federal officials paused $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard in response to its rebuff of the Trump administration’s demands. Harvard’s School of Public Health — the University school most reliant on federal funding — has since announced layoffs.

According to union director Bill Jaeger, hundreds of workers in the 5,700-member union who hold positions in labs could be laid off without alternative funding.

In the letter, HUCTW leadership lauded Garber’s response to the demands, but pushed University leadership to employ the endowment as a stopgap measure in the face of layoffs.

“We know that drawing on the endowment outside of the regular annual distributions to the schools goes against long-standing institutional instincts, but these are extraordinary times,” they wrote.

“Once Harvard research has been stopped and dismantled, and staff have been laid off or found other positions, our University’s lifesaving work will be set back by years in ways that may be difficult or impossible to recover from,” they added.

While more than 80 percent of Harvard’s endowment is made up of restricted funds, experts have said that the University could weather a short-term blow to its investments if the funds were used to support operations temporarily affected by funding cuts.

The open letter cited the University’s $9.6 billion in unrestricted endowment funds and $6.1 billion in General Operating Account investments — accessible with the Corporation’s approval — in fiscal year 2024.

HUCTW President Carrie Barbash said that while the union has found alternative funding for some affected workers, Harvard will need to make structural reallocations to keep its current research staff.

“I don’t think there’s anybody involved in this at Harvard who wants layoffs to happen,” Barbash said.

“So I think we’re trying to have a kind of different conversation than we might normally have, because it is such a unique moment and such a challenging moment — to maybe push in a hard direction,” she added.

After Garber rejected federal demands on April 14, the Trump administration has considered revoking the University’s tax-exempt status, threatened to restrict its ability to host international students, and planned to cut another $1 billion in funding. On Monday, the University sued to halt the administration’s freeze on federal funding.

As the fight between Harvard and the Trump administration escalates, HUCTW urged the University to protect research funds “until the path forward becomes clearer.”

“The government’s attacks on higher education are not designed to protect anyone in our community; they are calculated attempts to tear down universities and bend them to its will,” they wrote.

“If we yield now and shutter essential research — including laying off hundreds of Harvard staff committed to that research, endangering their economic security and damaging their careers — we help to give the Trump administration what it wants: control over our academic direction, our future, and our community,” they added.

A University spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.