Memorial Church Reduces Programming Amid University Budget Cuts

Memorial Church will limit its student programs and public events as a result of University-wide budget cuts, Memorial Church Pusey Minister Matthew Ichihashi Potts wrote in his annual fall newsletter released in August.

The church will continue to hold worship every Sunday in addition to morning services during the week. But many of its student-oriented events will be held less frequently, Potts wrote.

Public events, lectures, and volunteer projects will also be reduced, though Potts did not specify which events could be cut.

“The Memorial Church is not unimpacted by the severe budget pressures Harvard has experienced from external forces,” he wrote. “We have had to make cuts, and we will have to make many more throughout the year.”

Potts is the latest in a series of Harvard administrators who have announced cuts triggered by the University’s federal funding fight with the White House. Though a judge ruled on Wednesday that the freezing of over $2.6 billion in federal funding to Harvard was unconstitutional, the Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision.

The University is also under at least a dozen other congressional and department-level investigations for its response to antisemitism, ties to other countries, admissions practices, and broad accusations of racial discrimination — all of which threaten Harvard’s funding. Most damaging, the University is now subject to an 8 percent endowment tax as part of Trump’s new tax law. That law alone could cost Harvard more than $2oo million every year.

In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, academic hiring has been paused and the Arts and Humanities division cut their non-personnel spending by roughly $1.95 million. Course CAs have also taken a pay cut, and undergraduate positions are being reduced. The Harvard Kennedy School has also laid off staff and ended office space leases.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said in July that the combined effect of grant cuts and the endowment tax will likely cost Harvard up to $1 billion annually.

But Memorial Church is unique among affected programs for being a spiritual and religious, rather than academic, space. Most campus religious leaders volunteer their time, according to Potts. Other religious leaders are affiliated with independent organizations like Harvard Hillel that do not rely on University funding.

“I don’t see the University turn away from supporting students in their religious lives or in their spiritual and moral and ethical formation,” Potts said in an interview. “But University-at-large, there are new budgetary pressures, and depending upon the way these pressures interface with the budgets we have, each of our respective offices and organizations are having to figure out how to respond.”

The University has not laid off any Memorial Church staff yet, but Potts added that personnel cuts are not off the table.

“It will depend upon continuing conversations with other colleagues and with what we determine to be the full impact of the budgetary pressures,” he said.

But the church has already made changes to popular student programs in the first wave of cuts.

They reduced the frequency of regular programming such as “After School Snack,” an event where Potts and his family invite students to their residence in the afternoons to socialize and enjoy baked goods. These gatherings were held every week in past years, and will be scheduled less frequently now, according to Potts.

The church will also reduce spending on event catering for events such as monthly communion service dinners.

“Dinners might be not quite as fancy as they’ve been in the past,” Potts said. “But we’re still going to gather. We’re still going to eat and share time together and share a meal together, which really is the heart of the thing, right?”

Potts added that, despite the cuts, there are also new initiatives the church will be supporting this year, including a new presidential initiative on Interfaith Engagement led by Rabbi Getzel Davis.

“These pressures are pressures, but we’re going to continue doing the work that we believe in and that we believe serves the student population at Harvard and the larger Harvard community and the broader mission of the University,” he said.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com.