Trump freezes Harvard’s funding: Did Trump freeze Harvard’s funding undermine U.S. scientific leadership?
Trump and his advisers described the freeze as a temporary measure to force Harvard to make policy changes and address anti-Semitism on campus, but Ingber and other scientists saw a long-term negative impact on the tradition of partnership between government and university researchers, which made the United States the strongest nation on Earth. The damage has helped rivals like China, scientists say.
“We are killing the innovation goose that makes the United States a world leader in science,” said Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Biology-inspired Engineering Institute. “This is destroying our competitiveness.”
Since the Trump administration announced this week that it had frozen $2.3 billion, he has seen two government research contracts worth more than $20 million have been shut down. One focuses on evaluating and developing drugs to combat radiation damage in humans. This work can be the basis for helping cancer patients cope with the side effects of radiation therapy, and it can be used to protect soldiers and civilians during nuclear wars or nuclear power plant explosions.
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Harvard’s funding freeze comes after schools reject government reforms to its academic programs, admissions processes and recruitment practices designed to eliminate what the Trump administration sees at schools and other colleges across the country.
Trump officials pointed out that pro-Palestinian protests were held in several schools last year after the Israeli-Gaza war in 2023, justification for its demand. But critics in the faculty community say these measures are designed to calm the language and that the campus should be a place for freedom of speech and academic thought.
Ingber said he knew about the DOC and applicants are now refusing to accept research positions in the United States because they are afraid to live in the United States. They are turning to China or Europe for work.
“We are the best young scientists in the world to pursue innovation magnets,” Ingber said. “It’s over. Three months after this administration, it’s over.”
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White House spokesman Kush Desai said the funding freeze in Harvard and Colombia was “just one thing, only one thing: addressing anti-Semitism.”
“Anti-Semitic protesters create violence and take over the entire university campus building is not only a rough demonstration of paranoia targeting Jewish Americans, but also completely undermines the knowledge enquiry and research that federal funds for universities are designed to support,” Desai said.
The Ministry of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
“Durable effect”
Since the end of World War II, the government has identified areas of strategic research in public health, military or other fields. The researchers then responded by proposing projects, where less than the top 10% of projects may receive federal funding.
For decades, the university has provided infrastructure and management for these joint projects. Researchers are usually university-independent, have no teaching duties or relationships with students and the federal government.
Noam Ross, executive director of Ropensci, is a nonprofit global initiative that supports open and repeatable research, and is helping create a database of canceled grants and contracts that are removed from scientists’ reports, notifications on government websites, legal cases, legal cases and news coverage. Ross hopes that the scientific community can use this information in a legal battle or better bring cases in the court of public opinion.
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“You need information that people can use so that they can understand the impact of the government and understand what they are pursuing what it means to provide 100 years of health and scientific business for the country’s economy and progress,” Ross said.
Ross has collected data on fund cuts to study trans health or DEI, a question targeted by the Trump administration. But it also shows research threats from Harvard, Columbia and dozens of other universities.
Columbia researchers and executives have experienced what Harvard’s Ingber was experiencing in March after the Trump administration said it had terminated the university’s grants and contracts worth $400 million.
In the Columbia project affected by the Trump administration’s funding freeze, a study aimed at improving the safety of blood transfusion therapy in adults, children and neonates, as well as a study of uterine fibroids, noncancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.
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Dr. Ronald Collman, director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Pennsylvania, said his center has seen cuts by the Trump administration and he feels forced to help the public understand what is not a new entertainment center for new privileged Ivy League students.
“Of course, researchers are punished short-term, but the long-term cost, the real punishment is for the public that will not be found from the public,” Coleman said.
He added that motivational research is the “American way.”
“Now, the idea that the central government will control every aspect of the research is how we undermine this, and that’s how we will make China great,” Coleman said. “It will have a long-term lasting impact.”
