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Research administrators at several of Harvard’s schools sent emails Tuesday afternoon urging faculty who received federal stop-work orders to comply, but to continue working on other federally sponsored projects as President Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze remains in limbo.

The stop-work orders — which apply to whole projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within some federally funded programs — were issued by Trump amid a flood of executive actions in his first week in office.

“With these notifications, we are required to cease the identified sponsored activities in accordance with the orders,” Sara Lyn Elwell, an interim co-lead of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Office of Research Administration, wrote in an email to FAS faculty.

Harvard School of Public Health administrators issued similar instructions to HSPH researchers in a separate message.

The Crimson could not immediately determine which research activities at Harvard were affected by the stop-work orders.

In a separate directive late Monday night, which was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, the Trump administration threatened to cut off federal grants to universities. Harvard’s messages urged faculty whose sponsored projects were not covered by stop-work orders to continue their research amid the “changing landscape.”

The message also instructed faculty to continue charging research expenses to their award accounts and applying for new grants.

“We realize that some agencies have paused their grant reviews but, to the best of our knowledge, they are still allowing submissions,” wrote Elwell and her fellow interim FORA co-lead, Katherine Gates.

While both emails instructed researchers to contact University administrators upon receiving a stop-work order, they provided different guidance depending on whether the order applied to projects in their entirety or DEI components of sponsored activities.

For orders affecting DEI initiatives, the emails stated that administrators would advise researchers on how best to comply. For orders affecting entire projects, the emails specified that school administrators would work with University officials to determine appropriate next steps.

Several faculty wrote that they were deeply concerned that halts to funding would undermine research at Harvard.

Harvard Medical School professor A. Sloan Devlin wrote in an email that a diversity supplement for one of her NIH grants — which funds the salary and supplies for one of her senior graduate students — is likely to be cancelled. Without the grant, Devlin will need to find another way to fund her student’s graduate studies.

“It’s important for people to understand that this supplement is funding basic science research that benefits the general public,” Devlin wrote. “It is not research about diversity.”

Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Joshua R. Sanes wrote in an email that he was “shocked and distressed” by the funding freeze and said he worried it would set back efforts in the United States to keep pace with the technological strides being made in other countries.

“We are already being overtaken by other countries, especially China,” Sanes wrote. “This will speed our demise.”

Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Venkatesh N. Murthy wrote in an email that many researchers he knows were “very worried about both the short-term and long-term effect of these chilling directives.”

“When student researchers are worried about whether they will be able to buy supplies to prevent their months-long experiments from falling-through, and whether they will get paid at the end of this month, the very foundation of our scientific mission suddenly seems fragile,” Murthy wrote.

In their message to faculty, Gates and Elwell asked FAS affiliates to share any new updates on the situation they receive and wrote that they were collaborating with other Harvard faculties, the Office of Sponsored Programs, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, and other Harvard offices.

“This is a rapidly evolving situation that we are monitoring closely, and we will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available,” Gates and Elwelll wrote.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.