{shortcode-cfb85ff2a006768f42aca230185378198d6dae25}

Harvard spent $620,000 on lobbying the federal government in 2024 — the most it’s spent since 2010 — as the University attempts to dissuade lawmakers from imposing a larger endowment tax and other financial penalties on the heels of a 2023 leadership crisis.

The 17 percent rise in lobbying expenditures — a $90,000 increase compared to 2023— comes on the heels of a damaging congressional investigation into Harvard’s response to antisemitism on campus and threats from the Trump administration to revoke federal funding. Collective Ivy League federal lobbying expenditures also surged by 21 percent.

According to filings with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Harvard’s lobbying efforts primarily sought to protect federal research funding, oppose higher taxes on its $53.2 billion endowment, and advocate for immigration policies benefiting international Harvard affiliates.

{shortcode-c4ec998b16f9dd9fefa7923df29efb12b2369c37}

Harvard employs an in-house team of lobbyists in its Washington, D.C. office. Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 also personally made several trips to Washington to meet with lawmakers and address their concerns.

The threat of an endowment tax in particular has mobilized the University’s lobbying arm. In April, Garber described the possibility of an endowment tax hike as the “threat that keeps me up at night” in remarks to faculty.

Over the past year, House Republicans have introduced several proposals to raise the federal endowment tax from 1.4 to 10 percent, as part of renewed efforts to target the financial holdings of private universities. Harvard’s filings for the last five years name the endowment tax threats as a focus of their efforts.

Harvard was not alone in lobbying against new taxation proposals. Cornell, Princeton, and Yale all explicitly named a possible endowment tax in their 2024 lobbying filings.

{shortcode-bce40ddf2bc66c9a1de7208737fe73b990950482}

Of the Ivy League, Harvard came in third in lobbying expenditures, after Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, which spent $660,000 and $640,000, respectively.

In the final quarter of 2024, as in the second quarter, Harvard’s quarterly federal lobbying expenditures shot up to $170,000 — tied for the highest single quarter lobbying spending in at least the last five years. This uptick coincided with the University’s decision to enlist Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to President Trump, in early January 2025.

The University’s other external lobbying firm — O’Neill, Athy, and Casey — also lobbied against endowment tax proposals in addition to specifically monitoring the response to former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s damaging December 2023 congressional testimony.

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that “the University engages consistently with federal policymakers on a range of issues related to its education, research, and public service missions, including policies and investments that support innovation, expand access and opportunity, and strengthen engagement on issues of importance to the U.S. and the world.”

Beyond endowment taxation, Harvard’s lobbyists prioritized science and technology policy, lobbying for the CHIPS and Science Act, the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act, and the BIOSECURE Act to support semiconductor manufacturing, research security, and federal science funding. The University also pushed for increased investments in NSF and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

In higher education and immigration policy, Harvard backed the College Cost Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act to expand Pell Grant funding, while also advocating for visa reforms and pathways to citizenship for recipients and STEM graduates.

The Ivy League’s collective lobbying expenditures shot up by $630,000 in 2024. Former Vassar College President Catharine Hill wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the uptick in federal lobbying expenditures may be a response to deteriorating trust in higher education.

“Changes in lobbying over time may be responding to the decline in trust in higher education, with colleges and universities working to encourage federal policies that would actually contribute to addressing the challenges generating the declining trust,” Hill wrote.

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