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More than 80 Harvard faculty members pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the University in its resistance against the Trump administration’s attempts to exact concessions and freeze billions in federal funding.

The group is still collecting pledges, but faculty members’ commitments currently amount to more than $2 million, according to Government professor Ryan D. Enos. The faculty sent a letter outlining their planned donation to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 Wednesday afternoon.

“If we as a faculty are asking the University administration to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom, we should also be willing to share in the financial sacrifice that will be necessary,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik ’79, a signatory, wrote in an emailed statement.

The pledged donations come as Harvard faces lean times and continuing attacks on its funding. The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding on April 15, as well as an additional $1 billion on April 21 after Harvard publicly rejected the White House’s sweeping demands for policy changes at the University.

The faculty members have yet to determine how the donations will be made or used, including what programs they would support and whether the 10 percent cut would come in the form of a reduction to their salaries or a post-tax donation. But the letter stated that faculty who signed the pledge would eventually vote on whether they feel the University would make a “good faith effort” to spend the donations supporting staff, students, and academic programs.

Though the donations would represent significant costs for individual professors, several faculty who pledged to donate acknowledged that no amount of donations from Harvard’s professoriate could plug the multibillion dollar hole in the University’s budget. But faculty said that they pledged to signal their strong support for Harvard’s decision to resist the White House’s actions — including through a lawsuit the University filed last week over the $2.2 billion cut.

HKS professor Archon Fung, who pledged to donate, said that though the donations would be “a drop in the bucket,” he is trying to take any steps he can to support his colleagues, staff, and students.

The faculty also cited the unequal impact of Trump’s actions across University affiliates as a key reason for donating, writing that students and untenured staff in certain programs have been more directly impacted by the frozen funding than tenured faculty.

The letter also acknowledged that not all faculty are in a position to donate portions of their annual income and stated that many non-donors were still “making important contributions” by helping students and staff directly.

Government and Sociology professor Theda R. Skocpol said in an interview that though her pledge to donate was “significant money” for her and her husband, she felt it was necessary to support Harvard in its efforts to defend “basic constitutional rights.”

“The letter that the Trump administration sent to Harvard University is one of the most Stalinist things I’ve ever read, and I’ve studied communist revolutions,” Skocpol said. “It requires a firm and very broad response inside and beyond the universities.”

—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.