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Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors were instructed to develop contingency plans for center and departmental spending budget shortfalls, according to five professors informed at two separate department meetings this week.
Department heads in the Social Science division were specifically asked to anticipate how they would respond to a 20 percent shortfall in emails and in a meeting led by interim Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler ’87.
Centers and departments across the entire FAS were instructed to consider how downsizing their physical footprint, including the number of offices they use, could help reduce costs during their budget planning exercises.
“The FAS is adapting to this new world in part through contingency planning, studying what changes would be considered under different potential scenarios,” FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement. “Contingencies are not necessarily implemented, and we hope they will not need to be.”
The plans are the latest steps taken by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to tighten its belt amid the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard’s federal funding. The FAS has already announced it would keep spending flat for fiscal year 2026 and pause “non-essential capital projects and spending.”
The school has also halted full-time staff hiring.
At a faculty meeting last week, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra warned faculty of long-term changes to funding, saying that “these federal actions have set in motion changes that will not be undone, at least not in the foreseeable future.”
“The federal funding landscape is fundamentally different today than it was just a few months ago,” she said.
The threats to Harvard’s budget have grown increasingly grave in recent weeks. The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in grants, before slashing $450 million in funding on Tuesday and announcing last week that it would disqualify Harvard from future federal grants.
The University is suing the administration over what it argues is an unconstitutional affront to its independence, but administrators have acknowledged that a win in court would not mark the end to Harvard’s troubles.
“While Harvard is challenging the funding freeze in court, we can’t assume that resolution will be reached quickly, or, even if Harvard prevails, that the funds will be returned in full,” Hoekstra said at last week’s faculty meeting.
The guidance to the FAS follows similar moves at Princeton University, where administrators asked all departments and units to prepare separate contingency plans for 5 and 10 percent “permanent” budget cuts, according to The Daily Princetonian. Princeton was targeted for $210 million in grant cuts last month.
At last week’s faculty meeting, Hoekstra discussed three recently appointed groups tasked with assessing the FAS’ response to the Trump administration’s attacks on its funding. One of the groups, the Task Force on Workforce Planning, is analyzing administrative staffing across the division and will make recommendations, potentially including staff reorganizations and reductions.
Hoekstra also announced that she had relaunched the Resources Committee, which will provide her with guidance on how to navigate the national financial landscape. The committee last convened under former FAS Dean Michael D. Smith, who led the faculty during the 2008 financial crisis.
“These efforts will not be easy. Nothing about the current time is easy. The issues facing Harvard, and higher education as a whole, are as profound as any time in our nation’s history,” Hoekstra said at the meeting.
—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.
