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At a Tuesday meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra braced faculty for long-term changes amid what she acknowledged would be a drawn-out struggle with the Trump administration.
“Now, in this time of unprecedented challenge — more than ever — we need your collective wisdom to chart a path forward,” Hoekstra said. “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.”
The meeting came one day after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that the federal government would stop awarding grants to Harvard — and weeks into Harvard’s legal battle for more than $2.2 billion in frozen federal funds.
“These federal actions have set in motion changes that will not be undone, at least not in the foreseeable future,” Hoekstra said.
Despite the suit, Harvard’s funding is unlikely to see a return to normal — especially now that the Trump administration has acted to cut off future grants. Hoekstra said that even if Harvard’s lawsuit holds up in court, a legal victory will not end the University’s financial strain.
“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.
“The federal funding landscape is fundamentally different today than it was just a few months ago,” she added, noting that some federal agencies that are major sources of research grants may see their budgets cut in half.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Hoekstra discussed three groups recently appointed by the FAS to evaluate the faculty division’s response to increasingly precarious funding streams. Two of the groups were announced via email last week.
One committee, originally named the Funding Priority Committee but now officially called the Research Continuity Committee, will speak with department chairs, faculty, and researchers over the next 30 days to make recommendations to Hoekstra about how to distribute limited funding for scientific research.
The RCC — chaired by Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology professor Steven E. Hyman, a former University Provost — will suggest a strategy for reviewing funding proposals and make recommendations on how funds should be allocated. The group consists entirely of scientists and administrators.
Another body — the Task Force on Workforce Planning — will conduct an analysis of administrative staffing across the FAS and make recommendations, potentially including staff reorganizations and reductions.
The task force will consult with faculty and staff as part of its efforts to “increase collaboration, synergy, integration, and ultimately, productivity, across our administrative workforce,” Hoekstra said.
The group consists of four administrators, including Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser and interim Dean of Social Science David Cutler, and two faculty members without administrative appointments. No timeline has been publicly set for its work.
Hoekstra also announced the relaunch of the Resources Committee, which will advise her on the national financial landscape. The committee last met under former FAS Dean Michael D. Smith, who presided over the FAS’ response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Hoekstra said during the meeting that the committee would “serve as a conduit for engaging the broader faculty on strategic financial decisions and trade-offs.” Its five members include two economists, David I. Laibson ’88 and Jeremy C. Stein.
During the Tuesday meeting, Hoekstra said she aims to keep the FAS’ response to budget pressures “closely aligned” with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. But she said the FAS’ response would “differ” from those at the Harvard Medical School and at the Harvard School of Public Health, where layoffs have already begun.
The two schools, along with SEAS, rely more on federal and other sponsored funding than any other Harvard school.
When Hoekstra last spoke to professors at a tense faculty meeting last month, she met a visibly more frustrated — and, at times, adversarial — faculty deeply concerned about the University’s response to President Donald Trump. But on Tuesday, faculty only applauded Hoekstra’s remarks, raising no questions.
Since the April faculty meeting, Harvard has gone on the offensive, first rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on April 14 and then suing on April 21 over the federal government revoked billions in funding in response.
University President Alan M. Garber ’76 has gone on a media tour to promote Harvard’s stand against Trump, and the University has trumpeted the value of federally backed research across its online platforms.
But even as Harvard becomes the face of institutional resistance to the Trump administration, the University has accepted a few of the administration’s demands — renaming its diversity office, canceling support for affinity graduation celebrations, and making it possible to centralize some disciplinary cases under the University president.
Neither those decisions, nor reports recently released by Harvard’s task forces on antisemitism, anti-Israeli bias, and anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias, drew discussion at Tuesday’s meeting.
Instead, Hoekstra’s remarks on research funding drew hearty applause.
“As dean, I feel a profound sense of responsibility to protect your livelihoods and ability to freely pursue the teaching and research you came to Harvard to pursue,” Hoekstra said.
—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.
