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Updated September 10, 2025, at 9:37 p.m.
Federal agencies have begun to inform Harvard researchers that they are reinstating portions of research funding frozen since the Trump administration’s pause on $2.7 billion in grants and contracts in the spring, according to a Harvard spokesperson on Wednesday evening.
The move comes exactly one week after a federal judge ruled that the administration acted unlawfully in halting the funding, calling the White House’s stated justification — a crackdown on campus antisemitism — a “smokescreen” for targeting Harvard and other universities.
“Harvard has begun to receive notices of reinstatements on many of the previously terminated federal awards from a range of federal agencies,” a Harvard spokesperson wrote. “So far, payments have not been restored on these awards.”
The spokesperson declined to comment on the value and number of grants that federal agencies have indicated they will restore.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed that the National Institutes of Health — whose grants make up about 70 percent of Harvard’s federal funding — has not disbursed any funding to Harvard since Judge Allison D. Burroughs’ ruling last week.
A Wednesday evening email obtained by The Crimson to researchers at the School of Public Health — the Harvard school most dependent on federal funds — noted that the school had yet to see its money start to flow.
“Given that we are still not receiving payments, please continue to follow the bridging plans that have been established in partnership with your departments,” HSPH Executive Dean of Administration Kate Calvin wrote.
Spokespeople for the White House and the nine federal agencies whose awards to Harvard were frozen in May did not immediately respond to a request for comment on their plans to reinstate funding. The planned reinstatement was first reported by the New York Times.
In her decision last Wednesday, Burroughs ruled that the Trump administration’s freeze on funding was an illegal, and retaliatory, response to Harvard’s decision to reject federal demands. She enjoined the governments from carrying out its freeze orders and funding termination notices — though the timeline for funding reinstatement remained unclear.
Burroughs also granted Harvard a permanent injunction preventing the Trump administration from reimposing unconstitutional conditions on its funding in the future, giving researchers and faculty renewed hope that shuttered labs would be revived.
But within hours of the ruling, the Trump administration vowed to appeal Burroughs’ ruling, though it has yet to formally file in court. Without intervention from an appeals court, agencies were required to resume the ordinary processing of funds previously halted by the freezes.
The Wednesday move to begin restoring grants is not the first time that federal agencies have issued notices of awards to Harvard researchers. In July, the NIH began allocating some grants to Harvard to comply with a federal court ruling, according to internal documents reviewed by The Crimson. But officials from the Department of Government Efficiency, a government cost-cutting group, wielded their control over the NIH’s grant disbursal system to quietly block the funds from reaching Harvard until it reached a settlement with the White House.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Staff writer Avani B. Rai can be reached at avani.rai@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @avaniiiirai.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.
