Scientists exploring weather changes in the earth’s upper atmosphere, geneticists snipping strands of DNA to treat diseases, physicians working on an HIV vaccine — all of these research projects at Harvard University and its affiliated institutions were paid for with federal dollars, which puts them squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s widening crackdown on universities.
On Monday, the administration announced a massive review of nearly $9 billion in federal funding to Harvard and its affiliates, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on elite universities for what it describes as their failure to protect Jewish students from alleged antisemitic harassment related to the pro-Palestinian student protest movement.
The review includes $255.6 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments, according to the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force.
A memo sent to Harvard by the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force Monday and obtained by The Boston Globe provided a list of federal research contracts included in the $255.6 million figure and said the government was prepared to issue “Stop Work Orders’’ for all of them.
The list includes more than $120 million in contracts with Boston Children’s Hospital, a contract with the Harvard School of Public Health for nearly $60 million for research on tuberculosis, and more than $65 million in contracts with Harvard University itself.
The memo was sent to Harvard’s leaders on Monday by the US General Services Administration, one of the agencies participating in the antisemitism task force.
By contrast, the government has provided few specifics about how it arrived at the $8.7 billion figure, except to say that it is undertaking a “comprehensive’’ review of grants and contracts from “across the federal government.’’
According to current and former administrators at Harvard and affiliated institutions, as well as members of the Trump task force, the review appears to encompass all active federal research grants and contracts to Harvard and its affiliates.
A Globe review of publicly-available federal data identified only about $7.3 billion of active federal grants and contracts with Harvard and its affiliates from government agencies ranging from the National Institutes of Health to the Department of Defense. Trump administration spokespeople did not respond to Globe questions about the discrepancy.
“The bottom line is there is complete uncertainty,’’ said Marc Weisskopf, professor of environmental epidemiology and physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, who has a $10 million five-year grant through the NIH to research the impact of environmental changes on disease and provide consulting services to communities that want to test their well water or build community gardens.
The historically decentralized structure of Harvard has contributed to the sense of confusion. By tradition, each individual school and department at Harvard, as well as at its affiliated institutions, has substantial autonomy over its own budget and funding decisions. The saying, “Every tub has its own bottom,’’ has long been used by Harvard academics to describe this tradition of independence.
Now, many Harvard department heads and leaders of affiliated research institutes and hospitals are scrambling to gauge how exposed they are to federal funding cuts. Harvard’s affiliates include Mass General Brigham, Boston Children’s Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“We have been given no specifics … only that this includes ‘affiliated institutions,‘’’ said Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley. “I’m worried about a less healthy population and a less healthy biotechnology ecosystem.’’
Each year, federal agencies distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to Harvard and its affiliates, and those grants are a major lifeblood of research progress on everything from experimental treatments for diseases to climate science, as well as a boon to the Massachusetts economy.
For now, Harvard scientists and students are operating under the assumption that every federally funded research project and contract could be imperiled.
“This is amorphous by design,’’ said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. “There is not a policy goal here. This is about fear. They want everyone at Harvard to believe they are potentially under threat or under attack. Vladimir Putin would be very comfortable with these tactics.’’
At Harvard Medical School, Kimberly LeBlanc helps oversee the operations of a sprawling program, the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, that diagnoses patients across the country with mysterious, rare conditions.
In 2019, the network — which is largely funded by $18 million in annual federal grants — helped find answers for a North Andover boy, Keegan Paradis, who was at risk of losing his eyesight. His father, Brendon, had slowly gone blind over 12 years — and no doctor could tell him why. Then when Keegan was in elementary school, an optometrist detected mild eye inflammation, a possible precursor of his father’s condition, according to his parents. But doctors could not explain why — until the family was sent to the Undiagnosed Diseases Network.
LeBlanc’s office at Harvard Medical School helped coordinate between scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas and doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, another Harvard-affiliated institution. They analyzed Keegan’s DNA and diagnosed him with the rarest of diseases, ROSAH syndrome, which has been found in fewer than 100 people worldwide, according to the network. The diagnosis guided Keegan’s treatment and helped doctors slow his vision loss, his parents, Brendon and Andria, said.
Around 2,000 patients at the network’s 24 clinical sites across the country are waiting for similar answers, LeBlanc said. The network also discovers new, rare diseases and tells doctors how to diagnose them. Now the network’s future is at risk.
The evolving nature of the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research grants has kept many in academia on edge. It began with a flurry of executive orders targeting research related to transgender identity and diversity, and recently has expanded to include studies on the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change.
Additionally, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force is directing grant cuts related to its investigations of what it describes as elite universities’ failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. At Columbia University last month, the task force canceled $400 million of grants and then sent the school a list of demands as a “precondition’’ for negotiations over the school’s “continued’’ federal funding.
“I don’t think they’re reviewing the science,’’ said George Church, a renowned geneticist and serial entrepreneur who teaches at Harvard and MIT. “If they did, I think the science would be reviewed very well. … This is all about power.’’
The Trump administration has accused Harvard, Columbia, and other elite universities of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment and intimidation stemming from the campus protest movement over the Israel-Hamas war. It has pushed universities to change rules governing protests and to adopt formal definitions of antisemitism in what some see as an effort to restore a sense of safety for Jewish students on campus and others criticize as a crackdown on political expression.
Robert Weisman of the Globe staff contributed.
