More than 100 Harvard researchers received termination notices for federally funded research projects on Thursday, as sweeping cuts to the majority of Harvard’s federal grants begin taking effect across the University’s labs.
The notices, delivered via email from Harvard’s Grants Management Application Suite, informed recipients that their projects had been terminated “per notice from the federal funding agency” and contained a list of terminated grants.
“You are receiving this e-mail because one (or more) of your projects have been terminated,” the emails read.
Harvard Assistant Vice President for Sponsored Programs Kelly Morrison and Chief Research Compliance Officer Ara Tahmassian had warned the researchers in a separate Wednesday email that the majority of Harvard’s awards from federal agencies were terminated.
“The University has received letters from most federal agencies indicating that the majority of our active, direct federal grants have been terminated,” they wrote to recipients.
Some of the terminated grants exceeded $1 million, funding entire research operations, including salaries for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and lab technicians.
Harvard is known for having one of the most enormous endowments of any college anywhere.
Same to you - what do you think an endowment is?
https://finance.harvard.edu/endowment
You’re acting as if Harvard has no control over the way they utilize the endowment, and that’s just not true. Of course they want to manage it so that they are only drawing from a portion of the gains rather than actually spending it down. Of course some percentage of funds are earmarked for specific purposes like new buildings, endowed professorships, and the like.
None of this means that Harvard cannot make the strategic decision to dip heavily into the endowment to maintain researchers’ livelihoods while their fight moves through the courts. Arguably it’s the fiscally-responsible thing to do, because many of the affected researchers are going to be losing work in progress that may have to be replicated if they are ever rehired, and some portion of those laid off are going to move on to other things, impacting Harvard’s research capacity and their reputation as a desirable, high-status employer in the sciences. One would have hoped that they picked this fight with the intention of winning it, and failing to tap the endowment as bridge funding while the legal challenges play out risks making it something of a Pyrrhic victory.
They’re not doing research for Harvard, they’re doing science research for the public which was competitively assessed and awarded.
That’s how the US has chosen to fund science research for over 50 years. It was considered a public good and has easily been one of best public investments that we’ve made during the period.
America has been at the pinnacle of science, medicine and education largely through this partnership with Universities. trump and company are pissing that legacy away in an effort to destroy higher education in the US, which they believe to be an impediment to them instituting authoritarian rule.
They’re happy to loot the country and burn it to the ground so long as they can rule over the ashes.