On Monday, Harvard University sued US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt the freezing of $2.3bn in federal funding for the institution. The funding freeze came amid US government efforts to crack down on student protesters and pressure universities into dropping diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
On March 10, the US Department of Education announced it had sent letters to 60 higher education institutions, warning them of “enforcement actions” if they did not protect Jewish students on campus as stipulated in the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The letters also quoted Secretary of Education Linda McMahon saying, “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Shortly after, the Trump administration began freezing federal funding for some of the country’s top institutions, threatening research that universities say is critical for medical and scientific advancement.
In particular, the Trump administration is targeting institutions where students participated in pro-Palestine protests last year, alleging that the student protesters spread anti-Semitic sentiment on campus.
A day after Harvard filed its lawsuit, leaders and representatives of more than 200 American universities issued a joint statement accusing the Trump administration of political interference. The statement was signed by presidents and directors of some of the top-tier institutes in the country, including Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern University and Pomona College.
So, what is going on in terms of federal funding on US campuses, and can universities survive these cuts?
Why is Harvard suing the US government over funding?
On April 11, the US Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration co-signed a letter to Harvard claiming that “Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.”
The letter made a series of demands of the university, including that the institution end all affirmative action in faculty hiring and student admissions, and that it change its admissions criteria to exclude international students “hostile to the American values”, including “students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism”. This was a follow-up to a separate letter the government had sent Harvard on April 3, demanding that the university reform any academic departments deemed to be fuelling “antisemitic harassment”. These departments, the letter said, “must be reviewed and necessary changes made to address bias, improve viewpoint diversity, and end ideological capture”.
In response, Harvard rejected the demands, saying that while some demands were aimed at targeting anti-Semitism, “the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”
Hours after Harvard rejected the demands, an Education Department task force to tackle anti-Semitism released a statement announcing that $2.3bn in federal funding to the university had been frozen.
Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, and fellows of Harvard College have now filed a lawsuit (PDF) in the US District Court in Massachusetts against leaders of the US Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, General Services Administration, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In a statement issued on Monday, Garber wrote: “We filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.”
The suit says that “the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships” which make it possible for Harvard and other American universities to carry out “invaluable research” in the fields of medicine, engineering and artificial intelligence (AI) which is crucial for finding solutions for space travel and for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer, among other things.
The lawsuit also alleges that the funding freeze is unlawful because it infringes on First Amendment rights, which guarantee the freedom of speech.
“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard,” the lawsuit states.
The Tuesday joint statement co-signed by hundreds of American university leaders states: “We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.”
How much money could Harvard and other universities lose?
The frozen federal funds to Harvard include $2.2bn in grants and $60m in contracts. However, more money is at stake. In March, the Trump administration announced that it would review $9bn of funding to Harvard.
The administration has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status and its ability to enrol foreign students. In the Monday statement, Garber also wrote that the Trump administration has considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1bn in grants.
In February, the Trump administration froze $400m of funding to Columbia University, which emerged as the epicentre of pro-Palestine campus protests in 2024. The government cited what it called the institution’s “failure to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment”.
On March 19, Trump froze more than $175m in federal funding to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, citing the allowance of transgender women to play women’s sports.
How else is university funding being targeted?
Some universities have reported receiving “stop work” orders, which are instructions to suspend all work on specific research projects supported by public funding.
“American universities receive two main funding sources from the federal government. The first is financial aid for students, which flows to thousands of colleges. The second is research funding, which is heavily concentrated at about 200 universities,” Robert Kelchen, a professor and department head at the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told Al Jazeera.
“The American government has relied on universities to conduct research to benefit the country since World War II, and universities have built an infrastructure around that. The magnitude of American research funding has been unmatched around the world during this period,” said Kelchen.
Cornell University said it had received more than 75 “stop work” orders from the US Department of Defense, according to a statement released by Cornell President Michael I Kotlikoff and other university leaders on April 8.
The orders sent to Cornell relate to “research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research”, the university said.
The statement did not specify the amount of federal funding the projects subject to stop work orders were receiving. It also did not say why the government had issued these orders.
Northwestern University has also received stop work orders relating to roughly 100 federal grants, the university’s President Michael Schill and Chair of Board of Trustees Peter Barris wrote in a statement on Northwestern University’s website on April 17.
Earlier in April, US media outlets reported that the Trump administration had separately frozen more than $1bn in federal funding to Cornell University and $790m in funding to Northwestern University. The New York Times and CNN both claimed that an unnamed White House official had confirmed these funding freezes. “The money was frozen in connection with several ongoing, credible, and concerning Title VI investigations,” the official was quoted by CNN as saying.
However, both Cornell and Northwestern say they have not received notification of these funding freezes.
How much money of their own do universities have?
Many universities have sizeable endowment funds from which they can draw income each year to support research projects, scholarships and other expenses. An endowment is a series of funds or assets donated to a university to ensure that the institution is financially sustained in the future. Charitable donations from alumni, other donors and companies make up a huge part of endowments.
Harvard’s endowment was worth approximately $53.2bn in the 2024 fiscal year – the largest of any university. More than one-third of the research at Harvard is funded directly by the university, according to Harvard’s website.
Columbia’s endowment was $14.8bn for the fiscal year ending in June 2024. Cornell’s endowment was about $10.7bn in the fiscal year ending in June 2024. Northwestern University’s endowment amounted to approximately $14.3bn in 2024. University of Pennsylvania’s endowment was $22.3bn as of June 2024.
Some universities will be able to fall back on these endowments if federal funding freezes remain in place. “Universities typically spend about 5 percent per year out of their endowment, which provides funding for the Harvards of the world to make up for a loss of federal funding,” said Kelchen.
Endowments are subject to restrictions, however. “Endowment funds are heavily concentrated at a few dozen universities, and roughly three-fourths of all endowment funds are restricted for particular purposes,” Kelchen said, explaining that such purposes include student scholarships in very specific fields.
At Harvard, donors decide which programmes, departments and purposes 70 percent of the annual endowment distribution is spent on. Columbia’s website also states that the annual spending of the endowment is according to the wishes of the donors.
Universities have also seen a fall in the value of endowments. In 2024, Harvard’s donations dropped by $151m after some donors pulled funding from the university over the pro-Palestine protests and the university’s response to concerns about anti-Semitism on campus, according to an October 2024 report by the student-run newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.
How will universities respond to threats to government funding?
Kelchen said that a few research universities may be able to make it through a period of several years without federal funding.
In its April 17 statement, for example, Northwestern University’s leadership wrote that for now, the university will continue to fund the research projects that are subject to stop work orders from the government. “This support is intended to keep these projects going until we have a better understanding of the funding landscape.”
Most universities will not be able to afford to this. Some, therefore, are acceding to government demands.
After receiving its own list of demands from the government on March 13, Columbia, for example, accepted these demands on March 18 and introduced new policies on campus. These new policies require protesting students to present their university identification if asked to do so. They also prohibit face masks intended to conceal a person’s identity. However, face coverings are still allowed for religious or medical reasons. Columbia also hired 36 security officers who have special powers to arrest students, and the university continues to rely on New York police for additional security assistance.
Some universities will try to seek other sources of funding, experts say.
“Universities have been trying to diversify funding sources for years. The two most likely sources are increasing enrolment [to get more tuition dollars] and trying to generate more donations,” said Kelchen.
“Some universities have the physical capacity to increase enrolment, while others do not. And universities are hoping for a rush of donations to help them get through a difficult time,” said Kelchen.
