Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding
freeze
[August 07, 2025]
By LEAH WILLINGHAM and MICHAEL CASEY
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's
research is literally frozen.
Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions
of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has
blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university’s
T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to
multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months,
Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7
million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with
the Trump administration.
“It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore
the universe, and now we don’t have money to launch it,” said Ascherio.
“We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new
discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then,
'Poof. You're being cut off.'”
Researchers laid off and science shelved
The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has
meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off
young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research,
into everything from opioid addiction to cancer.
And despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration, and
settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are
confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume.
The funding cuts are part of a monthslong battle that the Trump
administration has waged against some the country's top universities
including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration has taken
a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after
the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands
issued by a federal antisemitism task force.
The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to
campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government
accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and
tolerated anti-Jewish harassment.
Research jeopardized, even if court case prevails
Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump
administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university.
In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism
but also vowed not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its
constitutional rights.”
“Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all
of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate
antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint.
“But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts,
the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical,
scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to
do with antisemitism.”
The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation,
saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in
April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal
contracts for policy reasons.
The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of
shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has
nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or
scramble to find non-government funding to replace lost money.
In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of
its own money to continue research efforts, but university President
Alan Garber warned of “difficult decisions and sacrifices” ahead.
Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay
his researchers’ salaries until next June. But he’s still been left
without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work.
Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said.
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Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio opens a liquid
nitrogen freezer used to store blood samples used for research at
the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Tuesday, Aug.
5, 2025 in Boston. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
 Knowledge lost in funding freeze
“It’s really devastating,” agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the
Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who
had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the
Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact of
school segregation on heart health, how pandemic-era policies in
over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of
neighborhood factors in dementia.
At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is
based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130
scientists.
“Just thinking about all the knowledge that’s not
going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad
said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding
freeze continues for a few more months. "It’s all just a mixture of
frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day."
John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and
bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past
few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts.
In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing
a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about
$1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the
Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that
funded training of doctoral students also were cancelled as part of
the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said.
“I’m in a position where I have to really think about, ‘Can I revive
this research?’” he said. “Can I restart these programs even if
Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of
settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the
funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?”
The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or
nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism.
Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and
pressure from the Trump administration was necessary.
Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create
a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and
drug use, said she’s happy to see the culling of what she called
“politically motivated social science studies.”
White House pressure a good thing?
Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed
reform at the university, where several programs of study have
“really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that
is not representative of the country as a whole.”
But Madras, who served on the President’s Commission on Opioids
during Trump’s first term, said holding scientists’ research funding
hostage as a bargaining chip doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t know if reform would have happened without the president of
the United States pointing the bony finger at Harvard," she said.
“But sacrificing science is problematic, and it’s very worrisome
because it is one of the major pillars of strength of the country.”
Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers argue the cuts are part of
a larger attack on science by the Trump administration that puts the
country's reputation as the global research leader at risk. Support
for students and post-doctoral fellows has been slashed, visas for
foreign scholars threatened, and new guidelines and funding cuts at
the NIH will make it much more difficult to get federal funding in
the future, they said. It also will be difficult to replace federal
funding with money from the private sector.
“We’re all sort of moving toward this future in which this 80-year
partnership between the government and the universities is going to
be jeopardized,” Quackenbush said. “We’re going to face real
challenges in continuing to lead the world in scientific
excellence.”
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