\n<\/p>\n
The federal government annually spends billions funding research at Harvard, part of a decades-old system that is little understood by the public but essential to American science.<\/p>\n
This spring, nearly every dollar of that payment was cut off by the Trump administration, endangering much of the university\u2019s research.<\/p>\n
This picture represents nearly every grant the government has canceled at Harvard.<\/span><\/p>\n This picture represents nearly every grant the government has canceled at Harvard.<\/span><\/p>\n This one has tracked the health of 116,00 American women continuously since 1989.<\/span><\/p>\n This one has tracked the health of 116,00 American women continuously since 1989.<\/span><\/p>\n This one supported domestic Ph.D. students training to be America\u2019s next neuroscientists.<\/span><\/p>\n This one supported domestic Ph.D. students training to be America\u2019s next neuroscientists.<\/span><\/p>\n This one studied the role of telemedicine in treating opioid addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n This one studied the role of telemedicine in treating opioid addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n These two probed how salamanders regenerate their legs, to eventually aid human amputees.<\/span><\/p>\n These two probed how salamanders regenerate their legs, to eventually aid human amputees.<\/span><\/p>\n These sought advances that could one day enable Navy divers to breathe underwater without oxygen tanks.<\/span><\/p>\n These sought advances that could one day enable Navy divers to breathe underwater without oxygen tanks.<\/span><\/p>\n This one funded work with rural school districts to test ideas to lift student outcomes and attendance.<\/span><\/p>\n This one funded work with rural school districts to test ideas to lift student outcomes and attendance.<\/span><\/p>\n Now all of these projects are in jeopardy.<\/span><\/p>\n Now all of these projects are in jeopardy.<\/span><\/p>\n The New York Times was able to identify more than 900 terminated grants, using court records, government databases and other internal university sources \u2014 a near-complete accounting of the cuts in the Trump administration\u2019s escalating campaign to cripple the university.<\/p>\n The White House and Harvard have resumed negotiations to resolve the government\u2019s claims that the nation\u2019s oldest university has \u201cfailed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.\u201d But while researchers await the outcome \u2014 or that of a parallel lawsuit brought by Harvard \u2014 the federal support for every one of these projects remains halted.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has canceled research grants at other universities, too, ending studies related to racial diversity and equity, scaling back the reach of federal science agencies, and sometimes attacking universities it views as ideological foes.<\/p>\n But Harvard is unique both in the volume of its research output and the extent of these cuts \u2014 the government has threatened to end every research dollar to the university. The canceled grants accounted for here add up to about $2.6 billion in awarded federal funds, nearly half of which has already been spent according to government data.<\/p>\n \u201cEven \u2018grant\u2019 is a problematic word, because people think they\u2019re just sort of handing this money out for us to do what we want with,\u201d said Marc Weisskopf, who directs a center for environmental health at Harvard that lost its funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.<\/p>\n On the contrary, the government is much more explicit in competitive research applications and grant reviews: It wants more neuroscientists. It wants better opioid treatment. It wants to know how lightweight origami-inspired shelters and antennas can be unfurled in war zones.<\/p>\n The money the government sends to Harvard is, in effect, not a subsidy to advance the university\u2019s mission. It\u2019s a payment for the role Harvard plays in advancing the research mission of the United States.<\/p>\n This is the science model the U.S. has developed over 80 years: The government sets the agenda and funds the work; university scientists design the studies and find the answers. The president\u2019s willingness to upend that model has revealed its fragility. There is no alternative in the U.S. to produce the kind of scientific advancements represented by these grants.<\/p>\n Much of what the government funds at universities is \u201cbasic\u201d research \u2014 the foundational knowledge that lays the groundwork for technological advances, disease cures and improvements in quality of life.<\/p>\n Daniel Nocera, a Harvard chemist, had four total grants terminated from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. His lab develops new chemical methods to address practical problems, such as developing an artificial leaf that can convert air and sunlight into biofuels, or extracting oxygen from seawater so that divers could one day swim without a heavy oxygen tank.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to answer these questions that a company doesn’t have time to answer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because basic research takes years. And it produces insights that aren\u2019t profitable on the time scale of corporate quarterly earnings.<\/p>\n Stephen Buratowski\u2019s project to understand how genes are expressed and regulated is in its 25th year of federal funding. An early discovery in his lab used yeast cells to reveal how different steps are coordinated in the formation of messenger RNA, a mechanism later confirmed in human cells by researchers at other universities. Today, 20 years later, several companies are testing potential cancer treatments built on that knowledge.<\/p>\n Such long-term federal investments are inherently risky and expensive (a single tube containing a teardrop size of purified enzyme used in Professor Buratowski\u2019s lab costs $400 to $500). And some ideas don\u2019t prove as fruitful. But the government can bear this risk better than industry or individual universities can.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost as if the government is acting as a venture capitalist,\u201d Professor Buratowski said. \u201cThey\u2019re putting out an ad saying, \u2018We\u2019ve got a pool of money, send us your best ideas.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Dragana Rogulja\u2019s Harvard lab studies how chronic sleep deprivation harms the body. Her lab discovered that when fruit flies or mice are deprived of sleep, it damages their gut, which can be fatal. But when sleep-deprived flies were then treated with antioxidant drugs, they had normal life spans.<\/p>\n She received a grant from the Department of Defense\u2019s health agency to detect biological signals in samples of blood, urine or saliva that warn of organ damage from sleep loss in mice. \u201cIf we are right,\u201d her research proposal stated, \u201cthis would be a major breakthrough that would offer practical ways to mitigate health damage caused by poor sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Without researchers at Harvard or other universities doing this foundational work, it\u2019s not clear who would. The government doesn\u2019t have the expertise. Companies don\u2019t have the luxury of time. And this same research would cost far more outside academia, where it runs on graduate students working long hours at relatively low cost.<\/p>\n Other grants at Harvard produce something different from a lab discovery or a medical cure. This research provides evidence that shapes public policy, like nutritional guidelines, federal laws or local education initiatives.<\/p>\n A federal rule in 2018 banned artificial trans fats, following the findings of a decades-long longitudinal study of women\u2019s health based at Harvard.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of things we take for granted \u2014 \u2018Oh, everybody always knew that\u2019 \u2014 no actually, we published those findings,\u201d said Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition who leads that study.<\/p>\n Of similar direct interest to the government, other Harvard researchers are trying to determine how well telemedicine appointments \u2014 sometimes paid for by Medicaid and Medicare \u2014 connect opioid use disorder patients with lifesaving treatments. (Some of the National Institutes of Health funding for that research goes right back to the government, in the form of fees to access Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services health data).<\/p>\n Other researchers are studying how well community college students have fared amid remote learning, after a pandemic boost in federal support for community colleges. Others are working on how to implement smoke-free policies in low-income housing after a move by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to curb secondhand smoke.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are directly informing the government\u2019s capacity to work to serve its constituents,\u201d said Vaughan Rees, the lead investigator on that HUD-funded research.<\/p>\n Just as much of basic research couldn\u2019t be done in corporate labs, this kind of work \u2014 often relying on large-scale surveys, or partnerships that cross universities, hospitals and countries \u2014 couldn\u2019t be funded by Harvard alone.<\/p>\n \u201cNo university could do that,\u201d said Lisa Berkman, a professor of public policy and epidemiology who works on international studies. \u201cThis is science that rests on a public investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal funding also fosters not just science, but scientists. Grants pay the salaries of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Grant terms regularly require that lead researchers incorporate student training into their work.<\/p>\n Jessica Whited, a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, was the first in her family to become a scientist. As an undergraduate, she earned a scholarship at the University of Missouri and worked part-time under the federal work-study program. As an early-career researcher, her research was funded by competitive N.I.H. grants.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be sitting here today without the government,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Her lab studies how the axolotl, a salamander species, can regenerate its limbs, producing insights that could lead to treatments for human amputees. In 2019, President Trump awarded her the Presidential Early Career Award, the nation\u2019s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers. Last month, the government canceled the grants that provided nearly all of her funding.<\/p>\n The canceled grants highlighted below are specifically designed for training and professional development. They include National Science Foundation fellowships for undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and early-career researchers, and similar training opportunities from the N.I.H. Together, these awards cover about a tenth of the total funding cut by the government at Harvard.<\/p>\n Paul Bump, a postdoctoral fellow, was just awarded one of these grants \u2014 the first of his career \u2014 in January. He wants to uncover the fundamental mechanisms of where stem cells come from in certain animals that, unlike humans, continue to produce them throughout their lives. (He works, in particular, on the three-banded panther worm, which can regenerate into two worms when cut in half.)<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are the grand biological processes that explain that?\u201d he said, describing what amounts to nature\u2019s solution for making stem cells. The public\u2019s down payment on the answer was about $75,000 a year to fund Mr. Bump\u2019s work for two years.<\/p>\n Harvard is trying for now to provide stopgap funding for many of these researchers and students, but it can\u2019t permanently replace the government. That\u2019s also because federal funds support much of the infrastructure that researchers rely on. Grants also cover the indirect costs Harvard pays to maintain facilities and research support staff. And some larger grants directly fund research hubs that assemble shared resources and facilities for many scientists from different specialties working on related topics.<\/p>\n For 18 years, Harvard has hosted a center studying worker safety, health and well-being funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the C.D.C., where researchers from multiple institutions have studied the health of construction workers, Sept. 11 first responders, health care workers and warehouse workers.<\/p>\n The center\u2019s canceled grant jeopardizes its active research projects, but also the partnerships with hospitals, insurance companies and employers that have taken years to develop, said Glorian Sorensen, a Harvard professor who co-directs the center.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is larger than any individual grant,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we are losing is a future.\u201d<\/p>\n Click on the chart below to explore the canceled grants for yourself:<\/p>\n About the data<\/p>\n To account for Harvard\u2019s terminated grants, we used data from multiple sources: letters from government agencies included in court filings by the university; lists of terminated grants provided by the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation; a crowd-sourced list of grant terminations at Grant Watch; and some additional data from internal university sources. We interviewed 23 researchers whose grant funding was terminated, who confirmed those specific cancellations.<\/p>\n Our charts show the total obligated amount for each grant using data from USAspending.gov, which reflects the funds that the government has set aside for each project. In cases where a grant was extended or renewed, this figure typically accounts for the entire lifetime of the grant to date, and not just the most recent renewal. Obligated funds for multiyear grant awards are typically paid out gradually over a number of years. Our charts do not account for this outlayed spending \u2014 the portion of these obligated funds that have been paid by the government so far \u2014 because there are substantial lags in this spending data for some agencies. This analysis did not include the $100 million or so in federal contracts, separate from grants, much of which also fund scientific research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The federal government annually spends billions funding research at Harvard, part of a decades-old system that is little understood by the public but essential to American science. This spring, nearly every dollar of that payment was cut off by the Trump administration, endangering much of the university\u2019s research. Grants terminated at Harvard This picture represents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1535,676,736,516,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-9360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-clash","9":"tag-harvard","10":"tag-risk","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Foundational discoveries and future cures<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Evidence for public policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Training the next generation of scientists<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Terminated grants for training and career development<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Explore the data<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n