Harvard is a lot more than its university campus. What else could funding cuts affect?
Harvard University, one of the top higher education institutions in the world, is under fire from the United States government for refusing to comply with demands from President Donald Trump's administration.
Massive funding cuts to the university announced this week will likely affect academic programming and research at Harvard, though it's unclear exactly what will be affected.
However, Harvard's influence extends far beyond its famous Cambridge campus, and the freeze on federal funding could have far-reaching effects than you might expect.
Why is funding being cut?
Early this month, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard detailing a list of demands the institution would have to comply with to avoid having its $9 billion in federal funding to the school and its affiliates cancelled.
The demands in that letter — and a subsequent letter submitted to the Harvard on Friday — include canceling all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning masks on campus, ending admission and hiring policies based on race and national origin, reviewing programs and departments that "fuel antisemitic harassment," cooperating with law enforcement and allowing the government to audit the viewpoints of students, faculty and staff and forcing the university to hire people.
However, Harvard's administration refused to comply with the demands , saying in a letter that "The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."
"Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government," the letter read.
What does Harvard own or influence outside of its Cambridge campus?
Harvard's reach goes far beyond Harvard Yard. The school is a major landowner in the Boston area, notably controlling about one-third of the land in Boston's Allston neighborhood , where it is planning a massive research campus .
The school also owns the Arnold Arboretum in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale neighborhoods of Boston and other properties around Massachusetts, such as the 4,000-acre Harvard Forest in Petersham and the 650-acre Concord Station in Concord's Estabrook Woods.
Harvard is known as a top organization for medical and health-related research. Many local hospitals teach Harvard Medical School students, and the school gives their physicians appointments at the medical school in return. The Harvard Medical School website lists 15 such affiliates, including some of Boston's largest medical institutions, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, the VA Boston Healthcare System and others.
Harvard also partners with a number of respected non-hospital research labs and institutions, such as the Broad Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the ADA Forsyth Institute, Ragon Institute, Whitehead Institute, Wyss Institute, Baim Institute and others.
The Harvard University campus.Tréa Lavery/MassLive
What federal funds could Harvard lose?
Hours after Harvard's announcement that it would not meet the government's demands on Monday, the U.S. Department of Education said it would immediately freeze "$2.2 billion in multi-year grant and $60 million in multi-year contract value" to the school.
"Harvard's statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws," the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said in a statement on the DOE website.
For now, the cuts appear to have affected only grants directly to Harvard's programming and research, rather than those of its affiliates. A $60 million contract with the National Institutes of Health funded a major tuberculosis study at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Health, which was halted after the announcement of the funding freeze, according to the Boston Globe .
Other than the tuberculosis study, however, it is not yet publicly clear what funding has been cut, though a DOE spokesperson told the Globe the Boston-area hospitals affiliated with the university were unaffected.
Neither Harvard nor DOE responded to requests for comment from MassLive.
What funding could be at risk in the future?
The Trump administration has said it is reviewing the $9 billion in funding to Harvard and its affiliates, so while the existing cuts only affect $2.2 billion, that could change in the future.
A memo obtained by the Boston Globe detailed $255 million in federal government contracts that were included in the review, including the $60 million tuberculosis study.
While about $98 million of the contracts identified by the Globe were described as going to Harvard directly, other contracts listed in the memo went to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital and Mass General Brigham, the parent organization of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
The Harvard University website homepage was recently updated to showcase its various research projects and how that research affected people's lives.
Harvard may lose its tax-exempt status
The government has also threatened to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status .
If that happens, the school could be required to pay federal and state taxes on income from its approximately $53.2 billion endowment and donations it receives, as well as property taxes. It may also lead to fewer donations, as they might not be tax-exempt for donors.
Just under a third of Harvard's research funding — approximately $490 million — comes from the university itself. The other $1 billion that makes up Harvard's research budget comes from the federal government, various research foundations and private sponsors, according to the university.
A spokesperson for Harvard told MassLive in a statement on Wednesday that losing its tax-exempt status would be a big problem for the university.
"The tax exemption means that more of every dollar can go toward scholarships for students, lifesaving and life-enhancing medical research and technological advancements that drive economic growth," he wrote.
