The Trump administration will restart the flow of federal research money to Harvard University, following a judge’s ruling that a sweeping blockade of funds was illegal, according to five people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The government’s decision to restore the funding appeared to be a response to the judge’s ruling, and not a broader shift in its stance toward Harvard. The administration has said it would appeal the judge’s decision and maintain its pressure campaign against the university.
Harvard received at least one letter this week from the Trump administration saying that hundreds of grants were being restored, according to a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private correspondence. Individual researchers have begun receiving notices from the government about restored funding, including an astronomy professor, whose $3.7 million NASA grant seems to have been resurrected.
“We’re very glad that things have gone back to what seems like normal — or maybe they are,” said the professor, Alyssa A. Goodman, whose grant supported a science outreach and education project.
It was not clear how widespread the restorations were, or when the government would actually begin to pay Harvard.
It is possible that funding will be disrupted again, even if the government begins making payments. The Justice Department, for example, could seek a stay of last week’s decision by Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who sits on the federal bench in Boston, and ask the court for permission to suspend the funding once again while its appeal proceeds.
The restorations come at a time when Harvard and the White House are trying to hammer out a deal to end the monthslong fight between the Trump administration and the nation’s wealthiest university.
Harvard officials were surprised by the development, and unsure whether the White House knew that federal agencies seemed set to restore Harvard’s money, according to a person familiar with the university officials’ thinking. They wondered whether the West Wing would intervene to cut the funding off again.
A spokesperson for Harvard said that the university had begun to receive notices of reinstatements of many of the terminated federal awards. The notices came from a range of federal agencies, the spokesman said, adding that the university had not received any payments yet.
The White House declined to comment.
For Harvard officials, restoration of federal research money has been a priority since the spring. The Trump administration, citing Harvard’s record on antisemitism, began canceling grants after the university publicly rebuffed a list of White House demands. Judge Burroughs later said that most of the demands were “directed, on their face, at Harvard’s governance, staffing and hiring practices, and admissions policies — all of which have little to do with antisemitism and everything to do” with the Trump administration’s “power and political views.”
By targeting Harvard’s research funding, the Trump administration found a particular point of vulnerability for the nation’s oldest university, which has argued that its research benefits society at large. Trump officials have said that Harvard should use its own resources to pay for its projects.
Although Harvard has an endowment valued at about $53 billion, donors have restricted much of that money, limiting how it may be spent. The university taps its endowment each year to cover part of its budget. But Harvard, like other schools, relies on public funding for much of its research, reflecting a system that has been central to American academia since around World War II. In recent years, Washington has been steering around $60 billion annually to colleges and universities for research projects selected by the government.
At Harvard, federal research money has lately accounted for roughly 11 percent of the university’s revenue, according to its most recent financial report. Most of the federal research money that pours into Harvard comes from the Department of Health and Human Services. But an array of federal agencies, including NASA and the intelligence community, directed funds to the university in 2023.
Since President Trump took office, his administration has sought to leverage research money to get compromises from universities. Federal funding remains in flux for Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles.
In her 84-page ruling last week, Judge Burroughs attacked the government’s approach to Harvard as an unlawful sham, writing that the Trump administration had “used antisemitism as a smoke-screen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
The judge’s ruling heartened Harvard officials, who have grappled with how a lasting loss of federal funding could reshape the university. They have feared that the government could menace the university throughout Mr. Trump’s term, with some of Harvard’s top leaders concluding that a protracted fight with the government would be untenable.
In turn, the university has spent months in talks with the White House about a possible settlement. Although the negotiations have stalled lately, the university has been considering spending $500 million to resolve its clash with the government. In return, the university would probably have its access to research funding revived.
Critics have compared the Trump administration’s tactics to extortion. In July, Brown University and Columbia University signed settlements tied to restorations of research funding.
Although some federal money could soon be headed to Harvard, the Trump administration has insisted that it wants to cut the university off if the government and the school do not reach a deal. A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said last week that “Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.”
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
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