Harvard Says US To Restore Some Research Funds After Freeze

Harvard University said it has received notice that some of the federal research funding frozen by the Trump administration is being restarted, although the money hasn’t started flowing yet.

The notification followed a court victory for Harvard last week in which a federal judge ruled that the US illegally froze more than $2 billion in research dollars for the school. It can take several days for the university to receive authorized funding after submitting a request.

“While the administration has indicated its intention to appeal, we have begun to receive notices of reinstatements on many of the previously terminated federal awards from a range of federal agencies,” Harvard’s Office for Sponsored Programs said in a letter seen by Bloomberg. 

“We are monitoring funding receipts closely, and, thus far, payments have not been restored on these awards,” the office said. A spokesperson for the university confirmed the notices without providing additional details. 

Harvard has been the main target of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape elite higher education, a campaign that started by accusing schools of fostering antisemitism but widened into a broader attack on diversity programs and perceived political bias. US District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled last week that the Trump administration violated Harvard’s free-speech protections as well as US civil rights and administrative laws. 

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the funding restart, which was reported earlier by the New York Times. 

The Trump administration vowed to appeal the court ruling, calling the decision “egregious.” The administration maintains it’s withholding federal money because Harvard failed to protect Jewish students on campus during protests following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, among other issues.  

Burroughs said in her ruling that the government “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul” of the law. 

While Burroughs found the administration acted illegally, she didn’t specifically order the government to release the funds. The government suspended a wide range of research funding in April.

Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said most National Institutes of Health grants have technically remained active since Trump moved against the university. But Harvard researchers haven’t been able to access the funds because of the payment freeze. 

Delaney runs Grant Witness, a database of NIH and other funding terminated by the Trump administration. 

“Overall, it does indeed seem like multiple government agencies are moving forward for now to reinstate grants,” he said. “But the critical question — whether Harvard can actually get paid — remains unanswered.”