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Nearly 100 senior faculty members at Harvard have committed to taking a pay cut to support the institution’s legal defense against the federal government.
The Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funding, threatened to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status and said it would end the institution’s ability to enroll international students.
Last month, Harvard filed a lawsuit to halt the federal freeze on $2.2 billion in grants after university officials refused to comply with a sweeping list of demands from the government.
On Friday, President Trump repeated his calls to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial.
Harvard president Alan Garber said taking away the institution’s nonprofit tax exemption would be “highly illegal” and that its mission to educate and research would be “severely impaired” if the status were revoked.
In their pledge, 89 senior faculty signatories said they would take a 10 percent pay cut for up to a year to protect the institution, as well as faculty and students who are more exposed to efforts to shore up costs, including by limiting graduate student enrollment and implementing hiring and salary freezes.
“The financial costs will not be shared equally among our community. Staff and students in many programs, in particular, are under greater threat than those of us with tenured positions,” the pledge says.
Ryan Enos, a signatory and professor of government at Harvard, estimated that the donations could amount to more than $2 million.
The group said it intends to move quickly but has not decided how the salary cuts will be implemented.
“We envision that faculty who have made the pledge will hold a vote and if the majority agrees that the university is making a good faith effort to use its own resources in support of staff, student, and academic programs, faculty will proceed with their donation.”
Last week the institution announced changes to its admissions, curriculum and disciplinary procedures after two internal task forces launched last year investigating anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism on campus found the university’s response lacking.
In response to the efforts, a White House official told CNN, “Harvard’s steps so far to curb antisemitism are ‘positive,’” but “what we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut.”
