CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - MARCH 12: Students walk through Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University on March 12, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Students have been asked to move out of their dorms by March 15 due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) risk. All classes will be moved online for the rest of the spring semester. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Boston, Massachusetts – The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) is implementing significant cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, campus footprint reductions, and departmental budget adjustments, in response to escalating federal attacks that threaten the University’s financial stability and international student enrollment.
These measures come as the Trump administration intensifies its pressure campaign against Harvard, which includes pulling over $2 billion in federal funding and threatening the University’s eligibility to enroll international students. HSPH, heavily reliant on federal funds, has been particularly impacted, recently receiving three stop-work orders totaling over $60 million.
Layoffs have already begun, primarily affecting staff and researchers whose projects faced funding freezes. While HSPH is not targeting a specific number of job cuts, it intends to honor existing commitments to faculty. HSPH spokesperson Stephanie Simon acknowledged a “significant budget crisis,” stating that the school is taking a targeted approach to fiscal austerity by “identifying strategic priorities and making sustainable budget cuts.”
In addition to layoffs, HSPH is consolidating its campus footprint by exiting leases on two buildings. One building houses the school’s human resources office and the Harvard University Police Department’s Longwood campus office. The other is a 40,000 square-foot space at the Landmark Center, containing laboratories, faculty and graduate student offices, and classrooms.
While across-the-board departmental budget cuts have not yet been implemented, departments have been asked to model potential budget scenarios and assess their impact on research and educational operations. These moves follow earlier cost-cutting measures, including shrinking Ph.D. admissions pools and pausing the dean of research search.
Federal research funding constituted 46 percent of HSPH’s revenue in fiscal year 2025. As of last month, at least a dozen grants had been terminated. Among the recently issued stop-work orders is a $60 million contract supporting an international tuberculosis research collective, led by HSPH professor Sarah Fortune. Other affected grants focused on breast cancer tumor sequencing and the relationship between coffee consumption and cancer.
The White House’s pressure campaign has intensified in recent days. The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the Department of Homeland Security has threatened to pull the University’s eligibility to enroll international students, contingent on the University sharing student disciplinary records and protest participation details.
With roughly 40 percent of HSPH’s student body being international, Simon cited the DHS’s threats as a significant factor contributing to the school’s budget crisis. “We are working to minimize the impact on our outstanding workforce while protecting the heart of our research and educational missions,” Simon wrote.
