Save Harvard...
Save us
The federal government aims to destroy Harvard and higher education.We—the workers and students of Harvard—are on the front lines.Without our labor and presence, Harvard cannot achieve education and research excellence.Harvard needs to fight for us, not fire us or abandon us to immigration enforcement.Do you want to save Harvard? It’s easy to support Harvard’s students, educators, and researchers!
What’s going on at Harvard?
Harvard is under attack and fighting back.
We are deeply proud that our institution is resisting the barrage of federal attacks. However, in response to these unprecedented and existential threats to our institution, our Administration has called for austerity measures that disproportionately impact non-tenure-track faculty, scholars, researchers, and students.
Harvard is doing the right thing by standing for its values, but it is not doing enough!
Harvard has implemented hiring freezes while laying off lecturers and preceptors using term limits (“time caps”), removing some of our most excellent (and indeed award-winning) educators, and in some cases, eliminating entire programs that made Harvard unique.
In response to terminated federal grants, Harvard has pledged to cover some of the lost funding only for faculty, not for the talented postdoctoral scholars and graduate student researchers who won their own awards and perform essential research.
These policies will irreparably damage the core education and research missions of our university and the Harvard community.
Harvard must do more to save research:
Cover all research funding cuts instead of asking labs to exhaust all non-federal funds (because the long-term survival of Harvard research is put in jeopardy otherwise)
Cover graduate and postdoctoral researchers who won their own grants (because covering funding cuts that only affect tenured faculty imperils the future of scientific research)
Harvard must do more to save education:
Harvard uses term limits on teaching faculty to fire world-class educators
Harvard is using a hiring freeze to understaff courses
Time caps + hiring freeze = Harvard is destroying and eliminating academic programs
Harvard should use its resources to protect the jobs of non-tenured researchers and teachers
Harvard needs to do more to save non-citizen community members:
Provide sufficient legal resources to its international students and scholars
Protect the sensitive records of non-citizens from the government
Establish remote schooling options for students who lose their visa status
Establish remote work options and facilitate physical or remote access to Harvard’s research facilities, when possible, for scholars who lose their visa status
Commit to helping visa holders co-enroll (or transfer) to other institutions
“They should make clear that their formidable financial endowments are not there to simply be envied or admired. Part of their function is to be drawn down in the face of emergencies, and covering federal funding lapses surely counts as one. Believe me, a former president of Harvard, when I say that ways can be found in an emergency to deploy even parts of the endowment that have been earmarked by their donors for other uses.”
--Larry Summers, former Harvard President (NY Times, 3 April 2025)
Meet the people at Harvard affected by federal funding cuts and austerity measures
We are the non-tenure-track faculty, scholars, researchers, staff, and students who do essential teaching and research at Harvard...and we are being left behind.
Federal funding cuts and our University’s own austerity measures have made many of us unsure about our future prospects at Harvard University. Some of us have been fired due to time caps, laid off or forced to leave earlier than anticipated due to funding cuts, and placed on shorter appointments or offered lower salaries than expected. Threats to Harvard’s ability to admit and employ international students and workers have sown fear among us. As academic workers at Harvard, we are all anxiously confronting an uncertain academic job market in the United States.
Adam Sychla, Research Fellow in Microbiology (Harvard Medical School)
IMAGE: Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe
“I work on making next generation medicines that have less side effects for diseases from cancer to the common cold. [At Harvard Medical School,] I get to spend my time making discoveries to better the lives of Americans and beyond.”“In the past few months this view and feeling has been stripped away.”“For years I worked 60+ hour weeks while hearing that millennials are lazy and live at home doing nothing. I was happy to do that work because I got to produce results for the American people and mentor the next generation of students. But right now, it really looks that with a PhD, with years of work and value for the American people, I will have to go back to my parents as my field and career are being destroyed before my eyes.”
Kelsey Tyssowski, Postdoctoral Researcher in Molecular and Cellular Biology / Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences)
IMAGE: @kelseytea.bsky.social
“I have developed a new mouse model to study how our nervous systems generate skilled movement. My unique research direction has potential to lead to discoveries that inform how we treat movement disorders, such as ALS.”“The NIH grant that funds this work, including my salary, has been cancelled. Because of this, I am not sure how much longer I have a job here at Harvard or in academic science in general. I worry that I will have to leave behind the career pathway that I’ve been working towards my entire adult life.”“If I can't stay in academic science, the research that I’ve been working on and plan to work on in the future will be lost forever. My work relies on mouse lines collected through field work that will only continue to exist if I am able to stay in academic science. If I can’t continue this project, no one will. If I can't continue in academic science, we will lose the expertise I've developed doing federally funded research for over a decade, thanks to hundreds of thousands in American taxpayer dollars. If I can't continue in my job, the system I've developed will be lost, the money spent developing it will be wasted, and we will never make the discoveries that will lay the foundation for therapeutics of the future.”
Lisa Gulesserian, Preceptor on Armenian Language and Culture (Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences)
IMAGE: Insta @f1yby
“I’m an award-winning educator of Western Armenian who is being forced to leave Harvard because of the time caps combined with the hiring freeze. This school year, I was the sole educator at Harvard to be awarded the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize by the Harvard Undergraduate Association for ‘superb teaching by members of the Harvard faculties who teach undergraduates.’”“And yet, despite my excellent teaching record and innovative pedagogy, I cannot continue serving Harvard because I have reached the 8-year limit for how long I can teach as a non-tenure-track faculty member in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. After 8 years of building a curriculum from scratch, I’m being let go. My department’s leaders have been told that they cannot continue to hire me because the time caps policy is a Harvard-specific rule that the Administration has chosen to follow during a hiring freeze and ongoing union bargaining. I’m worried that the program that I built for my under-resourced language will be dismantled and lose steam in my absence.”
Ozan Baytaş, Research Fellow in Neurobiology (Harvard Medical School)
IMAGE: Ozan Baytaş
“For more than a decade, I had the privilege to do research in the United States with real impact on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease. Much of the current research at Harvard is conducted by skilled international postdoctoral scholars. Preventing their entry into the country or not properly funding them will cease many of the operations in laboratories. Many non-citizen researchers, like me, will choose not to come here, even if they can, because we are being targeted.”“Overall, the whole trajectory of postdoctoral research careers is already squeezed to bits, mentoring is not valued or encouraged, and academic freedom is at a steep decline with people self-censoring in fear of persecution for one reason or another. Further dismissal of international contributions made to the intellect and research output in this country would be detrimental to our understanding of nature, improving healthcare and lives everywhere in the world.”
Share your story about how the federal funding cuts or austerity measures are affecting you at Harvard. We want to hear from you!
Jules Riegel, Lecturer on History & Literature (Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences)
IMAGE: Harvard Center for Jewish Studies
“These attacks have also had devastating effects on my career plans. My current job is term limited, meaning that I am only allowed to hold this position for a maximum of three years. The next academic year will be my last, which makes it extremely urgent that I find another job. I'm doing everything I can to remain a competitive candidate, including maintaining an active research agenda, presenting new findings at conferences, and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.”“However, these attacks on academia and losses of funding have caused the academic job market—already cutthroat-competitive at the best of times—to collapse almost entirely. I've spent nearly two decades working to reach this point in my career. I've benefited enormously from federal funding to support my language study and research, including a Foreign Languages and Area Studies Scholarship, a U.S. Department of State Title VIII Grant for language study, and a Fulbright Institute of International Education Grant for research. Now, I'm worried that all this effort (and taxpayer funding!) will go to waste as I'm forced out of academia through no fault of my own.”
Victoria Jenkins, Biocurator @ FlyBase, Molecular and Cellular Biology (Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences)
IMAGE: GitHub @vjenkinsFB
“I work at FlyBase, which is essentially an online encyclopedia of fruit fly genetics. I get information out of papers and into the database, where it helps biologists worldwide.”“My group learned that our grant was terminated this morning. We’re scrambling to try to get out data exported to our parent organization’s website, but trying to preserve 30+ years of data is a big job. My European coworkers paid as foreign sub-awardees already have termination dates for their jobs. We will be able to transfer some people to grants at other institutions, but probably not me, I expect to lose my job.”
Hannah Grunwald, Research Fellow in Genetics (Harvard Medical School)
IMAGE: Hannah Grunwald
“I study the evolution of the Mexican cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus. Understanding the evolution of these fish is critical because it will help us understand complex genetic traits and could improve predictions of complex and low penetrance genetic diseases.”“In April, my grant program was terminated, effectively taking away $875,000 that I won to perform this research and to recruit, train, and mentor the next generation of scientists. In May, the federal government canceled all grants to Harvard, taking away the last remnants of my award.”“And the worst part? I feel lucky. I am white. I am a citizen. My job is relatively protected for at least the next six months. I’m watching a career that I built over 14 years crumble around me, watching the potential dissolution of a project that I think could be transformative, that no one else in the world is thinking about…and all I can think is, ‘It can still get worse.’”“When we lose scientists, we don’t just lose their current research (although their research is essential!), we also lose a generation of teachers and mentors that would have brought new scientists and their research to light. The effects are cascading and generational.”
Act Now!
If Harvard wants to preserve its status as the greatest university in the world, it cannot afford to lose members who make it great.
How do you want to help?
Email Templates
Click the buttons below to compose emails with our abbreviated suggested messages—personalize, sign, and SEND.If you’d like more detail to include in your emails, scroll down to find more detailed sample messages you can use to craft yours to the appropriate parties (email addresses listed below).If the buttons don’t work for you, copy and paste the suggested email addresses and messages below.
SUBJECT: Harvard, value and protect your people!
TO:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
As someone who cares deeply about Harvard’s reputation and prestige, I fully support the University’s principled resistance in the face of unjust attacks by the federal government. I am with you, Harvard—do not cave to unreasonable demands!However, while Harvard is fighting injustice as an institution, it must protect its people. I was deeply troubled to learn about the precarity of various groups of workers at Harvard who conduct world-changing research, educate the leaders of tomorrow, and ensure that the University is functioning. If Harvard wants to preserve its status as the greatest university in the world, it cannot afford to lose members who make it great!In these difficult times, it is all the more important that Harvard protect all students, educators, and researchers, regardless of tenure-track status. I call on Harvard University to use its resources to protect international students and staff, and to preserve Harvard’s workforce of educators, researchers, and staff.Harvard must commit more of its resources, including more of its endowment. It must support and defend the jobs and rights of academic workers and graduate students who rely on Harvard for income. It must commit significant resources to protecting the rights of international students and staff.I am proud that Harvard has pushed back against these attacks from the federal government. But Harvard is only as strong as its people. You can do more, Harvard!
SUBJECT: Use the endowment to protect Harvard’s research
TO:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
As someone who cares deeply about Harvard’s reputation and prestige, I fully support the University’s principled resistance in the face of unjust attacks by the federal government. I am with you, Harvard—do not cave to unreasonable demands!I am appalled by the federal funding cuts that have affected many research institutions but have targeted Harvard specifically and indiscriminately across all fields, from medical to climate to education research.While I applaud Harvard’s judicial push to combat these attacks in the long term, research is still at immediate risk. Should the research supported by these grants stop, scientists will lose jobs, experimental facilities will be closed, and essential research may be permanently abandoned. Most at risk are the young investigators, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research staff scientists who do the work of research at this institution. Their loss would remove the capability of most labs to perform research. Collectively, a failure to sufficiently support research will lead to a destruction of a significant part of Harvard’s research capacities which may not be rebuilt for years, if ever, in some cases. We could all lose new knowledge, drugs, and treatments to combat common diseases like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.Harvard’s prestige and its contribution to society rely in great part on its contribution to scientific research and advancement.I urge Harvard’s leadership to use its financial resources now, including its endowment, to make sure researchers’ jobs are saved and research can continue with limited disruption, for as long as necessary until federal funding can be restored. This is too important to leave to individual schools, departments, or labs. Harvard, as an institution, must act now. I recognize this is a significant effort, but when Harvard had to draw more from its endowment in the past, it did. If Harvard’s accumulated wealth is not used now when the University's capacities are most threatened, when will it be used?I know that Harvard has the capacity and the will to defend research at this great institution.
SUBJECT: Help non-citizen students and scholars
TO:
[email protected]
[email protected]
The federal government has, cruelly and likely illegally, attempted to revoke the visa status of most of Harvard’s foreign students, educators, and researchers. This is a brutal attack on Harvard as an international community of students and scholars.I am heartened to see that Harvard is fighting back, and I hope it continues to do so with all its legal resources, to protect the rights of our non-citizen community members. Harvard should not give up!
However, Harvard should also set up a specific plan should some non-citizens students or scholars be forced to leave the University.I call on Harvard Leadership to adopt the following measures:
- Use the University’s full legal resources to help students and staff who get unjustly arrested or deported
- Establish remote schooling options for students who lose their visa status
- Establish remote work options and facilitate physical or remote access to Harvard’s research facilities, when possible, for scholars who lose their visa status
- Commit to helping visa holders co-enroll (or transfer) to other institutionsThese measures could help lessen the impact of visa revocations and help the affected return to Harvard more easily when it becomes possible again.As someone who cares deeply about Harvard’s reputation and prestige, I fully support the University’s principled resistance in the face of unjust attacks by the federal government. I am with you, Harvard—do not cave to unreasonable demands! And now, when non-citizens are feeling most precarious, do the right thing and make a plan for their protection!
Phone Calls
You can call Harvard’s leadership or your elected officials to help save the people doing essential teaching and research at Harvard.
Call Harvard’s leadership to protect its essential people! Click the buttons above to directly call Harvard’s President and Deans, then use the script below!
“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m [CONNECTION TO HARVARD].”“As someone who cares deeply about Harvard’s reputation and prestige, I fully support the University’s principled resistance in the face of unjust attacks by the federal government. I am with you, Harvard—do not cave to unreasonable demands!”“However, while Harvard is fighting injustice as an institution, it must protect its people. I was deeply troubled to learn about the precarity of various groups of workers at Harvard who conduct world-changing research, educate the leaders of tomorrow, and ensure that the University is functioning. If Harvard wants to preserve its status as the greatest university in the world, it cannot afford to lose members who make it great!”“In these difficult times, it is all the more important that Harvard protect all students, educators, and researchers, regardless of tenure-track status. I call on Harvard University to use its resources to protect international students and staff, and to preserve Harvard’s workforce of educators, researchers, and staff.”“Harvard must commit more of its resources, including more of its endowment. It must support and defend the jobs and rights of academic workers and graduate students who rely on Harvard for income. It must commit significant resources to protecting the rights of international students and staff. It must pause time caps so that excellent educators can be retained and programs are not eliminated.”“I am proud that Harvard has pushed back against these attacks from the federal government. But Harvard is only as strong as its people. You can do more, Harvard!”“Thank you for your time and consideration.”IF LEAVING VOICEMAIL: Please leave your full name and contact information so that your call is tallied
Call your federal legislators and ask for protections for higher education. Mention specific protections for universities like Harvard and Columbia that have been targeted. Use the script below!
Call Massachusetts state legislators and Governor Maura Healey to ask for protections and support for Harvard.
“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY, ZIP].”“I’m calling to demand [SEN NAME] reject the budget reconciliation bill and its provisions to raise taxes on endowments for higher education. This endowment tax would create financial barriers for students by slashing funding for student aid and stifle the innovative research our country and its economy depend on. I especially worry about what might happen to Harvard University if this bill were to pass—how can Harvard continue its world-changing research and important teaching if it has to pay a higher tax after having so many of its federal grants canceled?”“Thank you for your time and consideration.”IF LEAVING VOICEMAIL: Please leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied
Donate to Harvard
Our allies at Crimson Courage have set up a page collecting donations from alumni.
Thank you
The people who contribute to Harvard’s education and teaching mission appreciate your help!