COMMONSENSE CHANGES AT HARVARD COULD GO A LONG WAY TO DIFFUSING TRUMP STANDOFF

An update on huge payroll, endowment, far-Left research and opaque foreign gifts in Harvard’s ledger.

The Trump administration is taking a hard look at one of its top contractors: Harvard University. In response to the university’s increasing left-wing radicalism and racial discrimination in admissions and hiring decisions, the president sent a list of demands to Harvard to continue receiving federal funds. Those demands include ending divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, adopting merit-based admissions and hiring, and reporting international students who violated conduct policies to federal authorities.

Harvard has refused to comply and has since had $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts frozen. President Trump also stated that he is considering stripping the university’s non-profit tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘sickness.’”

These actions demand a closer look at how much Harvard stands to lose if it walks away from its federal funding or loses a monumental court battle with the current administration.

New analyses from Open the Books show that since the first Trump administration in 2017, Harvard has received $4.4 billion in federal funding through grants, contracts, sub-grants, and sub-contracts. That’s about $539 million a year. Most funding ($3.6 billion) came from grants.

In any given year, Harvard collected more in federal grants and contracts than they stood to gain through tuition, room & board. (This does not consider financial aid, loans, etc., but is self-reported tuition charges from Harvard).

Meanwhile, even more astonishing: Harvard’s endowment has grown by $14 BILLION since 2018 (for a total of $53.2B) — that means they’re sitting on more than $7 million for every undergraduate student as they collect billions in grants and contracts.

The NIH gave the most funding ($2.6 billion), with the National Science Foundation ($418 million) and the Department of Defense ($357 million) a distant second and third.

Top ten agencies funding Harvard from FY 2017-2025

A few notable grants in that time include:

• $2,497,617 for improving “diversity in biomedical sciences via personalized research and education programs”

• $669,028 for a project called “Effects of Advance in the STEM Disciplines: Faculty Diversity, Women in Leadership, and Institutional Transformation”

• $201,124 to study avenues to “societal transformations” that make “profound and enduring systemic changes that typically involve social, cultural, technological, political, economic, and environmental processes.”

• $99,216 for “The Amendments Project: Rewriting the U.S. Constitution” which aims to “present to the public the text of proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution from 1787 to 2020, in the form of a digital archive and a narrative podcast...to advance civic education and support emerging proposals for constitutional reform.” See Open the Books previous reporting on taxpayer funded podcasts here.

• $85,000 to “support studies assessing the feasibility and fidelity of a digital music-based mindfulness intervention developed for black American adults experiencing race-based anxiety”

FOREIGN CASH

The Trump administration has also opened an investigation into Harvard’s foreign gifts, claiming the university made “incomplete and inaccurate” disclosures. Universities are legally required to report payments from foreign sources to the Department of Education when they exceed $250,000.

Since 2017, Harvard has accepted $1.1 billion in gifts or contracts from foreign sources, with top countries being England ($166.8 million) and China ($101.9 million). Another $77.9 million came from the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Top five origin countries of foreign funds to Harvard from 2017-2024

Involvement with China raises questions about potential intellectual property theft. Most funds don’t have a description, but $34.2 million in contracts, all awarded since 2020, go towards “designat[ing] a principle investigator,” presumably for a research project. Choosing researchers creates a significant opportunity for infiltration.

Harvard professor and chemist Charles Lieber was convicted in 2021 of making false statements related to his work with the China-based Wuhan University of Technology. Lieber lied about his involvement with China’s Thousand Talents Program to investigators from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, both of which funded his work.

The Thousand Talents Program provides generous financial compensation to top scientists to work in and contribute research to China. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the program is meant to “incentivize its members to steal foreign technologies needed to advance China’s national, military, and economic goals.”

FLASHBACK: When Open the Books took a deep dive into the finances of public universities, the Thousand Talents Program made an infamous visit to the home of the Buckeyes. At Ohio State University, we found yet another researcher appropriating our intellectual property:

In 2021, Ohio State researcher Song Guo Zheng pleaded guilty in Ohio to fraud for spending a $4.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health on immunology research for China. Zheng — a member of the Thousand Talents Program, through which China recruits foreign researchers — never disclosed his Chinese affiliations to Ohio State when he was hired in 2013.

He was sentenced to 37 months in prison and fined $3.8 million for lying on applications and using the grants to develop China’s expertise in the areas of rheumatology and immunology.

“For years the defendant concealed his participation in Chinese government talent recruitment programs, hiding his affiliations with at least five research institutions in China. Zheng greedily took federal research dollars and prevented others from receiving funding for critical research in support of medical advances.” - Alan E. Kohler Jr., Assistant Director, FBI Counterintelligence Division.

Harvard University also received $1.6 million from entities within the “Palestinian territories.” Federal records have no description of how funds were to be spent. Harvard refused to clarify through a comment.

As campuses across the nation were rocked with extremist protests since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the financial relationship between entities within the “Palestinian territories” should be examined more closely.

Read more about Harvard and other universities' ties to the West Bank and Gaza here.

HARVARD’S MASSIVE PAYROLL

As Harvard seeks to tighten its belt while being cut off from federal funding, it is worthwhile to look at the university’s payroll.

Tax records show that in 2022 (the most recent year available), Harvard paid out nearly $2.9 BILLION in total compensation for all of its employees ($2,883,517,726 to be precise). That includes $18,637,713 for the 23 employees that took home over $400,000.

That same year, then-president Lawrence Bacow was paid $1,330,200.

Former Harvard president Claudine Gay, Bacow’s short-reigning successor, resigned in January 2024 after a disastrous congressional testimony on antisemitism at the university. Following the hearing, journalists reported mounting evidence of plagiarism in her body of research. It is yet unknown how much Claudine Gay was paid for her six-month tenure as Harvard president, but she earned $879,079 as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2022.

Gay is still working at Harvard as the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and Professor of African and African-American Studies. According to a New York Post report, Gay was expected to keep a plush salary approaching $900,000.

Including Lawrence Bacow, only five faculty earned more than Gay in 2022. Here’s a look at the top ten:

Top Ten Earners at Harvard, FY 2022

Between 2018 and 2022, top faculty compensation rocketed by $3.6 million, outpacing inflation. Had salaries tracked with inflation, top earners would have totaled $17.05 million in payroll, an increase of just $2 million. Top faculty are those reported on Harvard’s tax filings as collecting more than $400,000 per year.

The number of employees in that exclusive club has stayed roughly the same for over a decade. There were 23 of them in 2012, 22 in 2018 and 23 again in 2022, the most recent year available.

ENDOWMENT

Harvard can afford this kind of generous compensation in part because of its tremendous endowment, which grew from $39.2 billion in 2018 to $53.2 billion in 2024—the largest of all the Ivy Leagues.

Such endowments only started getting taxed in 2017 thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which imposed a 1.4 percent tax on investment income for university endowments exceeding $500,000 per student. At 7,128 undergraduates, Harvard has over $7 million per student.

CONCLUSION

With an endowment that’s grown by $14 BILLION and with over $7 million to throw around for every enrolled student, one would think some of Harvard’s current concerns might be overblown.

As they enter a costly court battle over their funding, a few commonsense adjustments could diffuse the situation.

Congress is beginning to help with the first part. After the House Select Subcommittee on the Chinese Communist Party did a deep dive on American university partnerships with China, they found cause for serious concern. First, that universities were underreporting foreign gifts and contracts when they triggered new legal entities, like a separate research institute. Second, that the Higher Education Act did too little to capture all the foreign cash – payments under $250,000 could go completely unreported, and unrestricted grants could be reported without details on how they were spent.

So members of the House of Representatives introduced the DETERRENT Act, which lowers the threshold for reporting to $50,000 for most countries. But for adversarial nations like China – deemed “countries of concern” by the State Department -- every dime would need to be reported. Universities would also need to get annual approval from the Secretary of Education to work with those countries (think China, Iran, Russia, North Korea).

Those schools failing to comply with the requirements would be fined but also lose their Title IV funding – the crucial federal student aid that’s part of what allows schools like Harvard to keep sky-high tuition rates.

The DETERRENT Act passed with bipartisan approval in March, including 31 Democrats.

If Harvard simply followed the spirit of that bipartisan bill, the fight over foreign gifts would likely all but evaporate.

Elucidating what exactly the money from entities in Palestine is used for would speak to the Trump administration’s concerns about antisemitism being allowed to foment on campus.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA) agreed, saying in written remarks:

“It is a crucial step forward, but it is important to remember that universities don't have to wait for federal action to begin taking these necessary steps. Adopting the DETERRENT framework now—by disclosing foreign funding, establishing robust oversight, and ensuring that no outside power undermines the pursuit of knowledge—can help preserve the free exchange of ideas and innovations that are central to our academic institutions.”

As for the billions of dollars in grantmaking on the line, we’ve demonstrated time and again that Harvard and other elite universities spend vast sums on research meant to inject DEI into every aspect of the intellectual canon and wider American society.

If they would restrain themselves from promoting ideas that end up leading to campus upheaval and discriminatory – often illegal – practices in the workplace, that fight would also diminish considerably even before anyone sets foot in a courtroom.

Instead, Harvard and the Trump administration are heading into what CNN recently called a “titanic clash,” that could be headed for the Supreme Court.