NIH Communications Freeze Leaves Longwood Affiliates Out in the Cold

Researchers at Harvard’s Longwood medical campus contended with canceled talks and blocked international collaboration as White House officials issued a stream of restrictions on federal funding and communication.

Scholars across Harvard’s schools have faced confusion amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on foreign aid and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. But much of the University’s federal research funding — 76 percent of which comes from the Department of Health and Human Services — flows into research at the schools in Longwood.

Trump briefly attempted to pause funding for federal grants and loans in an order intended to take effect Tuesday. Despite Trump’s swift retraction of the order to freeze federal funding, many restrictions remain in place, including travel bans, paused grant reviews, and restrictions on public statements.

The DHHS sent a Jan. 21 memo to the heads of its divisions — which include the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — instructing them to refrain from publicly issuing documents or participating in speaking engagements until the contents have been “reviewed and approved by a Presidential appointee.”

The communications ban is slated to lift on Feb. 1.

HMS professor Aaron S. Kesselheim ’96, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, said that the journal was told by the HHS to pause the publication of an article written by members of the HHS, which had previously been accepted by the journal.

According to Kesselheim, the journal was told that the article had to be reviewed by the new administration.

“We had to pull the article because of the repressive policies of the new administration with respect to speech,” Kesselheim said. “I think it’s a sort of a bald example of censorship.”

A planned Feb. 6 talk at Harvard and MIT’s Broad Institute by Michael E. Ward, an NIH scientist who studies neurodegenerative disorders, was canceled when the NIH prohibited its staff from traveling to external meetings.

Following Trump’s communication ban, the NIH also abruptly canceled its study sections, which are a key step in accepting and managing grant applications, until Feb. 1. On Jan. 27, the NIH relaxed some restrictions, saying that employees could submit articles to journals, though they were still barred from publishing preprints.

Harvard received more than $520 million in funding from the DHHS in fiscal year 2024.

Trump’s slew of executive orders this week also included requirements that federal agencies and educational institutions receiving federal funding terminate their DEI programs. Federal agencies have told researchers to cease work on initiatives that violate the new guidelines.

HMS Professor Charles A. Nelson III — who co-directs the Healthy Brain and Child Development Study, a multi-million dollar NIH project with 27 sites across the U.S. — explained that orders banning DEI initiatives have limited the scope of his work.

“We were told clearly last week that our DEI working group needs to be formally disbanded,” Nelson said.

The HBCD’s DEI committee assisted consortium members with implementing unconscious bias trainings and developing guidelines for interacting with diverse study participants.

“The consequences of this pause is that now we don’t have a team of people who can go through our measures and methods,” Nelson said. “So, it reduces our ability to make sure that we’re deploying things that are sensitive and respectful of the populations we’re working with.”

Aside from the NIH, Trump’s executive orders have had broader implications for partner organizations of Longwood labs — bringing some international projects to a standstill.

A Jan. 20 executive order froze almost all foreign assistance for 90 days, causing researchers and humanitarian workers worldwide to receive stop-work orders from the U.S. State Department.

Funding for the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center lab run by HMS professor Dan H. Barouch ’93, which researches vaccine development, has not been interrupted. But Barouch’s collaboration with groups in Africa on HIV research has been halted due to a stop-work order from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

So far, funding and travel freezes have been temporary, billed as a mechanism for the Trump administration to review programs and axe initiatives that break with his administration’s priorities. But the restrictions have left Harvard researchers unsettled and administrators scrambling to respond.

HMS Dean George Q. Daley ’82 addressed the confusion over NIH funding in an email to affiliates on Wednesday, thanking researchers for their “patience during this complicated and rapidly changing time.”

“Harvard’s leadership — including myself and the deans of all Harvard schools — and our government relations team are closely following and assessing the implications of all the relevant emerging executive orders and directives,” Daley wrote.

Kesselheim said that Trump’s decision to freeze research funding was “completely problematic and completely disastrous and completely unprecedented.”

“There have been transitions before between Republican and Democrat administrations and between Democrat and Republican administrations,” said Kesselheim, but “science has never stopped.”

—Staff writer Kaitlyn Y. Choi can be reached at kaitlyn.choi@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.

—Staff writer Sohum M. Sukhatankar can be reached at sohum.sukhatankar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ssukhatankar06.