I Teach at Harvard. Here’s What the Hiring Freeze Will Do to Us.

Harvard has long shaped history, influencing everything from science and politics to the arts. Now, that role is in jeopardy.

At the core of our success has always been the funding that allows these ideas to take shape. For decades, the support from administrators and donors has been essential in enabling groundbreaking research and attracting top minds from around the world. This has been true for every civilization throughout history — advancements in science, technology, and the arts have always been tied to the growth of academic institutions.

Despite its quiet presence in everyday life, academia is undeniably one of the pillars on which society stands.

That’s why the recent hiring freeze at Harvard is so troubling. This move is particularly concerning for researchers in fields like pure mathematics, where, in my experience, most of the funding doesn’t come from industry or private grants. For many of us, University funding is the only source of support to continue our work. But in return, we’re also responsible for teaching courses that are critical not only for math concentrators but for students in engineering, physics, biology, and finance.

Math is the backbone of many fields, and those of us who teach it play a role in shaping the next generation of thinkers across a wide array of disciplines. For example, my research field is differential geometry, which I also teach. The work matters for pure math research and theoretical physics — but it’s also vital for those studying engineering, computer science, and biology.

If this hiring freeze continues, we’ll see some real consequences. With fewer new hires, important courses won’t have instructors, and departments might even have to drop classes altogether. Those of us still here will be stretched thin, taking on extra teaching responsibilities that will leave us with less time to focus on research.

And at a place like Harvard, where research is the heart of the institution, that’s a real problem. Teaching multiple courses — especially advanced ones — takes a lot of time and energy, and it’s hard to do that while staying on top of cutting-edge research.

But it’s not just about faculty and classes. As this academic year draws to a close, many graduate students are finishing their theses and looking for postdoctoral positions. For many of them, staying in academia isn’t just a job — it’s a passion. They want to contribute to society through their research and to pursue what they love. That’s something that should be encouraged, because when people are passionate about their work, they excel.

If this hiring freeze goes on for too long, though, these bright minds might find themselves unable to pursue academic careers at top schools. And that’s a real loss — not just for them, but for the future of academia itself.

Currently, some of my past students who have applied for graduate schools are facing a similar problem. Some of the students interested in pursuing graduate school often decide to take a year break to work in a lab to prepare themselves. Given the current situation, some of the students that I taught are having a hard time finding research opportunities at any suitable lab due to the lack of funding. At the level of junior researchers, a close friend of mine got a tenure track position in a different department, but the offer is on hold.

These are some of the immediate consequences that are felt by the members of the Harvard community.

The uncertainty extends to undergraduates, too. Many seniors who were accepted into graduate programs are now wondering if they’ll actually be able to start them. For students in research labs, especially those involved in experimental science, the freeze could have even bigger consequences. Labs rely on graduate students and postdocs to keep things running, and without enough people to staff them, important research could slow or even grind to a halt.

In pure math research, we don’t have labs. But I collaborate with applied math and biology researchers in Professor Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan’s Lab where experiments take a long time and require constant supervision. To keep these experiments running, one needs a large group of highly skilled researchers, so labs usually hire a number of new students and postdocs every year. This hiring freeze if continued long will have a devastating effect on labs like Maha’s.

In short, the hiring freeze isn’t just a financial or administrative issue — it’s something that could have a ripple effect across all disciplines at Harvard. It could lead to fewer opportunities for students, more pressure on faculty, and a slowdown in research that could take years to recover from. And that’s not just bad for Harvard — it’s bad for all of us.

I hope this freeze doesn’t last long. Harvard has always been a place that attracts and nurtures some of the brightest minds in the world. Without the ability to hire new talent, we risk losing that. We need to remember that the work we do here, in every field, plays a huge part in pushing society forward. So, let’s hope that we can find a way to support the next generation of scholars, researchers, and innovators before this freeze takes an even bigger toll.

Puskar Mondal is a lecturer on Math and a research fellow in the Math Department.