NIH Director Bhattacharya Refuses Trump Demand to Cut Harvard Funding, Politico Reports

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, a former Stanford University colleague of Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, refused a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump to cut Harvard’s federal research grants during a heated Friday Oval Office meeting, Politico reported Saturday night.

Trump also plans to form a board of political appointees to oversee the grant approval process for NIH grants, Politico reported Saturday. Bhattacharya and Russell T. Vought, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, would sit on the board, and grants would require unanimous approval.

Bhattacharya, who worked closely with Garber at Stanford, became publicly associated with the White House’s pressure campaign against Harvard after the Trump administration slashed nearly $2.7 billion in federal funding to the University last April, including hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding.

Bhattacharya has since distanced himself from the administration’s push to defund federal-sponsored scientific research. He testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee testimony last year that he pushed to retain funding for Harvard-affiliated hospitals.

Ashish K. Jha, the former dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health who worked closely with both Garber and Bhattacharya, said in an interview Sunday that he “wasn’t totally surprised” that Bhattacharya broke with Trump over NIH funding for Harvard.

“My conversations with people who are speaking directly with him is that he is starting to realize that he has gone too far, that he has acquiesced too much,” Jha said. “I do think that has started happening in the last couple of months.”

Jha said Bhattacharya also worked behind the scenes last year to broker a settlement between Harvard and the White House that would restore the University’s funding. He called the effort “one of the very few things where I think he actually tried to be constructive.”

Bhattacharya declined to comment when The Crimson reached him by phone on Saturday night.

Professors who know Garber and Bhattacharya said the two remained close even after Bhattacharya began to promote fringe scientific views about the Covid-19 pandemic. Garber praised Bhattacharya after he was selected as NIH director in December 2024, calling him a “serious and dedicated researcher” in an interview.

Those professors also told The Crimson last year they were startled to see Bhattacharya associated with the funding cuts, describing him as someone who understood the value of scientific research firsthand.

Jha said Sunday that he thought many of the scientists who remain in touch with Bhattacharya are at Harvard, ties that he said made an attack against the University personal as well as political.

“He’s probably thinking about, like, if he acquiesces to this, he’s going to have to talk to those people and explain why he signed off,” Jha said.

“It’s so egregious what they’re proposing. He has no way to justify it, and I think the personal connection makes that harder for him,” Jha added.

Trump’s demand followed a string of setbacks in the administration’s efforts to strip Harvard of its access to federal money.

A federal judge ordered the government to restore Harvard’s research funding last fall, and a separate judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to claw back nearly $1 billion in Harvard research funding over alleged civil rights violations. (Both cases remain under appeal in the First Circuit.)

The White House first targeted the University’s federal funding through the NIH last spring, terminating more than $110 million in grants to Harvard and its affiliated hospitals from February 28 to Apr. 1, 2025.

The NIH struck another blow to Harvard’s researchers that February, capping reimbursements for research indirect costs at 15 percent. Garber sharply criticized the decision in an email to affiliates, writing that it would leave national research “severely compromised.” The First Circuit permanently blocked the cap in January.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.