Garber Blasts Trump’s Proposed Order Politicizing NIH Grants on Alumni Call

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 slammed the White House’s bid to politicize the approval of National Institutes of Health research funding as “unprecedented” during a Tuesday Zoom call with alumni.

Asked about threats to the University’s federal funding, Garber appeared to point to an executive order proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump last week that would give a board of political appointees final say over how NIH money is spent. He also seemed to cite an Office of Management and Budget rule proposed earlier this year that would have put senior political appointees in charge of grant disbursement.

“Under some proposed rules and executive orders, there would be greater political control over which research gets funded, which really is unprecedented, at least in the degree of interference in U.S. history,” Garber said, according to a recording of the call shared with The Crimson.

“When you talk about the threat, I want everybody to be clear: these are the kinds of things that we are concerned about,” he added.

The remarks came just days after a heated Oval Office meeting where Trump reportedly ordered OMB Director Russell T. Vought to draft an executive order shifting grant oversight to political appointees, including Vought himself — a longtime critic of NIH spending.

In the same meeting, Trump also reportedly pushed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya to cut NIH grants for Harvard; Bhattacharya reportedly refused.

But by the time Garber spoke to alumni just three days later, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle had come out publicly against the executive order, including several who helped torpedo the OMB rule this summer.

By Wednesday, the White House appeared to have backed off. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she pushed the White House to drop the order.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), her Democratic counterpart on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote in a Wednesday press release that the order might be “on ice” but called for more legal protections for NIH funding.

“It shouldn’t take public outcry to prevent President Trump and Russ Vought from laying waste to the NIH and defunding lifesaving research because they think it’s ‘woke’ or want to extort a university,” Murray wrote.

Garber was a frequent critic last year of NIH grant freezes, agency-wide cost-cutting measures, and a 15 percent cap on reimbursements for indirect expenses — each of which threatened Harvard’s funding supply — but Tuesday’s remarks were his first public comments on the politicization of NIH grants.

Other University officials have been more vocal. John H. Shaw, senior vice provost for research, urged the OMB to abandon the proposed rule in a July public comment, saying the rule would punish universities with higher indirect costs, allow the OMB to terminate funding midway through research, and deter international collaboration.

“If promulgated, the rule would fundamentally and radically reshape how federally funded research is reviewed, awarded, and managed in this country, undermining the decades long national research partnership between the federal government and higher education,” Shaw wrote in July.

The University also lobbied on “changes to F&A reimbursement and grant-making processes” in the first half of 2026, according to July disclosures.

Garber also announced for the first time on the call that all Harvard schools had adopted versions of the Chatham House Rule, a non-attribution policy that allows participants to share the content of statements made in academic settings but not identify particular speakers.

The Law School, the Kennedy School, and the Business School adopted non-attribution policies years ago, and the rest of Harvard’s schools have now quietly followed suit.

The pace of adoption has sped up in the past year.

The Harvard Medical School integrated Chatham House rules into its M.D. program in the summer of 2025. Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education voted last fall to adopt versions of Chatham House rules.

The Harvard School of Public Health faculty adopted Chatham House rules at a May faculty meeting after a March recommendation from a faculty working group, and they are “being rolled out in the current academic year,” according to HSPH spokesperson Todd Datz. A non-attribution policy is also included in the latest edition of Harvard Graduate School of Design’s student handbook.

Garber otherwise largely repeated his previous public comments during the hour-long call with alumni — a fairly regular practice since the start of his tenure. The call was moderated by writer Lillian C. “Gish” Jen ’77. Attendees were told the call was off the record.

Garber doubled down on criticism of the federal government’s new rule capping international student visas at four years. A federal judge temporarily blocked the rule earlier this month.

Though Garber said Harvard maintained relatively consistent international student enrollment through last summer’s visa disruptions, he warned the new policy could set the University back.

“Our success to date should not be interpreted as something that’s very reassuring,” Garber said. “If these rules go through, we are facing a very very different world.”

On the call, Garber also praised a controversial cap on A grades at the College that was approved overwhelmingly by faculty last spring and is set to go into effect in fall 2027.

“I’m sure that we will all learn from it, possibly modify some aspects of the policy going forward,” Garber said. “But it was an important step to take, and I think in the end we’ll be better off.”

—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.