Harvard plans to borrow $1 billion after federal funding threats
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Harvard University had US$7.1 billion of debt outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2024.
PHOTO: SOPHIE PARK/NYTIMES
Follow topic:
WASHINGTON – Harvard University plans to borrow US$750 million (S$1 billion) from Wall Street as part of contingency preparations, it said on April 7.
This comes days after US President Donald Trump’s administration said it was reviewing US$9 billion in federal grants and contracts
In a letter to Harvard last week, the government listed conditions
Harvard acknowledged receiving the letter but did not comment further.
“As part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances, Harvard is evaluating resources needed to advance its academic and research priorities,” it said in an April 7 statement.
Harvard’s plans come less than a week after Princeton University said in a notice dated April 1 that it was also considering the sale of about US$320 million of taxable bonds later in April. Princeton said last week the US government froze several dozen research grants to the school.
Harvard intends to issue up to US$750 million of taxable bonds for “general corporate purposes”, a spokesperson said.
It had US$7.1 billion of debt outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2024 and anticipated about US$8.2 billion after the proposed bond issuance.
The university most recently issued US$434 million in tax-exempt bonds in March 2025 and US$735 million in tax-exempt bonds in spring 2024, its spokesperson said, adding that it also issued bonds in 2022.
Harvard has a US$53 billion endowment, the largest of any US university.
Advocates, students and several faculty members have called on university leadership to resist the demands from the Trump administration.
Mr Trump has threatened to slash federal funding for US universities that the administration says have tolerated anti-semitism on their campuses.
Such allegations have grown out of a wave of pro-Palestinian protests at Harvard and other schools against Israel’s military assault on Gaza that has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and caused a humanitarian crisis.
The incursion was a response to the October 2023 attack inside Israel by Islamist group Hamas, which took scores of hostages. The attack killed 1,200 people.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-semitism and support for Hamas.
But some Jewish students on some campuses have said they felt threatened by protesters and that some academic courses are one-sided and biased against Israel.
In March, the Department of Education warned 60 universities, including Harvard, that it could bring enforcement actions if a review determined the schools had failed to stop anti-semitism on their campuses.
The government also planned to freeze grants to Brown University.
In March, the Trump administration cancelled US$400 million in federal funding for Columbia University, which had been the epicentre of pro-Palestinian campus protests in 2024.
Columbia agreed to some significant changes that the administration demanded as a precondition for talks about restoring the funding.
Federal agents have also detained some foreign student protesters in recent weeks from different campuses and are working to deport them. The government has revoked the visas of many foreign students. REUTERS
