Harvard President To Take 25% Pay Cut Amid Current Financial Woes

Harvard President Alan M. Garber will take a voluntary 25% cut in his salary, according to reporting by The Harvard Crimson. The reduction will be effective for Fiscal Year 2026, which begins July 1.

Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain told The Crimson that Garber had informed other administrators of his decision, and it’s expected some of them will also self-impose reductions in their salaries, but it not clear how many will do so or how large their cuts will be.

Garber’s salary has not been made public, but “Harvard presidents have historically earned upward of $1 million annually,” according to The Crimson’s report.

The pay cut comes amid a growing set of financial challenges Harvard is facing as a result of recent actions taken by the Trump administration against it.

In April, the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts for Harvard. That action came on the immediate heels of Harvard rejecting the terms of a letter that contained a bulleted list of 10 demands that federal officials insisted Harvard had to meet if it wanted to maintain financial funding from the federal government. Among several allegations, the Trump administration has roundly criticized Harvard’s response to student protests over the war in Gaza, accusing it of failing to adequately confront campus antisemitism and harassment.

Harvard President Alan Garber drew a line in the sand at the time, writing in a letter to the campus community, that the institution had "informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

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Garber added, “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Instead of acquiescing to the administration’s demands, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the government, seeking to block the funding freeze.

Since then, the Trump administration said it would cut another $450 million in federal funding for Harvard, following up on threats contained in a three-page letter that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent to Garber on May 5 in which she informed Harvard that it would no longer be eligible for federal grants because, according to her, it had violated federal law, ethical standards, and academic principles.

Trump has also said he wants Harvard’s tax-exempt status to be revoked, a move that if successful, could drastically reduce the private donations it receives.

Garber’s decision comes as Harvard has already taken several belt-tightening steps to help it deal with the mounting financial pressures.

• In addition to issuing $434 million of tax-exempt bonds for capital projects, the university has borrowed $750 million of taxable debt, perhaps as an attempt to help shore up its finances during what will be a protracted legal battle.
• In March, Harvard froze faculty and staff hiring and urged individual units to reduce their discretionary spending.
• In April, Harvard told employees it was eliminating merit pay raises for faculty and non-union staff for FY2026.
• This week, according to another Crimson story, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences was being asked to draw up contingency plans for how it would respond to budget reductions as part of the intensifying financial challenge.
• On May 1, more than 80 Harvard faculty members pledged to donate 10% of their salaries for up to a year to help support the University. At the time, those commitments had totaled about $2 million.

At this point Harvard appears to have mustered a united front for its resistance to the Trump administration. While Garber’s self-imposed pay cut and those voluntarily taken by some faculty can be dismissed as merely public relations gestures, their symbolic value should not be minimized as Harvard begins to show its resolve to gird itself financially for an escalating battle with the White House.