For generations, students and researchers from around the world flocked to Boston, attracting not only to universities and universities, but also to regions where high-minded intellectual life was part of its brand. The Boston region thrives from its existence, with many of its schools and top-ranked research hospitals maintaining their economy strong, and their standard of living is almost unparalleled in the United States.
“The 2018-2011″ is a president of Harvard University, and a president of Tufts University from 2001-2011,” said Lawrence S. Bakow, who served as president of Harvard University from 2018-2023 and president of Tufts University from 2001-2011.
But now the city is being seized with uncertainty. The attack on the Trump administration's funding for higher education poses a greater threat to Boston and surrounding areas than anywhere else in the country. Harvard is facing government reviews of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts, with several universities frozen employment, withdrawing admission offers, labs closed, and international students are targeted for deportation.
And Boston faces a question that was once unthinkable: Will its core identity survive?
“Boston is the target of this fight,” Mayor Michelle Wu said in a city speech last month. “We were built on the values ​​this federal administration is about to demolish.”
Ever since John Harvard donated about £800 Sterling and a library of 400 books to a fledgling university founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, it has rarely been questioned a key element of the city's identity. The state's constitution required that all towns establish grammar schools.
Over the centuries since then, its formative focus has shaped almost every aspect of the city and nation – Massachusetts has consistently ranked top in national test scores and health measures – a deep-rooted sense of dominance that has contributed to its politically free identity and has long been a target of anti-elitist enthusiasm.
Beyond the bragging rights they gave to cities, universities and universities have provided enduring economic stability. The enormous investment in federal research helped develop arms during World War II, fueling decades of technological and biomedical advances, and fostering steady growth in Boston's education and healthcare sector, where federal research funding was the foundation of its foundation.
Last fiscal year, Harvard received $686 million in federal research grants, while the University of Massachusetts, as a group, won over $2 billion. This does not include separate funding for research hospitals in Boston. In fiscal year 2024, Harvard-affiliated popular general Brigham won more than $1 billion from the National Institutes of Health. Overall, Massachusetts receives more federal research funds per person than any other state.
The research findings have encouraged private investments that define the landscape of thriving urban areas like Kendall Square in Cambridge, where biotechnology company Biogen has long been anchored.
Over the past few weeks, the turbulence of a complex fundraising cycle has sparked growing concerns by academic researchers about a wave of deviation. Academic researchers may choose to seek more stable funding and employment outlook in the corporate world and in universities overseas.
“Some people leave science behind and it's over. After a massive investment, they just fell off the cliff,” said Dr. Wendy Chung, director of the pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital. “Instability is extremely difficult for people who are extremely hardworking and dedicated to their mission. They can only push before they break.”
Detention and deportation of international students from campuses, including Tufts and Harvard, has sent a surge in fear through the statewide education ecosystem, where 80,000 students and a third of the faculty on some campuses have an international background. It may be less in the future. Others may return home earlier than planned.
“That doesn't make sense,” said Gov. Maura Healy, a federal crackdown Democrat. In a statement, she cited a negative impact on cancer and Alzheimer's disease patients, as well as the country's competitiveness.
On Friday, Massachusetts “lead a coalition of 16 states in suing the Trump administration over illegal attempts to disrupt grants issued by the National Institutes of Health.”
The Trump administration says universities must move aggressively to curb anti-Semitism on campus to maintain funding. In a letter to Harvard, authorities requested that universities review the “anti-Semitic harassment” and “commit to full cooperation” programs with the Department of Homeland Security. Hundreds of Harvard faculty members have signed letters urging the university to resist the demands.
Vice President JD Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and praised the use of funding cuts to push out certain curricula and suppressed the university's “left control.”
“We should really positively reform them in a way that is much more open to conservative ideas,” Vance said in an interview last year.
The pain was said by leaders in New England, city and campus as the university offers 320,000 jobs and $70 billion in annual economic impact, as it feels deeply like it is in Massachusetts. Patients around the world warned that they would wait long for a life-saving medical breakthrough. Towns across the country will lose the opportunity to produce products invented in Boston and nearby Cambridge.
For example, MIT has recently announced plans to build the world's first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, with billions of investments in billions of years of groundbreaking research into fusion energy.
“It's important to us here because it's our economy and our employment, but everyone benefits in the red and blue states,” Mayor Wu said in an interview.
A progressive Democrat, Woo is one of the advanced Boston transplants that came to the city for university. A defense attorney for high school classes in Chicago, she signed up at Harvard to study economics and returned to Harvard Law School.
At Harvard Yard on a recent Saturday, there were few outward signs of behind-the-scenes confusion as tourists waited in long lines to posed for photos alongside the John Harvard statue. The university attracts 650,000 visitors each year. This is a boon for local tourism. One study found that all university startups held statewide each spring each year achieve roughly comparable economic growth for the two Super Bowls.
City scientific researchers said they are incorrect in their ability to plan ahead as they are plunging into uncertainty. Dr. David Corey, a Harvard neurobiologist seeking treatment for Usher syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes blindness and hearing loss, said he is making rapid progress and is aiming to launch clinical trials for new treatments when the funding shake-up begins.
“Now we don't know what's going to happen,” he said. “The news is different every day. I have to pay people who work in my lab, so if you don't know if there's a grant, are you going to let go of people? I've been with you for 25 years, 10 years.
Dr. Chung of Boston Children already feels that he is on the brunt of the cut. The former Columbia University faculty member who came to Boston two years ago lost a major source of funding for long-term autism research last month when the Trump administration cancelled a $400 million grant and contract to Columbia, claiming that the schools were unable to properly fight anti-Semitism.
Dr. Brittany Charlton, founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard School of Public Health, lost almost all of her funds. She may have to close staff, give up her pay and shut down her research, she said. As early scientists rethink their options, she said the damage will ripple many years before the next, plaintiffs in another lawsuit challenging the cuts.
“In the brightest mind, we may abandon their work,” she said.
Growing up in a small Alaska town, Alyssa Connell dreamed of a career as a doctor and researcher in Boston. She cried when the mail arrived in December, providing a coveted location in a dual degree program at UMass Chan Medical School, west of the city.
Connell cried again last month. When another email overturned her plans, the university had withdrawn all offers of admission to her PhD. This fall program “due to continued uncertainty related to federal funding for biomedical research.”
“It was a gut punch,” said Connell, 23, a teaching assistant and research technician at Penn State.
So far, her PhD only program acceptance has been revoked, so she is still planning to register with UMass School of Medicine this fall. However, her financial aid package, which covered the costs of both degrees, was cancelled, she said.
“I don't know how to pay rent, but hopefully I'm finding a way to understand it and take part in the research,” she said. “I'm still very excited to move to Boston.”
