随着哈佛大学与特朗普政府的谈判持续进行，校园内的裁员潮仍在不断蔓延

【中美创新时报2025年12月13日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）自特朗普政府最初大幅削减哈佛大学经费的计划在联邦法院被驳回以来，其重塑哈佛大学的努力已显著放缓。但随着秋季学期临近尾声，校园内遭受损失的人数仍在不断增加。《波士顿环球报》记者艾丹·瑞安和迪蒂·科利对此作了下述报道。

哈佛大学本已面临财政压力，联邦拨款的预期变化以及即将实施的捐赠基金税已导致多个学院裁员、研究生招生人数减少，并与校园工会陷入旷日持久的谈判。尽管9月份的一项法律裁决使部分拨款资金重返校园，但由于研究人员仍在为可能出现的进一步变化做好准备，他们仍未能满负荷运转。

“现在安静多了，我们也没什么新闻可报，”哈佛大学大三学生马修·托宾说。“但在很多方面，这感觉就像是千刀万剐一样，慢慢地折磨着我们。”

今年，哈佛大学尽管捐赠基金收益强劲，且当期捐款数量创历史新高，但仍出现了1.13亿美元的运营赤字，这是自新冠疫情爆发以来的首次赤字。哈佛大学有能力变现资产，也可以更多地动用捐赠基金来应对财务压力，但校方官员经常提醒，捐赠基金并非取之不尽的“提款机”。

今年早些时候，特朗普总统签署了一项提高捐赠基金税的法案，预计将对哈佛大学570亿美元的捐赠基金收入征收2.7亿美元的罚款。这导致一些严重依赖捐赠基金的学院——例如文理学院（其年度收入约一半来自捐赠基金）——不得不削减开支。文理学院是哈佛大学博士生的主要来源，目前已将部分院系的博士生招生人数削减了一半。

“除了本科教学之外，我们工作的核心莫过于培养研究生了，”哈佛大学政府学教授史蒂文·列维茨基说道，他指出该系已经将招生人数削减了一半。“这简直是在砍骨头。”

裁员还不止于此。三位研究生表示，由于经费的不确定性，一些博士后研究员的聘期被缩短。约翰·保尔森应用科学学院和肯尼迪学院也都受到了裁员的影响。

哈佛大学还在与三个校园工会进行谈判，这些工会分别代表学校的清洁工、研究生和教职员工——工会代表表示，这一过程进展比往常要慢。

2021年，研究生工会于3月开始谈判，10月举行罢工，11月达成协议。四年过去了，谈判又持续了同样长的时间，但双方仍未敲定任何条款，哲学博士候选人、谈判委员会成员丹尼什·贾斯瓦尔说道。

贾斯瓦尔说，在11月向工会作报告时，一位大学官员描绘了学校财务状况的严峻景象，而当时学生们还没有提出提高工资和福利的建议。

“我最深的印象是，他们570亿美元的捐赠基金每一分钱都已安排妥当，不可能再省下任何钱来资助其他任何事情，”她说。“他们表示，他们能做的改变并不多。”

联邦调解员也将在几天内介入工会与后勤人员的谈判。代表哈佛后勤 人员的SEIU 32BJ工会执行副总裁凯文·布朗表示，由于谈判陷入僵局，部分原因是哈佛大学对其自身预算感到不安，后勤人员在11月举行了两天的罢工。

布朗补充道：“哈佛大学现在有点反应过度，感觉受到了攻击，但即使从理性的角度来看最糟糕的情况也不会对他们的最终收益造成如此巨大的影响。他们这是在拿我们撒气。”

哈佛大学发言人杰森·牛顿在一份声明中表示，该大学最新的提议包括一次性支付 2000 美元奖金，以及在五年内使基本工资比目前增长 13.5% 的加薪。

他说：“我们认为这是一项具有竞争力的提议，它认可了我们后勤团队的价值，尤其是在其他员工没有获得加薪的情况下。”

在研究方面，哈佛大学医学院、公共卫生学院和工程学院的一些研究项目还无法重新启动。

哈佛大学医学院和公共卫生学院教授大卫·克里斯蒂亚尼（David Christiani）领导着一项肺癌研究，他表示，研究人员仍在“从资金被取消后又恢复的困境中恢复过来”。特朗普政府就资金问题提交上诉通知的最后期限是下周，克里斯蒂亚尼说，实验室的运作远未恢复正常。

他表示，获得资助的学生仍然只能使用恢复资金的 80%，而且全校范围内的招聘冻结仍然有效。

他说：“在问题解决之前，我们都处于一种不确定的状态。”

今年早些时候，特朗普政府最初以反犹主义为由将矛头指向哈佛大学。随后，调查范围扩大到要求哈佛大学彻底改革其管理、招生政策和招聘流程。哈佛大学拒绝这些要求后，特朗普政府试图削减哈佛大学的研究经费并禁止国际学生入学，但迄今为止在法庭上败诉。

哈佛大学尚未就谈判发表公开评论，其发言人本周再次拒绝置评。白宫发言人则建议《波士顿环球报》参考教育部长琳达·麦克马洪上个月发表的评论。

“谈判仍在进行中，我感觉我们离最终敲定这些谈判越来越近了，”麦克马洪当时说道。

题图：6月5日，人们排队与哈佛大学创始人约翰·哈佛的雕像合影。图片由《波士顿环球报》的希瑟·迪尔拍摄。

附原英文报道：

As Harvard continues negotiations with Trump administration, deep cuts keep spreading through campus

By Aidan Ryan and Diti Kohli Globe Staff,Updated December 12, 2025

People wait to pose and take photos with a statue of John Harvard, Harvard University’s namesake, on June 5.Heather Diehl for the Boston Globe

The Trump administration’s efforts to remake Harvard University have slowed considerably since an initial onslaught of funding cuts was rejected in federal court. But as the fall semester comes to a close, the casualties on campus are adding up.

Harvard is already under financial strain, and expected changes in federal grants and a forthcoming endowment tax have led to job cuts across several schools, lower graduate student admissions, and drawn-out negotiations with campus unions. And while grant funding has flowed back to campus after a September legal ruling, researchers still aren’t operating at full capacity as they brace for possible further changes.

“It’s a lot more quiet, and we’re not really getting much news,” said Matthew Tobin, a Harvard junior. “But in many ways, it’s starting to feel like death by a thousand cuts.”

This year, Harvard ran a $113 million operating deficit, its first since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite strong endowment returns and a record number of current-use gifts. Harvard is capable of liquidating assets and can tap its endowment more heavily to fortify itself amid financial pressure, though university officials frequently caution that its endowment is not a piggy bank.

A higher endowment tax signed into law earlier this year by President Trump will impose a projected $270 million penalty on income from Harvard’s $57 billion nest egg. That is leading some schools that rely heavily on the endowment — such as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where roughly half of its annual income is from the endowment — to make cuts. The FAS, home to most of the university’s PhD candidates, has cut its graduate admissions by half in some departments.

“Other than maybe undergraduate teaching, there’s really nothing more core to what we do than training graduate students,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor, who noted that his department cut admissions in half. “This is cutting into bone.”

The cuts don’t stop there. Some postdoctoral researchers are receiving shorter appointments because of funding uncertainty, three graduate students said. And layoffs have hit both the John Paulson School of Applied Sciences and the Kennedy School.

Harvard is also bargaining with three campus unions for its custodians, graduate students, and academic staff — a process that union representatives said is moving along more slowly than usual.

In 2021, the graduate student union started negotiations in March, went on strike in October, and had a contract in November. Four years later, bargaining has been going on just as long, but the two sides have not finalized a single article, said Denish Jaswal, a philosophy PhD candidate and bargaining committee member.

In a November presentation to the union, a university official laid out a dire picture of the school’s finances, even before students shared their proposals for improved wages and benefits, Jaswal said.

“The overwhelming impression I got is that every penny of their $57 billion endowment is accounted for, and nothing could possibly be spared to fund anything else,” she said. “They indicate there is not much movement that they can make.”

A federal mediator is also days from intervening in union negotiations with the custodians. They held a two-day strike in November after talks stalled in part because of Harvard’s unease about its own budget, said Kevin Brown, executive vice president of SEIU 32BJ, which represents the Harvard custodial staff.

“Harvard is acting a little irrational and feeling under attack when even the worst-case scenarios from a rational point of view are not going to affect their bottom line that dramatically,” Brown added. “They’re taking it out on us.”

In a statement, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said the university’s latest offer includes a $2,000 one‑time bonus and pay increases that would result in a 13.5 percent bump from today’s base salary within five years.

“We believe this is a competitive offer that recognizes the value of our custodial team amid a time when other employees have not received increases,” he said.

On the research side, some studies across Harvard’s medical, public health, and engineering schools haven’t been able to just flip their projects back on.

David Christiani, a professor at Harvard’s medical and public health schools who leads a study on lung cancer, said researchers are still “just digging out of those ashes” that resulted from the canceled, and then restored, funding. And with the deadline for the Trump administration to file a notice of appeal in the funding case coming next week, Christiani said labs are in no way back to normal.

He said grant recipients were still limited to spending only 80 percent of the reinstated funding and a university-wide hiring freeze remained in effect.

“We’re in a kind of limbo until that gets settled,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration first targeted Harvard over concerns of antisemitism. That inquiry grew to include demands that the university overhaul its governance, admissions policies, and hiring practices. When Harvard rejected those demands, the Trump administration attempted to cut its research funding and ban international students from campus, but has so far lost in court.

Harvard has not commented publicly on the negotiations, and spokespeople again declined to comment on the talks this week. A White House spokesperson referred the Globe to comments made by Education Secretary Linda McMahon last month.

“They’re ongoing negotiations and I feel very comfortable that we are getting close to having those negotiations finalized,” McMahon said at the time.