Update on the Impact of Federal Actions
March 11, 2025
Dear students, faculty, and staff,
This has been an extremely turbulent time for higher education, as actions in Washington impact our university. It is important for our community to understand the steps we have taken and our thoughts on the path forward.
We firmly believe in our mission: to educate responsible leaders and to do more than our fair share in addressing humanity’s most pressing problems. We will engage in this mission regardless of the uncertainties we face today and those we will confront tomorrow. Moreover, our values will not change. We will remain committed to academic excellence by keeping the doors to our campuses open to scholars and students with diverse, varied perspectives and backgrounds from across the country and around the world. Our community is strongest when we bring these different perspectives and experiences together to pursue unfettered intellectual inquiry. We will defend our mission and values.
Those of us in leadership at the university have been collectively working diligently to advance our mission, values, and interests. President Kumar has been meeting with elected officials at the local, state, and national levels to ensure that they know the impact these federal actions will have on our community and the damage they may do to the competitiveness and security of the United States. He has also met with students in small groups to hear firsthand how federal actions are impacting them, and he has spent time listening to the concerns of faculty and staff at faculty and department meetings over the past month and a half. Provost Genco has been leading town hall meetings for faculty and staff to discuss the impact of federal directives on their work, and her team has been meeting with students and faculty individually and in small groups to understand and address concerns. The deans at each of our schools have been engaging with their communities to discuss and address local impacts.
To ensure that everyone understands our efforts, we want to share some details about how we are working across the university to mitigate the impact of federal actions.
Federal funding impacts on research
Significant changes have impacted our research portfolio at two federal funding agencies: the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Over the past month, USAID has terminated nearly all of its funded research projects and, as of February 23, put almost all agency personnel on administrative leave. At Tufts, these USAID award terminations have impacted 12 projects, eight of which involved direct awards to the university. We encourage you to learn more about these projects on the federal actions resources page on the provost’s website.
We are working with researchers and their schools to assess and address the impact of these and any additional award terminations that might be made in the days ahead. Although the university will work painstakingly to find new funding sources for this work and for those impacted, we recognize that there will be negative impacts on our community.
In addition, last month, the NIH announced that it was capping facilities and administration (F&A) costs at a flat rate of 15 percent immediately, irrespective of the rates that individual universities had previously negotiated. In the ensuing lawsuit challenging the directive, which Tufts joined as a co-plaintiff, the judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction stating that the rate cut would cause irreparable injury and violated federal law.
F&A costs, often called “indirect costs,” have been portrayed by some as unnecessary and wasteful, written off simply as “overhead.” In fact, F&A funds are used for a range of critical needs that enable research to take place, from maintaining and operating the physical spaces and laboratories where the federally funded research will take place to funding staff members who ensure that research is conducted safely in compliance with applicable regulations, and guidelines. We encourage you to take a few minutes to watch this video from the AAU about the importance of these funds.
Even if the NIH lawsuit is ultimately decided in our favor, it is important to remember that our currently negotiated rate structure, which can be found on the Office of the Vice Provost for Research website, can be legally renegotiated by the government after complying with the process outlined in federal law. It is, therefore, imperative that we look for ways to be more efficient in how we conduct research across the university and that we seek to diversify our funding sources to make us more resilient moving forward. We are assembling a group of deans and senior leaders to prepare such plans.
Directives that impact Immigration and Institutional Inclusive Excellence at Tufts
The federal government has issued several executive orders relating to immigration that have the potential to impact members of our community. It has also issued several executive orders relating to diversity, including gender identity. Most of these orders are not very specific and require agencies and departments to develop plans over 60 or 90 days, and some of the orders have been put on hold due to a court-ordered injunction on a lawsuit filed by several national organizations, including the AAUP and NADOHE. As a result, we do not currently know what direct impact these executive orders will have on our community. We are also working diligently to understand the potential impact on our university and are collaborating with national organizations such as the AAU and the ACE to understand the scope and breadth of the directives. Community members should contact the Office of Institutional Inclusive Excellence for guidance and support.
Our International Center has been providing guidance to international students and scholars on F-1 or J-1 visas and international faculty and staff with temporary employment visas. We continue to encourage international students, faculty, and staff to contact the International Center to discuss travel plans or ask for guidance managing potential risks.
We know the fear and concerns that have rippled through our community over the past two months. We will stand with all our community members, and we pledge to support you to the utmost extent we can.
We anticipate that the situation will remain volatile and uncertain in the near future. This is where the resilience of the Tufts community to support one another will be most needed. While some of us will be more directly affected than others, we must all remember that an impact on one is an impact on all. Moving forward, we will continue to keep you updated about our efforts to advance our work and our mission.
Sincerely,
Sunil Kumar
President
Caroline Attardo Genco
Provost and Senior Vice President
Michael W. Howard
Executive Vice President
Denise E. Bates
Dean, University College
Helen W. Boucher
Dean, Tufts University School of Medicine and Chief Academic Officer, Tufts Medicine
Bárbara M. Brizuela
Dean, School of Arts and Sciences
Alastair Cribb
Dean, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
Dayna L. Cunningham
Dean, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life
Christina Economos
Dean, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Scheri Fultineer
Dean, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University
Kelly Sims Gallagher
Dean, The Fletcher School
Nadeem Karimbux
Dean, School of Dental Medicine
Kyongbum Lee
Dean, School of Engineering