FAS Administration Continues to Push for Layoffs
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administrators in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) are continuing to use the FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning to advance their plans for severe layoffs. They are citing a $365 million “projected deficit” for the FY2025 operating budget while providing no detailed financial data or documentation to the community to explain how this figure was reached. In fact, FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra has described FAS’s FY2025 financial position as “only a modest deficit of $8 million.”
At a faculty meeting last year, Professors Jeremy Stein and David Laibson—members of the FAS administration’s Faculty Resource Committee—indicated that the $350 million figure was derived through non-traditional accounting measures (non-GAAP) and reflects projected building maintenance costs over the next 15 years, asserting that FAS may need to spend an average of $400 million annually to “[keep] the buildings we have from falling down.”
FAS administrators they have provided no evidence as to why this 15-year projection, if accurate, would necessitate urgent, severe layoffs, especially when building maintenance costs are funded through the capital projects budget and fundraising efforts, not through the school’s annual operating budget that pays for staff.
Here’s what we do know:
(1) FAS is providing no financial transparency:
There is no way to verify any of FAS administrators’ vague assertions about the school’s finances because for the first time in 30+ years, FAS did not publish an annual financial report for the last fiscal year. When HUCTW leaders asked for a copy of the official FY2025 financial report, FAS administrators concerningly said that no FY2025 financial report had been produced “for distribution.” Dean Hoekstra and others have implied that the structural deficit extends back many years, but all prior financial reports appear to have been scrubbed from the FAS Dean’s website. HUCTW nonetheless retrieved the last four of those annual reports from the nonprofit Internet Archive database. All four reports show consistent budget surpluses, appearing to contradict administrators’ claims about a long-term historical deficit.
(2) FAS fundraising levels have hit a record high:
FAS leaders’ dire financial narrative is also difficult to reconcile with the school’s current fundraising successes, where the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is on course to have its own record-breaking year. FAS took in $222 million in donations during the first half of FY2026—that’s $62 million more than the school raised during the same period last year. Additionally, shortly after the start of the school’s new fundraising campaign for Ph.D. fellowships, FAS announced it had already reached half of its $100 million goal for the year.
(3) FAS staffing levels are already reduced by 13%:
The call for urgent, sweeping job cuts is also undermined by the fact that staffing levels have already been significantly reduced through regular attrition and the hiring “freeze.” According to Harvard data, HUCTW staffing levels in FAS have declined by 13% over the 1.5 years, and we know that many non-union positions also remain unfilled. In practice, this means that FAS departments are already operating with substantially fewer staff, at significantly reduced capacity, while the school’s donations continue to climb.
(4) Harvard has considerable control over endowment tax exposure:
The other justification FAS has cited for large-scale job eliminations is the federal government’s introduction of an 8% “endowment tax,” which in practical terms will not be owed by Harvard until mid-2027. More importantly, this is not a blanket tax on endowment earnings; it applies only to the assets the University chooses to sell (i.e., realized capital gains). As a result, Harvard retains significant control over how the tax affects its finances. There are multiple well-established strategies for maintaining strong investment returns while significantly minimizing exposure to the tax (as illustrated in this report on how Yale is addressing the endowment tax).
Taken together, these facts reveal a disturbing pattern: layoffs with profound consequences for hundreds of people’s lives are being advanced without any transparent, documented justification for those cuts. FAS’s finances are being portrayed in vague and ominous terms, while the financial reports needed to understand the school’s true financial position are withheld from the Harvard community.
To move forward with life-altering layoffs under these conditions is to disregard both the dignity of staff and the community’s right to honest, accountable governance. No institution committed to truth and integrity can justify job eliminations of this devastating magnitude when there is no evidence or credible justification to support them.
Fighting Layoffs and Preserving Employment
HUCTW leaders continue to hold Harvard administrators accountable for providing clear and transparent financial information, and we are doing everything possible to stop job cuts and preserve employment. In some cases, we were able to halt layoffs before they happened. In other cases, we were able to help laid-off members get job offers at the time of notifications or get recalled into their previous positions. Where layoffs have occurred, we have been working with all HUCTW members who have lost their jobs to support them throughout the Work Security Program and help them find jobs at Harvard or elsewhere. We are also working with their coworkers who have been left behind to ensure that their workloads are manageable, that they feel empowered to say no to additional work, and that they receive extra compensation if they do take on additional work.
Again, we urge members (and staff and community members) to stay actively engaged in budget discussions within their departments and schools. When the idea of major cuts or layoffs is raised, ask to see the specific data behind those suggested changes. Are the proposed changes grounded in tangible realities, or uncertain speculation? What are the risks of taking a cautious, judicious approach to staffing based on concrete realities, rather than rushing towards destructive job eliminations based on vague assumptions about the future?
We have said this before and want to state it again clearly: the threats from the Trump administration are serious and demand thoughtful, deliberate contingency planning should worst-case scenarios come to pass. But it is equally important to be clear about this: the University has experienced no significant financial losses, nor is there any evidence that any such losses are imminent. Mass layoffs at Harvard cannot be justified.
We call on Harvard and FAS administrators to halt the unwarranted rush toward large-scale layoffs and to provide the transparency, accountability, and respect owed to the University community, so that staff, faculty, and students can engage in honest discussions about Harvard’s financial future.
As always, please reach out to us with any questions or thoughts around the issues described in this letter. Anything you share with HUCTW organizers is confidential.