Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 207

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard’s endowment grew up by more than $11 billion to nearly $68 billion in fiscal year 2026 after posting a roughly 27 percent investment return, its highest since 2021, according to the University’s annual financial report... Harvard also reported a $100 million operating surplus — a modest 1.5 percent margin on $6.7 billion in revenue — following a major deficit last year. The $2.6 billion endowment distribution now makes up nearly 40 percent of the University’s operating revenue...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/16/harvard-68-billion-endowment/.

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From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard received a record $684 million in current-use gifts in fiscal year 2026, a 9 percent increase that marked the second consecutive year of record giving, according to the University’s annual financial report... But after donors redesignated $41 million in gifts from previous years to the endowment, Harvard recorded just $643 million in current-use operating revenue — an increase of roughly 2 percent from the $629 million reported last year. The University reported more than $1.5 billion in total gifts for fiscal year 2026, and philanthropy now accounts up 48 percent of operating revenue, including both current-use gifts and endowment distribution.

The two consecutive years of record giving stand in stark contrast to fiscal year 2024, when major Harvard donors paused or withdrew gifts following the University’s response to campus antisemitism. Though current-use gifts still increased that year, total philanthropic contributions fell significantly by $151 million, one of the steepest drops in a decade...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/16/harvard-current-use-gifts-2026/.

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From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard reported sharp declines in federal sponsored research revenue and overall research activity, according to the University’s annual financial report... Harvard’s federal research revenue fell by nearly 20 percent to $506 million, while federally sponsored research activity fell by roughly one-third on a comparable basis, according to the report. Total sponsored research support dropped 14 percent, from just over $973 million in 2025 to about $839 million this year...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/16/harvard-federal-research-revenue-2026/. 

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 205

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard is privately weighing a rapid-fire fundraising push to secure $500 million for University-wide scientific research priorities, according to two people familiar with the matter. The $500 million target has been floated internally in recent conversations, the two people said, but is not a finalized goal. The two said the University was hoping to raise the money by the end of the academic year. The short-term fundraising campaign would arrive in tandem with a sweeping University effort to rethink how Harvard will support its science and medical research in the wake of massive federal grant cuts.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 initiated a faculty Science Advisory Committee this summer to map out a long-term vision for scientific research, and the University set aside $150 million last week to fund cutting-edge projects. The tentative fundraising initiative mimics a successful Faculty of Arts and Sciences campaign this spring to raise $100 million for endowed Ph.D. fellowships. That campaign, launched in February, met its goal within four months, and the FAS promptly announced another $100 million challenge. The newest push appears to apply that template — short-term fundraising for targeted needs — more widely. As it stands, the University will seek fundraising support for defined scientific research occurring across Harvard, the two people said...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/9/science-fundraising/. 

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 202

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 quietly convened a University-wide committee of faculty members to develop a new vision for scientific research over the next several years, according to six people familiar with the matter. The group, known as the Science Advisory Committee, formed over the summer, one person said, and includes roughly 15 to 20 faculty members. It is chaired by former Provost Steven E. Hyman and Immunology Department Chair Arlene H. Sharpe ’75, that person and one other said...

The push to develop a coherent, University-wide strategy for the next era of scientific research — and one explicitly tied to fundraising — is the most concrete step the University has taken to rethink its approach to research since the government froze nearly $2.7 billion in Harvard’s funding in spring 2025. University officials have said for the past year that Harvard will need to diversify its funding sources in response to unreliable government support for scientific research... There are now early signs of that work around the University. The Alumni Affairs and Development office launched a new team focused on “transformational giving” after a spring reorganization...

Earlier this week, one of the University’s biggest donors, Kenneth C. Griffin ’89, who paused his giving to Harvard to 2024, announced a $3 billion gift to Carnegie Mellon University, the largest single gift in the history of U.S. higher education...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/10/2/garber-science-advisory-committee/. 

Somebody at Berkeley Dropped the Ball

From SFGATE: There’s a reason Joe Roth has the only retired number in Cal football’s history. Following a prolific junior season that saw him lead the Golden Bears to the best offense in all of college football and a Pac-8 co-championship, Roth entered his senior campaign a Heisman favorite and the likely first pick in the 1977 NFL Draft. Just two games into his final season, Roth was diagnosed with a recurrence of melanoma — a cancer he’d hoped he’d beaten a couple of years earlier. He kept the terminal diagnosis to himself as it ravaged his body during a final year that saw him improbably finish ninth in the Heisman voting while he was fighting the disease.

News of his condition finally leaked two months after the season ended while he was preparing for a college football all-star bowl game in Japan. After the bowl, he spent time at UC San Francisco getting chemotherapy before doctors suggested amputating both of his legs to keep the cancer at bay. Roth declined, checked himself out of the hospital on Feb. 18, 1977, and, upon returning to Berkeley, was carried up three flights of stairs by his teammates to his apartment. Roth died the next day.

Roth’s courageous story united the college and led to a yearly Joe Roth Memorial Game in Berkeley (played between Cal and UCLA or USC annually until the Bears moved to the ACC), a fund that has supported countless Cal football scholarships through the years (and currently supports two full-ride football scholarships each season), as well as a Joe Roth team award for the player who best demonstrates courage, attitude and sportsmanship.

This season, nearly 50 years later, it also led to the first-ever Joe Roth Collection, a capsule of three shirts celebrating Roth, including one with his face on it — the first time his likeness has ever appeared on Cal merchandise, Associate Athletics Director Jonathan Okanes confirmed to SFGATE. The collection was heavily marketed by the athletic department ahead of the return of the Joe Roth Memorial Game on Sept. 5 — Cal’s season-opening 45-24 loss to UCLA — and sold both at the stadium and at the Student Store on campus.

To the surprise of Tom Roth, Joe’s now 82-year-old brother, none of the proceeds from the Joe Roth Collection go back to melanoma cancer research or even to the Joe Roth scholarship fund. Cal instead is pocketing all of the revenue, and Roth hasn’t heard from Cal for months since the school first contacted him about the Roth Collection... A Cal football staffer [said] that they thought Tom Roth was dead.

After receiving SFGATE’s request for comment, ...the university is now again trying to reach Tom Roth, who, as of this publication, remains alive and well.

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/cal-profiting-revenue-joe-roth-22442272.php.

Chinese Gifts

From the Daily Californian: UC Berkeley is disputing a claim from the U.S. Department of Education that it had received $224.5 million in gifts and contracts from Chinese sources over the past 25 years. The Education Department published a dashboard earlier this year tracking Section 117 reports of foreign funding from “countries of concern,” including China.

UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in an email that campus believes the data in the Education Department’s dashboard “(does) not provide an accurate reflection of our current international academic partnerships.” Mogulof added that campus is currently evaluating the department’s data against its internal records. UC Berkeley submitted its biannual Section 117-compliant report of foreign funding last week, reporting no contracts and $4.5 million in gifts from Chinese sources, according to Mogulof...

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released a letter Monday asking every postsecondary institution in the country to address a series of questions, including how universities will protect their academic programs from foreign influence...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/uc-berkeley-disputes-224m-chinese-funding-claim-by-department-of-education/article_6fede9b5-68e0-417f-9da1-3485b31049da.html. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 416

From the NY Times: The Middle East campuses of American universities are expecting — or perhaps just hoping — to be open for classes as usual for the coming semester, even as the United States’ conflict with Iran poses new risks in the region. Some American schools have long run programs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The war, however, meant that students spent much of the spring semester enduring shutdowns, evacuations, online courses and other emergency measures. But the unraveling of the cease-fire between Washington and Tehran is not yet curbing universities’ ambitions to teach as they ordinarily would in the Middle East.

...For American universities, campuses in wealthy Persian Gulf states can offer new revenue and welcome clout. Those perks, though, come with sporadic political headaches at home, reputational perils and regional safety concerns. After a strike on a physics building at a university in Tehran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned in March that “American universities in the West Asia region are legitimate targets for us.” By then, American schools had begun closing campuses and turning to remote classes. But the relative lull of recent months left many administrators encouraged and publicly optimistic that the campuses would be able to run normally as students return for another semester...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/us/middle-east-campuses-american-universities.html.