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The Trump administration terminated nearly $200,000 in federal funding from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute last week, amid a wave of cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Researchers at HURI were informed of the funding cut on April 2, one day after the NEH was told to expect up to an 80 percent reduction in staff. The grant termination applies to the institute’s publishing arm, which produces books and other material on Ukraine.
In an email to HURI’s grant coordinator, NEH Acting Chairman Michael McDonald wrote that “the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda,” adding that the decision was made in accordance with Trump’s Feb. 19 executive order granting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency the authority to review agencies for bloat.
“Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes,” McDonald wrote.
The grant termination was effective immediately on April 2, something McDonald said was necessary due to “exceptional circumstances” and urgent administrative priorities.
The HURI is not funded by Harvard’s endowment, and relies instead on a private endowment organized independently by a group of students in 1973. HURI’s endowment investment and returns are managed by the University.
History professor Serhii Plokhii, the director of the HURI, said the funding cut was part of a “larger and very disturbing story.”
“It’s actually more damaging and bigger than just the sum of the fund or the person who we didn’t hire and the books that we didn’t publish,” he said.
Plokhii said the institute will attempt to fundraise to make up the difference, but said they face an ethical dilemma because most of the HURI’s individual donations come from Ukrainian families and organizations.
“We are in an impossible moral situation to compete for the money that can go to Ukraine and relief and help refugees, generally displaced people, the families that lost their providers in the war,” Plokhii said.
The cancelled grant — $197,000 for publishing — was received in October. According to HURI Director of Publications Oleh Kotsyuba, the institute experienced a surge in demand for publications about Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
“We started basically producing more, dipping deep into our own budget for publication, up to close to 150 percent per year,” Kotsyuba said, adding that the increase has been “exhausting” the HURI’s private endowment funds.
The termination will halt publication of three books the institute was in the process of producing, including two plays by Lesya Ukrainka, a famous Ukrainian poet.
Ostap Kin, a PhD student in Slavic Studies at Stanford, said the publication of his anthology of Ukrainian-Jewish poets has also been stopped by the funding cut.
“This book does not exist in any language, not even in Ukrainian,” Kin said, explaining the book as a “panorama” of the Ukrainian Jewish experience — something that has never been compiled.
The first English translation of a Ukrainian cult-classic novel by Maik Yohansen is also jeopardized by the grant termination.
The book’s translator, University College London associate professor Uilleam Blacker, wrote in a statement that the book “was being copyedited when the news hit, and had been scheduled for publication later this year.”
Blacker wrote that he does not know how the grant termination will affect the book’s release.
Plokhii said he had a scheduled meeting with Kotsyuba and Harvard’s Office for Sponsored Programs on Friday, but is not counting on much financial support from Harvard.
“We will see,” Plokhii said. “But I would be very positively surprised if there is any, given that the University is preparing potentially a big, big hit financially.”
–Staff writer Avi W. Burstein can be reached at avi.burstein@thecrimson.com.
