The University of Washington has frozen non-essential hiring and travel, effective immediately, amid federal and state funding uncertainty.
UW officials announced these “financial risk mitigation efforts” in a staff email late last week — and also warned of more budget cuts on the horizon.
“The current federal funding trajectory, while not completely clear, is nevertheless dire; and the state of Washington faces a significant budget shortfall,” UW President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Tricia Serio wrote in the email. “Either of these conditions alone would be challenging, and together they are significant and material risks to our financial health.”
A growing list of universities across the country have put similar spending freezes in place, as President Donald Trump threatens to slash federal higher education funding.
On Friday, the Trump administration pulled $400 million of federal grants from Columbia University over claims the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.
Columbia and the UW were among 60 colleges and universities to receive a letter from the U.S. Department of Education on Monday, warning of possible enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to address antisemitism on campus.
In a statement, spokesman Victor Balta said the UW “stands firmly against antisemitism” and “agreed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights earlier this year to five actions that will strengthen the UW’s commitment to timely and effective responses to complaints filed by students, faculty and staff.”
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“We continue to engage with Jewish students, faculty, and community leaders as we implement our response to the recommendations made by the UW’s Antisemitism Task Force and work toward an even more welcoming environment for all students,” Balta added.
A hiring freeze has already been in place at UW Medicine since last month.
Speaking at an event celebrating his recent Nobel Prize on Monday, UW biochemist David Baker said the hiring freeze has already affected their work, because new post-doctoral students can’t be hired and labs don’t know if they’re going to have funding going forward.
“These things could really have a very long-term negative effect — not just in biomedicine, but across science overall,” he said.
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Beyond these immediate impacts, Baker said all the uncertainty will disrupt drug discoveries and other critical biomedical research for years to come.
“It might be surprising to many people that most of the innovation doesn’t actually happen in the big companies; it happens at universities,” he said. “The universities also train the workforce for the biotech and pharmaceutical companies.”
UW receives more federal research and development funding than any other public university in the U.S. In 2024, that amounted to over $1.3 billion.
