Harvard endowment swells to nearly $57bn, donations reach a record

The school said it also received a record $600 million in unrestricted gifts from alumni and friends. (AFP)
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Updated 16 October 2025
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Harvard endowment swells to nearly $57bn, donations reach a record

BOSTON: The value of Harvard University’s endowment, the world’s largest among universities, grew by nearly $4 billion to $56.9 billion in fiscal 2025 on the back of strong investment returns even as the Trump administration cut the school’s research funding.
Harvard Management Co, the university’s investment arm, said on Thursday it earned an 11.9 percent return in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The return beat the school’s long-term target of 8 percent, according to its annual report. In fiscal 2024, Harvard’s endowment earned a 9.6 percent return to total $53.2 billion.
The school said it also received a record $600 million in unrestricted gifts from alumni and friends as its battles with the Trump administration made news headlines.
President Donald Trump accused Harvard of fostering antisemitism on campus amid Israel’s war in Gaza, but critics said the charge was a pretext for a broader campaign against what Trump views as anti-conservative bias in academia.
The dispute, now playing out in court, also involves federal efforts to cut research funding and restrict international student enrollment at the university.
The school’s endowment allocated 41 percent of its assets to private equity investments and 31 percent to hedge funds, and kept its allocation to public equities unchanged at 14 percent, Harvard Management Chief Executive N.P. Narvekar wrote in a letter.
“Though endowment results in fiscal year 2025 were dampened by having less public than private equity, HMC’s performance overall was bolstered by discerning manager selection,” Narvekar wrote, referring to the endowment’s use of outside investment advisers.
Returns from Ivy League schools like Harvard are watched closely because they pioneered practices like using hedge funds and private equity funds, and they are under even more scrutiny due to the current political battles.
“We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote, without naming Trump.


US judge rejects Trump administration’s halt of wind energy permits

Updated 5 sec ago
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US judge rejects Trump administration’s halt of wind energy permits

  • 17 Democratic-led states challenged the suspension
  • Offshore wind group supports ruling for economic and energy priorities
BOSTON: A federal judge on Monday struck down an order by US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt all federal approvals for new wind energy projects, saying that agencies’ efforts to implement his directive were unlawful and arbitrary.
Agencies including the US Departments of the Interior and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency have been implementing a directive to halt all new approvals needed for both onshore and offshore wind projects pending a review of leasing and permitting practices.
Siding with a group of 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, US District Judge Patti Saris in Boston said those agencies had failed to provide reasoned explanations for the actions they took to carry out the directive Trump issued on his first day back in office on January 20.
They could not lawfully under the Administrative Procedure Act indefinitely decline to review applications for permits, added Saris, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose state led the legal challenge, called the ruling “a big victory in our fight to keep tackling the climate crisis” in a social media post.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement that Trump through his order had “unleashed America’s energy dominance to protect our economic and national security.”
Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels and maximize output in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, after campaigning for the presidency on the refrain of “drill, baby, drill.”
The states, led by New York, sued in May, after the Interior Department ordered Norway’s Equinor to halt construction on its Empire Wind offshore wind project off the coast of New York.
While the administration allowed work on Empire Wind to resume, the states say the broader pause on permitting and leasing continues to have harmful economic effects.
The states said the agencies implementing Trump’s order never said why they were abruptly changing longstanding policy supporting wind energy development.
Saris agreed, saying the policy “constitutes a change of course from decades of agencies issuing (or denying) permits related to wind energy projects.”
The defendants “candidly concede that the sole factor they considered in deciding to stop issuing permits was the President’s direction to do so,” Saris wrote.
An offshore wind energy trade group welcomed the ruling.
“Overturning the unlawful blanket halt to offshore wind permitting activities is needed to achieve our nation’s energy and economic priorities of bringing more power online quickly, improving grid reliability, and driving billions of new American steel manufacturing and shipbuilding investments,” Oceantic Network CEO Liz Burdock said in a statement.