Harvard deepens commitment to HBCUs with $1.05 million grant

Harvard has announced a three-year, $1.05 million grant to the Association of Historically Black Colleges and Universities Research Institutions (AHRI), a new coalition of 15 HBCUs working to enhance their collective research, innovation, and impact.

The grant, made through Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative, will support research infrastructure and technical assistance at these schools as they build research capacity and seek to achieve R1 status — the highest research designation offered to United States universities — under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) will provide technical support.

“Through this three-year grant to AHRI, the H&LS Initiative is deepening our commitment to developing enduring partnerships with HBCUs,” said Sara Naomi Bleich, vice provost for special projects at Harvard. “We are honored to leverage our expertise in research infrastructure and capacity-building to help further HBCU research excellence.”

The new funding strengthens Harvard’s commitment to building partnerships at HBCUs, while enhancing their ability to attract top research talent and funding that come with R1 research classification. Howard University is the first HBCU to have earned an R1 designation and is currently the only partner institution in AHRI with that designation.

The grant directly implements Recommendation Three from the 2022 Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, which called on the University to forge lasting connections with HBCUs.

“The launch of AHRI represents an important inflection point for HBCU research institutions. The 15 universities in this coalition collectively account for 50 percent of all competitively awarded federal research funding among HBCUs — underscoring the scale and strength of our research, doctoral education, and innovation,” said Tomikia P. LeGrande, president of Prairie View A&M University and vice chair of AHRI. “As Carnegie-classified institutions spanning R2 and R1 designations, we are aligning that strength through AHRI to amplify impact, accelerate discovery, and define the future of research while firmly establishing HBCUs as central to that future.”

“AHRI marks a new chapter in the HBCU research landscape,” said Ruth Simmons, senior adviser to the president on HBCU engagement at Harvard and president emerita of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University. In 2024, Simmons and Bleich began talking about ways Harvard could support advancing research capacity at HBCUs. “This association brings institutions that have too often worked in isolation into sustained collaboration with one another and with the country’s leading research universities. Harvard’s partnership with AHRI offers a powerful model of a more forward-looking approach to higher education.”

Along with the OVPR, Harvard’s Office for Sponsored Programs (OSP) will provide technical assistance and guidance in designing and strengthening research administration and compliance infrastructure across AHRI member institutions. This will include participating in the inaugural AHRI symposium, hosting HBCU administrative staff at Harvard, and assistance with lifecycle grants administration and compliance.

AHRI formally launched April 29, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a national press conference and inaugural symposium, “Expanding the Research Mission of HBCUs.”

Beyond the new AHRI grant, the H&LS Initiative also supports the next generation of HBCU leaders through Harvard’s Seminar for New Presidents leadership program, which provides a collaborative cohort learning model for HBCU and non-HBCU presidents. Additionally, the H&LS Initiative supports capacity building through the HBCU Digital Library Trust, which has engaged more than 90 HBCUs in digitizing high-priority collections on a single platform and providing professional development programs. The initiative also funds research opportunities like the Du Bois Scholars Program, a summer research internship at Harvard University for undergraduate students from 21 research-intensive HBCUs.