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Emory University is joining a growing list of top research universities that plan to freeze or limit hiring because of concerns about federal research funding cuts.
President Gregory Fenves announced the new policies in an email to the Emory faculty and staff sent on Wednesday.
Emory will freeze most raises and reduce spending on operations, according to the email.
The Atlanta university received more than $488 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2024, and is by far the largest recipient in Georgia. Other universities such as Cornell University have implemented wide-ranging hiring freezes, and Stanford University and MIT have frozen staff hiring amid concerns over federal funding.
A proposed Trump administration policy aims to reduce the amount the NIH pays to universities for the research it funds. Emory leaders last month estimated the changes would cost the university about $140 million annually.
“In recent weeks there have been many directives, policy changes, and legislative proposals from the federal government that have serious implications for Emory,” Fenves wrote. The university must “take prudent measures to prepare for what may be a significant disruption to our finances.”
A federal judge Wednesday issued a nationwide injunction against the new NIH policy while the case is pending.
The order from U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley came in separate lawsuits filed by groups including the American Association of Universities, Democratic state attorneys-general, and the Association of American Medical Colleges against the NIH and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Reduced NIH funding is not the only federal change Emory leaders are worried about.
“We are tracking proposed regulations and legislation that could significantly affect other revenue sources, including a possible increase in the federal tax on university endowments,” Fenves wrote, referring to Republican-sponsored bills in Congress to increase endowment taxes on private universities from the current rate of 1.4% of net investment income to as much as 21%.
‘Potentially radical adjustments’ at the School of Public Health
The impact could be especially heavy for Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, its dean, Daniele Fallin, wrote in a Wednesday email sent to the faculty, staff and the “Rollins community.”
The email said the school would need to “make potentially radical adjustments to how we operate,” and detailed a freeze on most faculty and staff hiring.
A faculty research incentive program that was scheduled to launch this year will also be frozen, Fallin said.
Emory’s School of Public Health employs around 220 faculty and about 600 research staff members, Carmen Marsit, executive associate dean there, told Healthbeat last week.
Fallin’s email said that pay increases would in most cases be paused and that non-essential spending from non-grant funds would be limited.
“Items such as food/catering, events, gifts, travel, career development activities, contractors and consultants, or other spending that is not critical at this moment must be limited,” Fallin wrote.
She said the changes would continue into 2026 and possibly longer. Fallin said the school has planned listening sessions with faculty, staff and students
Marsit said the NIH cuts and other changes could have “ripple effects” across Atlanta’s economy.
“Some of your biggest employers in Atlanta are also major recipients of those types of federal funds: Emory, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, the hospital systems,” Marsit said. “It’s not just the losses of the researchers doing the work, but it’s also all of the ancillary services that go around supporting that research.”
The School of Public Health gets about 60% of its research funding from federal sources, most of that from the NIH, Marsit said.
He added that no ongoing NIH awards at the school have been canceled, but the process for applying for and getting new grants reviewed has slowed.
“New awards that probably should have started already haven’t been coming in,” Marsit said.
Marsit said public health graduate students see the developments as “a real crisis for their careers.”
A spokesperson from Emory University did not respond to a question about whether graduate programs have had to rescind admissions offers or stop admissions over funding concerns.
Other Georgia universities that receive NIH funding, including Georgia Tech, Augusta University, University of Georgia, Morehouse School of Medicine and Georgia State University, did not respond to comment requests by deadline.
In other federal news, some terminated workers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified Tuesday that they should return to work. It’s not clear how many of those workers are in Atlanta, where the CDC is headquartered.
The news came after an apparent reversal by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management about the termination of probationary workers, including at the CDC, in the midst of ongoing litigation about federal firings.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
