Northeastern spent $270,000 on federal lobbying in the second quarter of 2025, marking 12 quarters of unchanged spending.
In its quarterly disclosures, the university reported spending on legislation related to funding for higher education programs and policy issues, including “financial aid programs, work study, cooperative education, international students and lifelong learning.” It also lobbied on issues related to workforce development, climate change and coastal sustainability policy, research and economic development programs.
The university allotted money in support of federal research programs at the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense — which Trump recently ceremonially renamed the U.S. Department of War — National Science Foundation, or NSF, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires Northeastern, and all other organizations and lobbying firms, to publicly report federal lobbying activity quarterly. The university filed the report — which included information spanning April 1 to June 30 — on July 18. The disclosure bookends five months of President Donald Trump’s second term, a period defined by the administration’s intensifying pressure on universities to align with its legislative agenda, such as eliminating “wokeness” from higher education.
As of June, Northeastern ranks 16th among all U.S. universities and eighth among private universities in lobbying spending. The top three highest spending universities are the University of California, Columbia University and Northwestern University.
Northeastern’s lobbying budget of $270,000 per quarter has remained consistent since rising from $110,000 in 2022, when it doubled its spending between the second and third quarters of that year. The university’s lobbying issues did not change when spending spiked, and expenditures have remained consistent through the start of Trump’s return to office. Other universities have increased spending after Trump’s election, including Harvard University, which has increased spending by 35% between the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025.
While the Trump administration has not publicly targeted Northeastern, the university has not been immune to political headwinds. Within the first 10 days of Trump’s second term, the university scrubbed all mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives, replacing them with language centered around “belonging.” Six months after the rebrand, at least four staff members of the Office of Belonging no longer work at Northeastern, according to emails reviewed by The Huntington News. About 40 of Northeastern’s around 900 federally-awarded grants have been selected for termination as the Trump administration cracks down on research spending, meaning either all or part of the projects’ funding has been canceled prior to the originally scheduled end date.
Over the first two quarters of 2025, Northeastern spent $540,000 and allotted over half of its spending sum, $290,000, to four lobbying firms: Holland & Knight, Lewis-Burke Associates, CT Group and Congressional Solutions, Inc. The university has worked with Lewis-Burke Associates since 2012, added Congressional Solutions, Inc. and CT Group in 2021 and most recently brought on Holland & Knight in 2024.
In their lobbying income disclosures, the firms reported lobbying for issues impacting university science and engineering funding and issues pertaining to quantum research, infrastructure and workforce development at NSF, the Department of Education and NASA.
Both CT Group and Congressional Solutions, Inc. filed termination reports for Q2 2025, indicating that their lobbying work for Northeastern ended June 30. The two firms originally submitted new lobby registration forms March 1, 2021, as required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
The university’s disclosure also included four Northeastern administrators as in-house lobbyists: Vice President for Federal Relations Jack Cline, Assistant Director of Federal Relations Abigail Robbins, Associate Vice President for External Affairs Michael Ferrari and Director of Federal Relations Jesse Poon.
Northeastern ranks in the “highest research activity” category of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as an R1 institution and relies heavily on federal funding to sustain its research projects. During the 2021-22 academic year, $157 million of Northeastern’s more than $230 million in research funding came from the federal government, and its top 15 research awards were federally funded. The university, ranking in the top 100 universities nationwide in the amount of federal funding it receives, was granted a total of $186 million in fiscal year 2023. The Department of Health and Human Services, NSF and Department of Defense, or DOD, have allocated most of Northeastern’s federal research funding and are among the agencies the university lobbies for.
The university has continued its lobbying activity related to Research Development Test & Evaluation, or RDT&E, which is one of the five main spending categories the DOD uses. Northeastern reported requests for Congress to increase RDT&E spending and change certain language in the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill that sets funding levels and authorizes programs.
