Massive cuts in federal funding to schools and science agencies, dogmatic calls to eliminate entire research areas, revocations of visas for international students and scholars, and attacks on academic freedom, speech, and the value of education and expertise—all emanating from recent Trump administration actions—are damaging and reshaping U.S. higher education and scientific institutions. Furthermore, the country’s withdrawals from international treaties (e.g., the Paris Agreement) and organizations (e.g., the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and World Health Organization), and its weakening of programs promoting health, environmental protection, cultural exchange, and peace, diminish U.S. leadership and credibility globally and add to instabilities threatening lives, economies, and security around the world.
The surprising speed and breadth of the attacks and changes have left scientists, educators, and others confused, afraid, and grappling with how to respond.
The surprising speed and breadth of the attacks and changes have left scientists, educators, and others confused, afraid, and grappling with how to respond. The environment of intimidation, uncertainty, isolation, and fear created by the administration has been compounded by the silence or outright capitulation of many leaders and institutions, despite their having firm legal and constitutional protections, in the face of these threats. If sitting Republican senators like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), major universities, law firms, and private companies and foundations are afraid to speak out and defend their values, what can individuals do?
Individuals can organize, and in so doing wield strength in numbers and identify leaders who are well-positioned to raise their voices to push reluctant institutions to act. Within science higher education, senior scientists can and should fill these roles.
Standing Up and Standing Out
The risk calculations for many institutions and individuals in the face of the administration’s swift, illiberal, and authoritarian actions have been clear: It is better to comply than to fight, because fighting risks funding losses, investigations, and lawsuits.
However, as the experiences of some universities, notably Columbia, have demonstrated, submitting to administration demands does not spare institutions from further scrutiny. In Harvard’s case, shortly after the school’s president indicated willingness to engage with the administration about shared concerns, the scope of outrageous demands increased to infringe on its ability to make its own decisions on hiring, enrollment, curriculum, and values, leading the university to sue the administration.
Standing up and standing out are easier said than done, especially considering the very real risks to individuals’ careers, livelihoods, and safety.
Clearly, the balance of risk between compliance and standing up for core principles (not to mention the rule of law) has shifted. As the leaderships of higher education and science institutions weigh how to respond to this shift, their employees, members, and constituent communities can speak up to shape these responses.
What is needed is courage, solidarity, and an intentional and strategic plan of action. Of course, standing up and standing out are easier said than done, especially considering the very real risks to individuals’ careers, livelihoods, and safety. In science and academia, as elsewhere, these risks are greatest for those most vulnerable: students, early-career researchers, and immigrants and international scholars. Therefore, it is incumbent upon senior colleagues—who have outsize privilege, responsibility, and collective power in universities and professional societies—to lead the way.
Reframing the Message
With social media increasingly fueling the spread of misinformation and disinformation and the corporate consolidation and polarization (both real and perceived) of mass media, strategies used in the past to inform reasoned policy discussions no longer work on their own. Scientists’ rational, detailed, and evidence-based arguments used to be effective in influencing policy, but the current administration and its allies have largely disregarded experts and facts in making major decisions.
With this new reality, the messaging from scientists—especially senior scientists from privileged identities—must change. It must be direct and aimed at resisting ongoing actions that are dismantling U.S. scientific and education enterprises; harming students, universities and colleges, and federal research agencies; and degrading public health, foreign policy, the economy, and the rule of law. Simply put, these actions are leading to death and environmental destruction, and they are endangering the national economy.
The dismantling of federal support for HIV and AIDS research and prevention, for example, “will hurt people, will cause people to die, and will cause significant increased costs to all of us throughout the country,” said a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official. The numerous rollbacks of major EPA rules and environmental protections will dramatically degrade air and water quality and irreparably harm public health and ecosystems. And the cuts to scientific research will directly affect our ability to advance medical, energy, transportation, space, communication, and infrastructure innovations, undermining the country’s economic strength.
Influencing Institutional Leaders
Senior scientists should be at the vanguard of these fronts, using their influence to protect students and more vulnerable colleagues.
In addition to speaking simply and clearly about the realities of such threats, scientists must come together within their own and across institutions to form united fronts. Senior scientists should be at the vanguard of these fronts, using their influence to protect students and more vulnerable colleagues, U.S. citizens, and international scholars alike.
They should demand that their institutional leaders uphold core values of higher education and science, including inclusion, international cooperation, and ethical and evidence-based research. They should demand that these leaders strengthen mutually beneficial ties among universities and professional societies, urging them, for example, to join mutual defense alliances such as the recently proposed coalition among Big Ten universities and to sign on to the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ “Call for Constructive Engagement” that rebuked the administration’s attacks. And they should demand that instead of capitulating, their institutions bring and support litigation against attempts to suppress academic freedom, free speech, and freedom of association; to unlawfully cancel grants and revoke visas; and to infringe on universities’ independence to develop their own curricula and academic policies. After all, executive orders are unilateral directives, not laws or legislation.
Furthermore, institutions should provide free legal counsel to imperiled international students and researchers and speak loudly and publicly about the meaning and value of academic freedom, the power of diverse and inclusive communities in driving societally valuable innovations, and the incredible returns of investing in modern research universities.
Though these demands are made of our institutional leaders, senior scientists can also act on their own initiative to help defend the higher education and scientific communities and their work from attacks meant to discredit and marginalize them.
Acknowledge and Activate
What can these scientists do? For starters, they can keep up-to-date about the shifting landscape of relevant federal, state, and institutional policies and responses. Many timely resources can help with this. I joined the chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I work, for this purpose.
Senior scientists can support early-career colleagues and students by helping them, in turn, stay informed of policy developments, by actively listening to and understanding their concerns, and by providing opportunities for career and community networking and professional development during these uncertain times. Universities frequently offer mentoring resources and tool kits that can help, and programs such as AGU’s Mentoring365 enable connections within and across peer groups. They can also support each other across campuses, and seek allies in other disciplines, recognizing that attacks on the arts, humanities, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields are all connected.
Scientists should be contacting and meeting with local, state, and federal elected officials to convey the impacts of funding cuts and attacks on students, scholars, research, and innovations.
Further, scientists should be contacting and meeting with local, state, and federal elected officials. Scientists should use those meetings to convey the impacts of funding cuts and attacks on students, scholars, research, and innovations, citing real examples from their home institutions. At the University of Michigan, for example, scores of grants and contracts (including two of my own) have been canceled or not renewed, either because they were not compliant with administration ideology on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), health equity, or environmental justice, or because of agency program eliminations and budget cuts. These cuts have directly halted student research experiences and led to layoffs and withdrawals of graduate admissions offers.
Although local and state officials cannot directly change federal policy, scientists can help focus their attention on the local impacts of federal actions. Further, these leaders’ concerns often carry a different weight within political decisionmaking. A federal congressperson may respond differently to a state senator from their own political party than they would to the concerns of 10 scientists.
Senior scientists can also work with their professional societies and organizations to file litigation against unjust actions, and provide programming (e.g., career counseling) and financial support (e.g., waived conference registration fees) for students and colleagues directly affected. And if needed, they can push their professional societies to take stronger stances. The powerful statement by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences offers a model that every nonprofit professional society should emulate. Even if institutions or societies have adopted neutrality statements, or are nonprofits prohibited from lobbying activities and whose memberships have diverse views, there is clear rationale to speak out and act against policy changes that directly affect their missions.
In short, senior scientists must acknowledge the severity of the threats to the scientific and higher education communities from the administration’s actions and activate to support local and national efforts to counter the threats. Together with the leaderships of their institutions and professional societies, they must defend these communities—particularly their more vulnerable members—and the value and integrity of the work they do. The stakes are high: Lives and careers are being jeopardized, and brilliant scientists are being driven away. We must act to preserve the American partnership that created diverse, federally supported research universities before the damage is permanent.
Author Information
Mark Moldwin ([email protected]), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
