Right Here & Right Now

We are facing a generational disruption to science, research, and higher education. We must speak up in the face of attacks – right here & right now.

It has been more than 7 weeks since a crack appeared in the foundations of American science, research, and higher education.

The crack was a small administrative matter – the withholding of funds for early career scientists who had been awarded prestigious ‘postdoctoral fellowships’ to work in research labs throughout the US by the National Science Foundation. What made the cuts disturbing was precisely their relative smallness. As I wrote in early February, “the unfolding crisis in American scientific leadership is just beginning.”

In the grand scheme of things, what difference does a few dozen or few hundred paychecks mean in a ~$7 trillion budget? To the people impacted – everything.

cracks appearing and growing…

The withholding of funds wasn’t an attack on a large, publicly visible initiative. You might ask: why bother to disrupt early career scientists so far down on the hierarchy of targets? But arbitrary targeting by DOGE sends a message: the White House will punch all the way down, no one is immune, and you could be next.

Science is imperfect as are its institutions. Those who advocate for reform may differ in proposed remedies, but they believe in the notion that science matters and, like the public, believe in federal support for science.

The White House and its DOGE enablers disagree.

These first attacks were experiments in keyword-driven destruction. The big hits were still to come & depending on your prior beliefs, perhaps you could rationalize to yourself that the administration would stop (editor’s note: they won’t). Week after week, the administration accumulated evidence that it could cancel ever bigger chunks of expertise without regard to near- or long-term consequences.

The White House did so while communicating a misleading narrative: in their view, cancelled scientists and their programs are but the tip of the iceberg of government waste. The US would be better by stopped funding ‘woke’ science and instead cancelled not just a few fellowships, grants, or programs, but entire divisions, institutes, government departments, and perhaps even entire universities. The narrative goes further: in order to fix the system, one has to destroy it, and perhaps not rebuild it at all. Is this popular? Certainly more popular than many of us who work in science, research, and higher education might think possible.

But now, there is another crack appearing – and that is reflected in early signs of declining public support for DOGE and the Trump administration’s approach to federal employees and federal support for science. One reason is that impacts are being felt in communities in ways that wholly inconsistent with the White House narrative. How does stopping cancer clinical trials or research on heart disease or reducing veteran’s health benefits make us better off?

As more and more are impacted, it becomes harder to weave a narrative about restoring what is ‘great’ about America. Instead, it becomes more natural to interpret what DOGE and the Trump administration are doing as an overt effort to destroy and dismantle what makes (or has made) America unique: a commitment to open inquiry, welcoming talent from within the US and across the globe, and maintaining an independent and thriving ecosystem of research and development driven by universities and research institutes.

All of this is under threat.

Individually, it might seem each of us can do little. But we can do something – both online and more importantly, in our communities. As more of us do something, our actions have a synergistic effect.

In a recent “Ideas” piece in The Atlantic, the President of Princeton University called on fellow university leaders to do two things: (i) speak up; (ii) litigate forcefully to protect their rights. The first part of this message is relevant to us all.

We must speak up right here and right now.

We can call our Congressional representative, go to a town hall, attend a local protest against federal cuts to science, research, and higher-education, and support independent media. We can stay informed and inform friends and family.

Science impacts all of us. It matters. Dismantling American leadership will have ripple effects well beyond the confines of universities, hospitals and research institutes. It has taken decades to build up the culture of expertise that is the envy of the world, develops life-saving cures, and translates basic research into breakthrough technologies. At the core of this innovation-driven economy is the freedom to think, explore, build, and discover – a freedom we cannot afford to lose.