Should we destroy our universities?

The administration has taken a series of actions that threaten to remove essential funding for medical and scientific research at universities throughout the U.S. They have further threatened all foreign students who seek to attend U.S. universities. These steps will mean far fewer new drugs, new treatments, and new scientific discoveries. They will also destroy universities’ ability to train the next generation of engineers, scientists, and medical researchers.

Update 4/14/25: Harvard stands up for the rights of universities, and explains the destruction that will take place if research funding is simply cancelled. Universities across the country face severe threats to their ability to teach, do research, and speak out freely. We are now dependent on the courts and the people to uphold our First Amendment rights.

Update 4/9/25: The administration has just put stop work orders on up to $1 billion in federal contracts to Cornell University and $790 million at Northwestern University. These will do tremendous damage to research and eduction at both institutions. So far the “justification” is not known. Here are statements from Cornell and Northwestern.

From The Atlantic (gift article): If they persist, Donald Trump’s attacks on universities will destroy a cornerstone of American life.

Since January, the Trump administration has frozen, canceled, or substantially cut billions of dollars in federal grants to universities. Johns Hopkins has had to fire more than 2,000 workers. The University of California has frozen staff hiring across all 10 of its campuses. Many other schools have cut back on graduate admissions. And international students and faculty have been placed at such high risk of detainment, deportation, or imprisonment that Brown University advised its own to avoid any travel outside the country for the foreseeable future.

“Our problem in part is a failure of imagination,” Lee Bollinger, a former Columbia president, told The Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month. “We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions.” Now the most frightening versions are taking shape, as specters in the hallways of the ivory tower. Jobs are being cut, labs closed, building projects canceled. Faculty members may decide that their devotion to the pursuit of knowledge may not be worth the occupational risk. Those in science, medicine, and engineering whose grants have been withheld may start exiting for jobs abroad or in industry while they still can.

From the NY Times (gift article): Trump’s Science Policies Pose Long-Term Risk, Economists Warn

• The Trump administration in recent weeks has canceled or frozen billions of dollars in federal grants made to researchers through the National Institutes of Health, and has moved to sharply curtail funding for academic medical centers and other institutions. It has also, through the initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency, tried to fire hundreds of workers at the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency. And it has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign-born students.
• To economists, the policies threaten to undermine U.S. competitiveness in emerging areas like artificial intelligence, and to leave Americans as a whole poorer, less healthy and less productive in the decades ahead.
• “Universities are tremendously important engines of innovation,” said Sabrina Howell, a New York University professor who has studied the role of the federal government in supporting innovation. “This is really killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”

From PBS: After decades of partnership with the U.S. government, colleges are facing new doubts about the future of their federal funding.

• The squeeze on higher education underscores how much American colleges depend on the federal government — a provider of grants and contracts that have amounted to close to half the total revenue of some research universities, according to an Associated Press analysis.
• It adds up to a crisis for universities, and a problem for the country as a whole, say school administrators and advocates for academic freedom. America’s scientific and medical research capabilities are tightly entwined with its universities as part of a compact that started after World War II to develop national expertise and knowledge.
• “It feels like any day, any university could step out of line in some way and then have all of their funding pulled,” said Jonathan Friedman, managing director of free expression programs at PEN America.

From Axios: America has enjoyed decades of dominance in science and technology — plus the economic boom, medical advancements and global influence that come with it.

• Now, as the U.S.’s global lead is contested and competition for the world’s top talent gets stiffer, the Trump administration is disrupting the system that has propelled the country.

Stunning stat: 40% of U.S.-affiliated Nobel Prize winners in the sciences — physics, chemistry and medicine — between 2000 and 2023 were immigrants.

• Funding resources, top-notch universities, research freedom and a diverse culture that supports innovation are among the factors that have made the U.S. a global magnet for scientists.

The stakes: The U.S. could see a two-fold brain drain: fewer foreign scientists coming to America, and American talent heading to other countries.

• Three-quarters of the 1,600 scientists surveyed in a new poll from Nature said they are considering leaving the U.S. due to the disruptions to science caused by the Trump administration’s early actions.

From Nature: The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

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