While Trump and his advisers portray the freezes as a temporary measure employed to force Harvard to make policy changes and address antisemitism on campus, Ingber and other scientists see long-term negative impacts on a tradition of partnerships between the government and university researchers dating back to World War II that made the U.S. the most technologically powerful country on earth. Scientists say the damage is already aiding competitive rivals like China.
He has seen two government research contracts worth over $20 million halted since the Trump administration announced a $2.3 billion funding freeze against Harvard this week. One focused on assessing and developing drugs to combat radiation damage in humans. The work can be the basis for drugs to help cancer patients cope with the side effects of radiation therapy, and it could be used to protect soldiers and civilians alike in the case of nuclear war or during a nuclear plant explosion.
Trump officials point to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests at several schools last year following the 2023 war in Israel and Gaza as a rationale for its demands. However, critics among faculty and student groups say the measures are designed to chill speech and that campuses should be a place for freedom of speech and academic thought.
“We were the magnet for the best young scientists around the world to come and pursue innovation,“ Ingber said. “It’s over. After three months of this administration, it is over.”
“Antisemitic protestors inflicting violence and taking over entire college campus buildings is not only a crude display of bigotry against Jewish Americans, but entirely disruptive to the intellectual inquiry and research that federal funding of colleges is meant to support,“ Desai said.
'Long, lasting effects'
For decades universities have provided infrastructure and administration for these joint projects. The researchers are most often independent of the colleges, with no teaching duties or connections to the student politics that have riled universities' relationships with the federal government.
“You need information available to people so they can understand the impact of the administration, and understand what it means that they’re going after the health and scientific enterprise that has powered this country’s economy and progress for 100 years,“ Ross said.
Columbia University researchers and administrators went through what Harvard's Ingber is experiencing now in March, after the Trump administration said it was terminating grants and contracts worth $400 million to the university.
Dr. Ronald Collman, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for AIDS Research, said his center has seen cuts made by the Trump administration, and he felt compelled to help the public understand what is at stake is not funding for a new recreation center for privileged Ivy League students.
He added that incentivizing research is “the American way.”
“This notion now that the central government is going to control every aspect of the research is how we destroy that, it’s how we will make China great,“ Collman said. “It’s going to have long, lasting effects.” (Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)
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