1 week Ago
The Trump administration is threatening universities with giant cuts to science research. Scientific research is expensive and most of the funding comes from the federal government. Discoveries like COVID-19 immunizations, drugs to fight HIV, weight-loss drugs and artificial intelligence are just some of the many innovations that started with university research.
Paul Selvin But such innovations won’t be funded now. Importantly, the future workforce, namely today’s students, will turn away from science, even though — as I have seen — they love the subject and are very good at it. There has been some opposition to these cuts, most notably efforts by Harvard and Princeton, after Columbia initially acquiesced.
Recently, over 150 university presidents, including the University of Illinois’, have signed a letter opposing the Trump administration’s efforts. The goal of the cuts is not to control science per se, but to control major university functions, including admission, hiring and departmental arrangements. Christopher Rufo, who is ideologically leading the charge, says the goal is for universities to be “terrified.
” It is a common technique of autocratic leaders. Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary all attacked scientific societies and universities, destroying them. Do we really want this here? At the UI, the immediate impact of the attacks by the Trump administration is largely “north of Green Street” — i.
e., the engineering college, which contains my own department, physics. Nationwide, physics departments are cutting back on the number of graduate students accepted into their programs, leaving our seniors who want to continue schooling without a place to pursue science.
It’s a double whammy; many started their training during the COVID-19 pandemic. My own physics department has taken the risky step of maintaining the acceptance rate of the entering graduate class in the belief that succumbing to a tyrant who makes threats only encourages the tyranny. The size of the class is 50 percent larger than expected, probably because other schools are cutting back.
Among international students, the scenario is particularly fraught. They are subject to having their visa revoked. A friend of my student was forced to leave the U.
S. because he had a speeding ticket several years ago. At the UI, over 30 students have been forced to leave the country.
Nationwide, over 1,500 visas have been canceled, although due to a court battle, the Trump administration recently rescinded these cancellations — for now. In the physics department, 80 percent of the post-doctoral fellows, 50 percent of the graduate students and 30 percent of the undergraduates are foreign-born. Without these international students, the national and international reputation of the UI will disappear.
Forget about adding to the 13 Nobel laureates who are affiliated with the physics department. Professors are also running scared. I personally know of some professors who have had grants stopped midway through their funding cycle and other cases where the money hasn’t showed up despite being many months late.
(I need to talk in these generalities because the professors don’t want their chances to be harmed by being able to be identified.) With about 10 percent cutbacks of staffers at the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and a 50 percent decrease in new grants coming from the NSF, this isn’t too surprising. When I talk to other physics professors, they say, with the wide eyes of a frightened child, that I should be careful, because “you never know.
” Some professors have been here for decades as permanent residents, yet they stay silent and don’t attend conferences where they might be noticed — at least until they become a permanent U.S. citizen.
This is not what I call “free speech.” What can be done? First, protect the innocent, largely international undergraduate and graduate students. I tell my students to “keep your head down” — don’t do anything that might get them noticed; don’t drive, for example, for fear that they might get pulled over and that might be used against them.
I also tell them to try to ignore these shameful attacks — they are here to do great science and to learn. Second, domestic students, who come from all 50 states — including “red states” — should write letters to their own newspapers, telling them what is happening. Many parents and relatives do not know.
Fox News is silent on this manner. Third, the UI should get its own financial house in order. President Tim Killeen supports a bloated central administration and should reconsider his new UI levies on the engineering (and other) schools.
Fourth, at the state level, the “Illinois Promise,” to allow students who come to the UI from households who make less than $75,000 per year, needs to be funded, rather than be an unfunded mandate. It is eating a hole in the university’s budget. Then, some of the billions of dollars given to the UI Foundation could possibly be used to support international students who may otherwise be left without support if their professors’ grants get cut — at least until Trump’s awful attacks on science have ended.
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