2 weeks Ago By CHRIS DUNKER Lincoln Journal Star
Federal funding for counterterrorism research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha remains in limbo after the consortium leading several projects received mixed messages from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week.
The National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, better known as NCITE, learned April 8 that its 10-year cooperative agreement originally worth $36.5 million had been terminated by DHS. A day later, however, DHS notified UNO it was pausing the termination of NCITE’s cooperative agreement, which allowed the center to begin building a network of researchers across dozens of universities around the country and world.
“NCITE and UNO have not received further updates from DHS,” the university said in a statement. “The university is hopeful that DHS will continue to fund NCITE research.” The potential termination of the cooperative agreement comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s canceling of $9 million in active research grants and contracts at NCITE, which is among 10 academic partners for DHS.
Those cuts, which were implemented March 17-18, are equal to roughly 20% of the federal funding NCITE has received since it was established in 2020, during President Donald Trump’s first term, and account for one-fourth of its current research portfolio. Among the contracts terminated: * The remaining $1.3 million of a $6.
6 million contract for a UNO-led study of the threats posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to professional sports venues and events. The upcoming NFL draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is set to begin April 24, was going to be one of the events used in the study, which would have concluded Sept. 30, 2026.
* Approximately $4.2 million remaining of a $8.7 million contract to analyze the effects of a government program that distributed $60 million in prevention grants, as well as to look for improvements.
That project, which was set to end Sept. 30, 2026, was being conducted jointly between UNO and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Public Policy Center. * The remaining $630,400 of a $1.
6 million contract led by UNO in partnership with 30 international experts to develop guidelines and best practices for monitoring people with terrorist pasts after they are released from prison. * About $300,000 remaining from a $1.1 million contract to evaluate a national training program that advises local communities on behavioral threat assessment management and violence prevention.
The project was set to conclude this September. Five grants were also terminated by DHS last month, including: * A $2.25 million “International Academic Partnerships for Science and Security” grant for NCITE to lead an international consortium geared at developing next-generation terrorism experts.
Other countries participating in the counterterrorism consortium included the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Approximately $668,000 was remaining on the research grant set to end in June 2026. * The remaining $568,000 of a $750,000 grant aimed at building trust in U.
S. elections. The University of Connecticut-led project would have conducted risk-limiting audits in partnership with state election officials across the Northeast and Midwest.
* Most of a grant — $579,000 remaining of a $673,000 award — to develop assessments of terrorism prevention program outcomes. The project, which would be led by UNO, was to focus on assessing tolerance of violence and identifying concerning behaviors. * The remaining $630,400 of an $800,000 grant to train social workers, police officers and others to help foreign terrorist fighters reintegrate into their communities from a detention center in Syria.
UNO was partnering with the Juvenile Justice Institute and Innovative Learner Centric Initiatives on the project, which was set to continue through September 2026. The cancellation of the contract and grant awards, as well as the potential termination of NCITE’s underlying funding, comes as the Trump administration has slashed spending across dozens of federal departments. The University of Nebraska system has received notification of millions of dollars in cuts to grants stemming from the U.
S. Department of Agriculture, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Agency for International Development since January, when Trump took office.
University officials — including in NCITE’s case — have said they will work to find alternative funding sources to keep researchers employed and projects moving forward where possible. But NU President Jeff Gold has also said the changes and uncertainty from the Trump administration have put more than $178 million in federal funding in jeopardy, while the university system also faces muted growth in its state appropriations from the Legislature this year. NCITE, which has won acclaim from local, state and federal officials, was born from the work of UNO researchers charting the organizational structure of terrorist and extremist groups around the world, including the so-called Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban.
In February 2020, DHS designated the UNO research group as a Center of Excellence for Terrorism Prevention and Counter Terrorism Research. The federal grant was the largest in UNO’s history . At the time, it was the 10th center established across the country following the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks. NCITE later moved into a 44,000-square-foot expansion of Mammel Hall at UNO featuring state-of-the-art classrooms and behavioral health labs made possible by $17 million in private funding. The center won further confidence from the federal government two years ago when DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate increased the ceiling on a separate funding stream .
The boost to the basic ordering agreement, which allows DHS to pay for specific studies it deems priorities, also increased NCITE’s maximum grant funding for counterterrorism research from $10 million to $35 million..
