Nearly every day since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, we have been flooded with news about massive changes to the federal government — research cuts, the gutting of federal departments, threats to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and so much more. This can quickly become overwhelming, and it’s hard to keep up with the news without sinking into a feeling of helplessness and despair. So first: Thank you for reading this. Even though it’s challenging, paying attention to events happening beyond our campus bubble is more important than ever.
While there are many critical events unfolding on the national stage that we are both deeply concerned about, in this op-ed, we will focus on those that directly relate to our careers as scientists and faculty who teach and mentor students.
Since January, Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have issued a huge array of orders that directly impact STEM disciplines and academia more broadly. Federal grant agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been gutted through mass firings, resulting in the peer review of new grant proposals grinding to a halt. The impacts of these orders are not isolated to just new proposals. As of March 6, the NIH has been tasked with cancelling grants deemed to conflict with executive orders relating to “illegal DEI” — including competitive grants for a wide array of studies in the health sciences that have passed rigorous peer review and, in many cases, are well underway using funds already obligated by Congress.
In addition, the NIH issued a new policy capping indirect costs (funds used for essential expenses such as maintaining necessary lab facilities and paying essential administrative staff) at a rate of 15 percent of the total grant, down from previously permitted rates of 50 or even 60 percent at some organizations. This move effectively cuts about $4 billion of funding to universities and colleges across the United States.
Beyond the immediate impact on funding for scientific research, these orders are having massive trickle-down effects on higher education across the country. Stanford, MIT, and Columbia have announced staff hiring freezes. The biomedical sciences at the University of Pittsburgh announced a freeze on Ph.D. admissions and, at the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked departments in the School of Arts & Sciences to cut the number of incoming Ph.D. students. Many universities, including Johns Hopkins and Rutgers, canceled their Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs for the year. While a few of these decisions are temporary, there remains a lot of uncertainty about which ones will stick and cause lasting damage. There are also rumblings of more budget cuts on the horizon. For example, institutions with endowment assets of over $500,000 per student (including Williams and about 30 others) currently pay a minimal tax on that money — about 1.4 percent. But, one ally of Trump, Rep. Mike V. Lawler (R-N.Y.) has proposed an increase of 8.6 percent, with other politicians calling for more. This move would further erode the financial stability of many academic institutions, including Williams, potentially leading to cuts in areas like financial aid and the hiring of staff and faculty. It’s safe to say that the world of academia is shaken.
So is this the intended effect of DOGE or just a misguided attempt to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money? Definitely the former. We must recognize it for what it is: a clear-eyed strategy to damage academic institutions — and the public’s faith in them — as much as possible. How can we be so sure? Project 2025, a Republican policy playbook, makes it fairly clear, promising to “cap indirect costs … [that] cross-subsidize leftist agendas” such as DEI programs at educational institutions.
Curtis Yarvin, who has advocated the replacement of democracy in the United States with a tech monarchy and who is often cited by members of the administration (including Vice President JD Vance), put it even more bluntly. In 2022, Yarvin recommended that an authoritarian president, if elected, should not let independent institutions that may be critical of their policies survive through April 2025, specifically naming The New York Times and Harvard as examples.
Yarvin’s statement may suggest that this is only a problem for the most elite institutions. After all, the threat of an endowment tax only matters to institutions with large endowments. This is emphatically not the case. If the federal government endangers federal funding for academia, elite institutions may weather the storm, albeit heavily battered, but institutions that are on shakier financial footing are likely to be forced into closure.
Consider the following problem: The Pell Grant program, which is typically awarded to students whose families earn less than $50,000 a year, is projected to have a $2.7 billion shortfall in the next fiscal year. The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), our neighbor down the street, graduates many low-income students, setting them up for upward economic mobility to a variety of good paying jobs. In fact, over 40 percent of MCLA students are Pell Grant recipients. But what happens if the newly proposed budget from Congress eliminates Pell Grants? Given the current trend of cuts and disregard for equity, this is well within the realm of possibility and would lead to a severe crisis for schools like MCLA.
Why should someone who’s not involved in academia or soon to graduate and leave academia care at all? Because this affects all of us. In the Berkshires, there are a variety of programs that rely on federal agencies or federal sources of funding that may be gutted. For example, the cleanup and monitoring of the Hoosic river here in Williamstown and North Adams relies on funding and coordination by the Environmental Protection Agency which has recently canceled more than 400 funded grants. More broadly, federal grants fund a wide variety of research projects that seek to alleviate human suffering and build a better understanding of our world — from cancer research to addressing opioid addiction to research on how to make cities more resilient to climate change.
Even beyond the effects we will feel as a community, we may face a “brain drain” as a nation. Many academics escaped to the United States after surviving authoritarian governments that tried to oppress or kill them for who they were. Others have had their research defunded because it didn’t align with political agendas. There is reason to believe that if things get bad enough, we may experience the reversal of this “brain drain” phenomenon, with researchers and academics leaving the United States.
In times like these, it’s easy to feel tired and exhausted by the news. But, the time to be tired was yesterday. Now is the time to be energized for individual and collective action. We firmly believe that efforts to make academia and STEM more accessible to students from all backgrounds and efforts to defend our fundamental civil rights are worthy of federal funding and support.
But what do we do with this belief? On the individual level, websites like 5calls.org make it easy to call your representatives in Congress and share what issues matter to you most — both Democrats and Republicans need to hear from their constituents. Additionally, we can help spread awareness by sharing the impacts of federal cuts with friends and family members — who might not be aware that they are even happening.
We deeply appreciate President Maud S. Mandel’s advocacy in Washington, D.C. and the College’s commitment to maintaining existing DEI initiatives and protecting academic freedom. On a more personal level, compassion goes a long way. Faculty: We need to show up for our students — every single one of them. Our students may be suffering for several reasons: Some feel vulnerable and targeted by executive orders, some have had their REU canceled, or perhaps the federal job that they have worked toward for the last four years doesn’t exist anymore. Our students deserve to know that we care, that we are not quiet bystanders, but people who are willing to stand up for them and basic human principles.
And yes, as faculty, we too deserve to be seen. Maybe your next grant application cycle was canceled or the call for federal employees who have been allowed to work remotely to go back to the office presents an impossible situation for you and your partner who works from home. Students, if you see your professor struggling, extend them the same kindness you would to one of your friends. Change only happens when we work together towards a better future for all members of our communities. We are stronger together.
Rohit Bhattacharya is an assistant professor of computer science at the College. Phoebe Cohen is a professor of geosciences.
