Attacks on Higher Education Are Attacks on All Americans

Attacks on Higher Education Are Attacks on All Americans

By Matt Motta & Dominik Stecuła

Grant cancellations and budget reductions at the National Institutes of Health have put millions of dollars in research for promising new cancer treatments, tuberculosis therapies, and much more in jeopardy. Our elected officials could intervene if all Americans, not just academics, were to send a clear signal that they should.

Instead much of the public has shrugged its shoulders.

Since January the U.S. government has frozen billions of dollars in federal research funding to institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University and Princeton University. The Department of Education has opened investigations into 60 universities over allegations of antisemitism, using these inquiries to justify funding cuts and impose policy mandates. The administration has also placed international students under scrutiny, threatening visa revocations and deportations for those participating in campus protests deemed hostile to government interests. The administration has detained foreign-born academics such as Kseniia Petrova, a researcher at Harvard, who was recently released after she was placed in criminal custody for failing to declare research materials at customs.

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Collectively, we’re witnessing unprecedented attempts to bully academic institutions with the administration’s ideological aims. These attempts challenge long-standing norms of academic freedom—that is, the ability of a teacher or researcher in higher education to investigate and discuss subjects without fear of political interference. Our elected officials should stand up for scientific research and those who produce it in the face of politically motivated attacks. But public apathy is making it easier for legislators to ignore the problem.

In late March, we worked with YouGov to conduct a nationally representative online survey of 1,500 U.S. adults. We found that while few Americans actively support the president’s attacks on science, many more are unbothered by them.

For example, 65 percent of Americans either have no position (31 percent) or outright support (34 percent) the possibility that the Trump administration might revoke federal funding to universities that support “pro-Palestine / anti-Israel protests”. That possibility became very real on April 21, when the NIH suggested making grant awards conditional on compliance with anti-boycott provisions regarding Israeli companies . Similarly, a majority (67 percent) either take no issue with or outright support revoking funding to universities (like the White House did to the University of Pennsylvania) that allow transgender athletes to compete.

According to our survey, a majority of Americans either support or do not oppose politically motivated grant funding cancellations—including efforts to study differences in health outcomes attributable to race and gender (54 percent) or research about LGBT populations (64 percent)—mass firings (51 percent) and even forbidding foreign academics from entering the U.S. if they hold opinions at odds with the Trump administration (51 percent). Although there is a lack of polling on these exact issues, publicly available data suggest that our findings mirror those found by pollsters and other public opinion researchers.

Many of our colleagues initially believed that attacks on academic freedom and scientific research would cause public outcry. After all, U.S. academic research institutions are behind the country’s global leadership in innovation, medicine and technological development. American universities host most of the world’s top-ranked research programs, serve as engines of regional economic growth and train future leaders in fields such as medicine, public health and technology—in other words, they provide real jobs for people in and outside of academia. That’s why France has already accepted some “scientific refugees” from the United States and other countries, such as China, are trying to poach scientists from top American universities.

More urgently, defunding and censoring science could have dramatically negative consequences for all Americans. Canceling research on vaccine communication hinders not just our preparedness for future pandemics, but also our response to seasonal flu and COVID. Curtailing studies of health disparities weakens efforts to improve maternal mortality rates, particularly in communities of color, people who have low income and gender-diverse communities. Cutting international academic exchange isolates the U.S. from global scientific collaboration, including partnerships with entities, such as the World Health Organization, that are trying to promote access to lifesaving medical treatments and preventatives.

The costs of academic repression, in other words, are not confined to elite institutions—they are borne by everyone. Yet very few Americans seem to be concerned.

Why is that so? Politically motivated distrust in academic institutions, particularly on the ideological right, may help explain the attitude and why the Trump administration is taking these actions.

Decades of polling demonstrate that perceptions of science increasingly align with political identity. Trust in science across the American political spectrum has undergone a dramatic reversal. In the 1970s conservative Americans reported the highest confidence in scientific institutions. By 2010, however, this relationship had inverted, with conservatives expressing the lowest levels of trust in science. This partisan divide accelerated significantly in 2018 and widened further during the COVID pandemic.

The administration’s attacks on science demand a response from Congress, especially when political appointees try to circumvent the law. For example, efforts to withhold congressionally appropriated grant funds for scientific research may run afoul of the Impoundment Control Act, which says that the president is legally required to spend money authorized by Congress. Members of Congress could, in theory, amend the act to make it clear that efforts to claw back grants from university researchers is a violation of the law. They could also introduce legislation to forbid grant-making agencies from denying funding to universities that house diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Our congressional leaders can also stand up for science in the process of assembling a new budget for the coming year. Massive proposed cuts to the NIH threaten jobs and billions of dollars of government investment in cities and college towns across the country.

But if Americans of all stripes do not send their congressional representatives a clear message that they need to fight against cuts to academic science and research, our elected officials may not be motivated to do so. Politicians, after all, want to win reelection and may feel the need to cater to public opinion to do it. Right now the Republican-majority Congress seems to fear Trump more than the voters, perhaps no surprise given the voter disinterest seen in our poll.

What can turn public apathy into outrage?

One potential answer comes from people who have changed their mind about what science is and can do for them. Think of celebrity physician Mehmet Oz, now administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, embracing the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine on his television program The Dr. Oz Showin 2019 despite his past doubts. Skeptics are powerful communicators because they establish trust with audiences who share their previously held beliefs while nonetheless challenging those views.

Another example of this is Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, a supporter of the current administration who nonetheless voiced concerns over the effects that NIH budget cuts might have on the University of Alabama at Birmingham health care system, one of the largest employers in the state. Trump’s supporters may find Senator Britt credible, and her doubts may help those supporters change their mind and convince her to fight on behalf of her constituents to save one of her state’s economic powerhouses. Her defense of science could trickle across to other conservative legislators who also think of the interests of their constituents and reelection prospects.

Institutions such as the Ohio State University (OSU)—one of our own—demonstrate what’s at stake. OSU contributes more than $19 billion annually to the state’s economy, supports nearly 117,000 jobs and generates more than $650 billion in tax revenue for state and local governments. These are not abstract stakes—they are material, local and immediate. If voters, especially in politically conservative areas such as Ohio, make clear that dismantling science and academia undermines their communities, Congress may yet act. But without that pressure, the cost of inaction could be catastrophic and long lasting and will affect people far beyond the walls of higher education.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.