Then Along Came the Second Trump Administration

Academy President and CEO Nicholas B. Dirks highlights some of the ways higher education and science in the United States are under threat during the second Trump Administration.

Published March 12, 2025

Originally published by Times Higher Education

By Nicholas B. Dirks
President and CEO

There was little direct federal support for US scientific research until the National Defense Research Committee was convened in 1940. But on the back of the committee’s key role in developing radar, sonar and the nuclear bomb, its instigator, former MIT vice-president Vannevar Bush, wrote a report, The Endless Frontier, laying out a vision for the creation of a post-war National Science Foundation. 

Established in 1950, the NSF provided unprecedented funding for fundamental research, conducted principally in America’s universities by faculty researchers whose projects were evaluated by scientific peers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which dates back to the late 19th century, also grew dramatically in the post-war years. And, together, the two agencies turned institutions that had previously struggled to support science into the gold standard for research universities globally.

Science may still be the “endless frontier”, but the federal funding that came as a result of Bush’s influential report may not be.

By 1964, government funding for research and development hit 1.9 per cent of US GDP, amid bipartisan support. But in recent decades it has fallen back to 0.7 per cent. The real growth in support over that period has come from the private sector, but, important though that is, it is too often confined to applied and proprietary research. Real progress, by contrast, is critically dependent on the open, global scientific ecosystem of fundamental research. 

The 2023 State of Science in America report by the Science and Technology Action Committee (a non-partisan alliance of non-profit, academic, foundation and business leaders) strongly endorsed the importance of dramatically increasing federal support for science. The justifications voiced in surveys conducted across multiple sectors, including as many self-identified Republicans as Democrats, included a belief that science powers both the economy and national security and a concern that China was spending a much higher percentage of its GDP on research. 

But then along came the second Trump administration.

While the effort to dismantle DEI in government offices, corporations and universities was announced in advance, the abrupt halt of NIH and NSF funding took universities by surprise. And even as some funding resumed, programmes presumed to have any connection to DEI “policies” or “preferences” (a far broader interpretation of DEI than had been expected) were peremptorily cancelled, along with other research programmes connected to concerns about climate change. 

At the same time, a new – extremely low – cap on overhead rates was set at 15 per cent, abruptly withdrawing support for necessary scientific equipment, infrastructure and other real costs of research. Meanwhile, programme officers and other administrators have been fired, and elaborate protocols for granting and administering funding have been disrupted in ways no one seems yet able to grasp fully. 

The consequences of all this are likely to be dire. Scientific research not only helps to drive the economy: it is the core reason why US technological innovation has exceeded that of any other nation. And while it may be commonly overlooked, federally funded research really is the bedrock of that dynamic. 

For example, there is a popular myth that Steve Jobs and his team at Apple invented the iPhone. They did package an array of technologies in a single device with nifty design features, to be sure. But, as Mariana Mazzucato has shown in her 2011 book The Entrepreneurial State, those technologies – including the internet, GPS, touchscreen displays and voice-activated Siri – derived from federally supported research.

There are many reasons for the populist scepticism, distrust and downright dislike of science and research universities. Some of these reasons are doubtless our own fault. But it should not only be those directly affected who are upset by the prospect of dismantling the research apparatus of “elite” universities – where the bulk of non-profit scientific research in the US is conducted. 

It will also do irreparable harm to the world’s entire scientific, technological and biomedical enterprise, not to mention US prosperity, security and health. University leaders may be correct to be cautious in voicing their alarm, but they would not be wrong to panic. Along with all the rest of us.