Update. "As Trump’s Cuts Loom Large, Colleges Are Under Pressure to Punish Anti-Israel Speech."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/as-trumps-cuts-loom-large-colleges-are-under-pressure-to-punish-anti-israel-speech
(#paywalled)

Kate Hidalgo Bellows gets this right. #Trump treats criticism of #Israel as #antisemitism and pressures colleges and universities to do the same.

"The #Trump administration has promised to pull funding from colleges that don’t punish people for criticizing Israel, on the basis that it is antisemitic."

But of course we have the same right to criticize Israel that we have to criticize any country. There's nothing intrinsically antisemitic about it.

Don't take my word for it. Ask the majority of Israelis who join this criticism.
https://voice7news.tv/public/world/news/15235

#Academia #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. "#NIH freezes funds to #Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-funds-harvard-and-four-other-universities-can-t-tell-them
(#paywalled)

"After freezing all grants to #Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities [#Brown, #Northwestern, #Cornell, #WeillCornell Medical School]…The move will both block new funding and halt payments to investigators currently working on NIH projects…The Department of Health and Human Services (#HHS)…instructed NIH staff not to provide any communication to these institutions or to Columbia about whether the funds are frozen or why, according to the email."

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. The Chronicle of Higher Education says that the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have also signed on.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-faculty-senates-are-trying-to-band-together-to-stand-up-to-trump
(#paywalled)

PS: But I'm still looking for a person or group tracking this progress.

#Academia #Universities
@academicchatter

Update. "The National Science Foundation (#NSF) has abolished its chief mechanism for getting the scientific community’s input on its programs."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-scraps-most-outside-advisory-panels
(#paywalled)

Update. "Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency. White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-seeks-end-climate-research-premier-u-s-climate-agency
(#paywalled)

"President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the #climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (#NOAA)…The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to #NASA’s science programs."

Update. Phillip Levine lists the 77 US #universities that stand to lose the most from three kinds of funding cuts threatened by the #Trump admin: (1) capping indirect costs for #NIH grants at 15%, (2) cutting the #NSF budget by two-thirds, and (3) endowment taxes.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-77-colleges-have-the-most-to-lose-from-trumps-cuts
(#paywalled)

PS: Note that there are other kinds of cuts that Levine does not bring into this calculation, like withholding funds from targeted institutions because of their DEI or antisemitism policies.

#Academia #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. "Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever"
https://www.404media.co/nih-archives-repositories-marked-for-review-for-potential-modification
(#paywalled)

"Almost two dozen repositories of research and public #health #data supported by the #NIH are marked for “review” under the #Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago…Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process."

Update. #DOGE will review #NIH grant opportunities "to ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-officials-will-screen-nih-funding-opportunities
(#paywalled)

PS: Note that this is about content, politics, or ideology, not waste, fraud, or abuse.

"One NIH employee familiar with the matter worries that Trump officials reviewing the NOFOs [Notices of Funding Opportunities] “may not have the scientific background to understand why funding for research on certain topics is important.” Moreover, they added, “Having these decisions made by DOGE after months have been spent writing the NOFOs drafts and getting buy-in from [NIH’s institutes and centers] and offices is a huge waste of staff time and resources.”

@eff . . . why, float #PayWalled articles on Mastodon ?? Especially when you've Free, as in Freedom of Information, in your directive ??

Think you're at a #CrossPurposes point there . . :/

Update. "Foreign interference laws ‘no protection from #Trump edicts’"
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/foreign-interference-laws-no-protection-trump-edicts
(#paywalled)

"A memo sent to Australian collaborators in US-funded research projects seeks assurances that they and their institutions have no involvement in diversity, equity and inclusion (#DEI) initiatives, “environmental justice”, “gender ideology extremism” or “any party that espouses anti-American beliefs”. It asks whether they have received any funding from China, including Confucius Institutes and “non-state actors”, along with Russia, Cuba or Iran. The 36 questions also include queries on how the projects “create measurable benefits” for the US."

Update. Good advice from #MichaelIgnatieff, past President of the Central European University in Budapest and Vienna (2016-2021): "How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime. Viktor #Orbán came for me. Donald #Trump is coming for you. Here’s what to do."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-a-university-fights-an-authoritarian-regime
(#paywalled)

"You’re going to need an alliance that pulls together American families, employers, unions, companies, the whole network of people and institutions beyond your campus who understand that the universities of America are critical to everything that is good about the country: its commitment to freedom, its devotion to excellence, its leadership in science and medicine. This alliance is going to have to get political — to reach across red state and blue state, identify the members of Congress from both sides of the House who understand why universities matter to their communities, to the American economy, and to America’s deserved reputation for excellence. Don’t mince words. It’s too late to play nice. Call a spade a spade. Convince enough Americans that the administration’s strategy deserves only one name: vandalism."

#Academia #DefendResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter

Update. "The Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge. Can #librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from #DOGE.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge
(#paywalled)

"Lynda Kellam, a social scientist and data librarian,…who’s served in leadership positions at two Ivy League universities, described the vulnerable data as “irreplaceable.”…Kellam told me that she’d participated in a small data-preservation effort during Trump’s first term, but had never seen anything like the frenzy that ignited in late January, when the #CDC began removing information from its website. Kellam was encouraged, but worried about a lack of coördination. What if the backups languished on private hard drives? What if archivists duplicated one another’s work? She created a Google Doc to centralize information about preëxisting initiatives—an archive of archives, with detailed instructions on how to contribute to each…Kellam met with the heads of other data-librarian organizations, and together they founded the #DataRescueProject."

Update. "The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-national-science-foundation
(#paywalled)

"The #Trump administration’s assault on the #NSF represents precisely the kind of political interference [#VannevarBush] sought to prevent — one that threatens not only scientific progress but also the very foundation of academic freedom."