Beginning the discussion of a way forward

Roundup of recent events in the crisis for American science, and the emergence of new voices on where we stand and where we could go

The bad news for higher education and science continues. Trump’s budget proposes massive cuts, NSF cuts overhead to 15%, and the NSF director resigned. We had a great roundup on everything in the first 100 days here. And here’s the video version:

Since the inauguration, I have had the chance to visit, either in person or virtually, many college campuses to talk with students, staff, and faculty about what is going on. I have mostly visited public universities, and I wish more people would visit and think about these places instead of the elite universities that are dominating the news right now. They are doing many of the things that the public is looking for in terms of training a lot of students and doing a lot of medical care. I benefit greatly from getting out of the echo chambers on social media and to hear directly from more of the people on the ground.

What I’ve learned as I’ve gone around is that work is continuing by one means or another. Experiments are getting done, classes are getting taught. Students are fearful about their future plans and their immigration status. And they are desperate for information. I have a lot of access to information about what is going on given my role at Science and my presence at AAAS where excellent efforts are underway on federal relations, so sharing that — even when the news is bad — makes a big difference. Fortunately, as this crisis has worn on, more administrators are being transparent with the campuses and having town halls, etc. to share everything that is they know and what they are doing. As I have said elsewhere, this is absolutely crucial, because internal cohesion is required to succeed in finding ways out of the crisis.

But perhaps the most telling thing is that most of the people on the campuses are completely open to a discussion about how science and higher education has contributed to the current situation without engaging in a self-defeating conversation about how any talk of reform is validating the attacks. So, sharing historical information about higher education and the choices that have been made over the last decades to give the administration the leverage that it is now using are mostly welcome. That’s why it is really vital to lead a discussion on the campuses about how higher education needs to evolve in response to the messages sent by the election and the reaction of the American people to the administration’s actions. There certainly is a group that objects to this kind of talk, but it is not the majority in my experience so far.

We’ve also entered a phase where sitting university presidents are now speaking out. At the beginning it was mostly me and Michael Roth at Wesleyan giving the majority of the sound bites (Michael is absolutely a sitting president but not of a major research university with hundreds of millions of dollars in grants). Now, the presidents of Princeton and Harvard are fully engaged in fighting back, and hundreds of presidents have signed a letter opposing the administration’s actions. I’m not in the seat of dealing with any of these challenges, so I’m grateful that I’m not giving sound bites any more.

We’re also seeing an encouraging trend of willingness to talk about how higher education and science need to change in ways that still advocate for strong protection for academic freedom. This takes gumption, because there is a group on the campuses that sees any admission that higher education has contributed to the problems as bending the knee. The Harvard president has done an excellent job at this, and Danielle Allen had a terrific piece in the Atlantic.

I had the chance to go on Derek Thompson’s podcast to talk about all of this. Derek and Ezra Klein are burning up the airwaves and the bestseller list with their new book, Abundance, which offers a vision for America that espouses liberal values in a context of success for more people. Abundance has plenty of critics on the far left and has started a good discussion about how to bring everyone into a common plan. I mostly agree with what Derek and Klein are writing and it has a lot of lessons and ideas for science.

In our discussion, Derek and I talked about the importance of science funding, the history of how the US adopted the model that is currently being disrupted, what could be lost if the US is no longer the world leader in science, and the mistakes that science and scientists (including me) have made to contribute to the ability of the administration to take these actions — and how to alter our approach in the new reality.

On the political front, AAAS CEO participated in a hearing of the Senate appropriations committee on the importance of biomedical research. He did a superb job making the case for additional investment and was joined by my former colleague Barry Sleckman who now runs the cancer center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. They did great. It was heartening to see the support from senators of both parties. Highly recommend watching the hearing if you want a glimmer of hope as to how the situation could resolve.

In personal news, the Friends of the National Library of Medicine have recognized me with the Donald A. B. Lindberg Award for Distinguished Health Communications. The previous winners are many of my idols and I’m deeply grateful to the FNLM but mostly to the leaders at AAAS who give me the support to do all of this and my colleagues at Science who drive scientific information and commentary forward.