In early March the Trump administration froze $400 million in federal funding for scientific research at Columbia University, citing antisemitism and referencing pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The AFT has members at Columbia, but the implications are far broader: The administration has also threatened to take $9 billion from Harvard and $1 billion from Cornell if they don’t change policies to suit White House ideology, threatening a list of 60 institutions in a similar way. To retain funding, Columbia has already changed its campus protest policies and altered the structure of its Middle Eastern Studies department.
This grip on academia is chilling, and the loss of research funding harms us all. The AFT and the American Association of University Professors have filed a lawsuit to stop it, and on March 26 they held a press conference in protest. The following are excerpts from three professors who spoke during that event.
Melanie Wall
Data scientist, professor of biostatistics, Columbia University
Trumps’ termination of funding for health science research is an attack on your doctors and those who are training your doctors and nurses, but more than that, it is an attack on those of us who are doing innovative research and development that leads to the new medicines and public health discoveries that help everyone.
I’m a data scientist. I’m a math geek. I grew up in Missouri. I got a Pell Grant, and I was the first in my family to go to college. I’ve been training the next generation of data scientists for years, even some who have become tech bros.
We focus on innovative medical and public health solutions using big data, mathematical modeling and high-speed computing. One of the programs that my data science colleagues and I were recently awarded by the National Institutes of Health was focused on how to use data to drive solutions for the mental health crisis in America. That program was terminated.
I can describe study after study I’ve been working on that is now terminated. And I can tell you that, regardless of the excuse for why they were terminated, they are all focused on advances that can benefit everyone.
For example, there are studies on the role of loneliness and cognitive decline and the ways to promote social connectedness in order to prevent that decline. Studies on how sleep and stress interact to cause heart disease, a chronic condition. Studies that unpack the way that preventing intimate partner violence interacts with alcoholism and how to find programs to help.
These are studies that are not going to be taken on by companies because these important topics are not inherently profit-making topics. Drug companies want to sell drugs. University health science researchers want to find ways to make it so that more people don’t need them.
Trump’s administration has terminated and taken hostage our grants, igniting frictions around issues of free speech and discrimination. However, I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful because of events like this. I’m hopeful because of the fact that within less than a week over 130 of my medical center colleagues and researchers from the medical school, the Mailman School of Public Health and the nursing school were willing to openly sign their names to endorse the Columbia University’s AAUP letter asking the administration to fight back against the assault on Columbia. It is not easy for people who have lost their jobs or whose jobs are threatened to say openly that they want the university to fight back. But to my joyous surprise, they did.
Let us all see clearly that the Trump administration’s goal is to oppress our voices, oppress the voices of all of us who threaten their power. We must stand up for diversity. We must stand up for self-governance. We must stand up for science.
Melanie Wall is a professor of biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, director of mental health data science in the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and a member of the Columbia chapter of the AAUP.
Marcel Agueros
Astronomy professor, Columbia University
I am a Columbia lifer. I graduated from Columbia College in 1996, I returned to Columbia as a postdoc 10 years later and I joined the faculty in 2010. I am a professor in the astronomy department, and ever since our AAUP chapter was revived in December 2021, I have also served on its executive committee.
I have always loved Columbia, warts and all, principally because of its people. The university, like this city, is a magnet for talented, interesting and interested people. No two alike. I have been lucky to spend decades now surrounded by world-class teachers and researchers and learners who, far from constituting an elite hiding in an ivory tower, are fully engaged with the world around them.
And we should be very clear. When we talk about cutting off funding to Columbia, or more generally about the threats being made to academic institutions across the country, what we are really talking about is an attack on these people.
Politicizing what questions can be asked, arbitrarily defunding ongoing research, demanding changes to what is taught, restricting dissent, repressing free speech — these are all attacks on the individuals that together made Columbia and make it great.
Once these attacks have been normalized, once we have internalized this level of external interference, then no one at any university is safe. And indeed, no thinker, wherever they may be, will be protected. This is why what is happening here matters, and not just to us. We must refuse to spiral into accepting the unacceptable.
Marcel Agueros is an astronomy professor at Columbia University and an executive committee member of the AAUP chapter there.
Benjamin Bostick
Geochemistry professor, Columbia University
I am somewhat different from the people you might have pictured as the people who are impacted by this kind of attack. I am someone who studies clean water. I grew up in Idaho, I have been in New York for about 15 years now working here at Columbia.
As far as I know, everybody wants clean water. I don’t think anyone wants to turn on the tap and see brown.
I say that because … our work is important and is addressing the needs of people all over, not just in New York. Our work spans the globe. The reason I came to Columbia was to study … the connection between climate and water quality. It’s a unique place to do that, and it brings up something I really think is important.
The strength of Columbia is in its people, in its students, in its faculty, in its staff. All of these people are central to us making the world a better place and solving the issues that we are facing.
Although these buildings are great, most of the power of the institution comes from the people that have been here and that are here today. I think that it’s incredibly important for all of us as that community, the Columbia community, to stand together and recognize that for us to be impactful and to be able to solve the world’s problems that we’re working on, we absolutely need to do so together, united.
Benjamin Bostick is the Lamont Research Professor of Geochemistry at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University and a lecturer in sustainability sciences in the School of Professional Studies, and he is affiliated with the Master of Public Administration in development practice in the School of International and Public Affairs. He is a member of the Columbia chapter of the AAUP.
To read more about the lawsuit, click here. To see full footage of the press conference, click here. To read more news from AFT members, sign up for our e-newsletters here.