Week 16
Figuring out what to focus on now & next in science and higher ed
This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among colleagues who’ve had a rough week. I share two or three pieces of the puzzle that feel are most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.
MEETING THE MOMENT: 2025-05-09
Hello friends,
I’m on a plane again, heading home from Philadelphia after an intensive workshop with Penn researchers and clinicians. There’s so much I wish I could tell you about those two days, but instead, I’m going to focus on one small moment. Day 2 was a golden sunlight morning, the kind that just lifts your heart. When my driver picked me up, his music was perfect. We didn’t talk much. The vibes were immaculate. And as we pulled around the corner to our destination, he craned his head up to stare at the tower. “Yoooooooo, you get to work in this BEAUTIFUL building? That must feel so good.”
And it DID. It does.
That morning, the Cira Centre was a sparkling marvel soaring over our heads. It’s a twisting, curtain wall skyscraper of glass and metal, an artistic vision made possible by state-of-the-art technology and engineering. I looked at it and thought, “We can do anything.” It made me feel the same way I feel about science.
I’m not a fool. I know the toll that any building like that takes on the planet and the people who built it. I know there is a long and complicated story behind the shining spire. I am aware of the shadow it casts just as much as I enjoy the dazzling light it reflects. And I hope you feel that duality in these weekly newsletters. I can’t do my job if I can’t hold both truths in my mind simultaneously: talking about science and higher ed in America means holding all the light and all the dark. For me, it means confronting the devastating losses while celebrating the brilliance all around us. It’s remembering the heroic stories that got us here, as well as all of the monstrous histories that are just as much part of the story of science.
It reminds me of the Maggie Smith poem, Good Bones. It ends with, “This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”1
It could be. It can be. This was week 16. Let’s do it.
What’s happening now
As always, there is more that’s happened than I can digest. My goal here is not comprehensive so much as comprehensible. These are high-level updates for you, light and dark.
Let’s start with the dark. NSF grant terminations continued this week2, as new details about the plan to radically shrink and restructure the agency emerge. On Thursday, staff were informed that the 37 divisions are going to be abolished in favor of just five new priority “clusters”3 and that the ranks of both senior leadership and outside scientific expertise will be drastically slashed. Such losses will make the agency much less responsive and connected to the research community, and more directly an instrument of executive branch preferences. The Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM has been terminated, effective today, which also tracks. Over on the NIH side of things, the few funds making their way out4 now require grantees to uphold the extreme ideology espoused in executive orders. It threatens grant-accepting institutions with defraudment law and criminal liability if anyone on their campus is working to oppose the administration’s anti-trans and resegregationist agenda. ProPublica reports that the administration itself is in violation of a court order blocking it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care.
Sorry, more worrisome news in this bullet point. On Monday, the White House issued a new executive order on gain-of-function research.5 The possibility that researchers might accidentally release an infectious agent engineered to be more transmissible or more pathogenic is genuinely worrisome. That’s why tighter and specific oversight was due to go into effect this week. Instead, the new EO and fact sheet are vague, contradictory, and risk chilling large swaths of infectious disease research. Meanwhile, multiple state legislatures are attempting to ban and even criminalize mRNA vaccines. Vaccine-criticism is again central in news about political appointments this week: UCSF oncologist Vinay Prasad6 is the new head of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research, while MAHA nutritionist Casey Means7 is the new Surgeon General nominee. Despite incorrectly linking childhood vaccines with autism and questioning infant vaccination, Means is under intense fire from the right for not being anti-vaccine enough.
And now the light! I think each of these speaks to the power of close attention and sustained effort.
After six weeks in detention, Rümeysa Öztürk has been released! She still faces potential deportation for writing an op-ed, but the judge overseeing her case ruled that her case has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation.
Today, District Judge Susan Illston ruled in favor of the coalition of employee unions, the AGU, APHA, NRDC, and others who are suing to halt the dismantling of the federal government. The temporary restraining order forbids the administration from issuing further reductions in force (RIFs) or placing employees on administrative leave at any of the twenty-one defendant agencies8, including EPA and NSF.
Finally, a reminder: the specifics of this administration’s actions are profoundly unpopular. Only 28% of people support increased government involvement in running private universities. More than 75% of people oppose cutting funding for medical research! Those numbers are WILD. Sure, the details vary in different polls with different questions, but the takeaway is the same: most people are not on board with what is happening. And even if they were, public opinion is not fixed - we have charted unbelievable change within living memory.
What’s next
I’ll be keeping an eye on where the FOIA issue is going. On May 1, some FDA employees received notice that - surprise! - they are, in fact, essential staff who were un-fired and needed to return to their FOIA work immediately. Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Finance sent a letter demanding answers from RFK Jr. by May 22. That’s the same day as the preliminary injunction hearing on the large-scale RIFs.
What to do
Remember to look for the light. I’ve written previously about how important morale is, and introduced the concept of “critical ignoring” as a way to maintain focus. I encourage you to check in on whether you’ve consumed too much bad news or been exposed to too much propaganda. I’m not saying things are better than you think - so much is so wrong right now - but I am wondering if you still recognize the good things when you see them. Metacognition is a habit and a skill to cultivate. It’s worth thinking about what memories you’re forming in these wild months.9
We need it because when the future is so uncertain, we tend to systematically overestimate the likelihood of bad outcomes and underestimate good ones. If we aren’t actively working against this pessimism bias, it can lead us astray and stunt our ability to act. Worse, it will convince us that doing nothing is the savvy choice.
If you’re not struggling with that, I’m glad! I bet you have people in your life who are. I know I do. One thing we can do for them and for ourselves is take mental health seriously. Given how limited resources are, I think taking a psychological first aid course is a very good idea. Our friends at Dragonfly Mental Health recommend this five-hour course from Johns Hopkins. The Association of Internet Researchers points toward https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org. If you’re at a university, it’s entirely possible that you have custom-built resources on campus.
Once you have your own oxygen mask on, then you can help others. We’re hosting another Scientists in Solidarity session this coming Monday. Our focus this time will be on the effort to Save NSF.
Register below. I’d love to see you there. Let’s build something beautiful together.
Liz
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The excerpt I’m thinking is below, but you should go read the whole thing.
Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
I have a friend who lost a critical grant today. Staff, early career fellows, regranting support to partners, summer salary: gone, effective immediately. It feels like there has been a death. I’m furious and heartbroken for them, and there’s so little I can do. ↩
Evidently the president’s priorities are artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and translational science. ↩
Last week, Don Moynihan wrote a meticulously-sourced, extremely useful, but also frightening explainer on what is going on with NIH budgets ↩
The use of gain-of-function research is often described in true but vague terms, like “to better understand the biology, ecology and pathogenesis of viruses“. Those longer-term basic science goals are important, but I find it more useful to focus on the near-term outcomes. Gain-of-function research is part of our rapid-response toolkit. Specific applications include adapting viruses to grow in culture and developing essential animal models for emerging pathogens. ↩
In 2021, Prasad wrote a substack essay “How Democracy Ends” arguing that the public health response to COVID was leading us into totalitarian rule. Yep. ↩
Means is an influencer who promotes raw milk smoothies and sells “immune-boosting” dietary supplements, creams, teas. Yep. ↩
The full list includes OMB, OPM, DOGE, USDA, Commerce, Energy, HHS, HUD, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation, VA, AmeriCorps, EPA, GSA, NLRB, NSF, SBA, and SSA. ↩
This is the subject of a new PBS documentary that the producers just shared with me. I haven't been able to watch it yet, but an artist has animated 30,000 watercolor images to visualize the brain’s process of forming, altering, and storing memories. ↩