Week 19
What now & what’s 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 the most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.
MEETING THE MOMENT: 2025-05-30
Hello friends,
It’s been a very long short week, hasn’t it? Today was particularly intense, but I’m glad to be wrapping it up with you.
On days when looking at my schedule feels overwhelming, I try to remind myself that the meetings are not impediments to my work, they ARE my work. Those conversations are where so much happens - decisions get made, sure, but more importantly, we’re creating connections, building clarity, and on good days, making breakthroughs. On great days, like today, I can see all the pieces fitting together and the engines starting to whir. Sure, I came out of each meeting with a much longer to-do list than I went in with, but good grief, I love it.
I watched a brilliant scientist fully (finally!) realize that her book-in-progress is brilliant. It took reading a lucid, beautiful book written by one of her friends to help her see how exactly to realize her own ambitions. Our work can unlock things for each other in ways we never imagined. I made tentative plans with new collaborators who feel like they’re changing the game. I caught up with the fellows, co-founders, and collective members who have changed my life. In our various ways, we decided what to worry about now, what to cope with later, and what we can’t afford to worry about. It feels like walking through an orchard: I’m coming back with fistfuls of wildflowers and a collection of interesting rocks I picked up along the way,
This was week 19. Everything is terrible, but I brought you some plums.
What’s happening now
We published a huge page on funding for medical research at Unbreaking! It contains basically everything I know about what’s been happening in terms of grant terminations, proposed restructuring, layoffs, and program cancellations. It was a very heavy lift, but I think it will be very useful, and if nothing else, I feel so much more focused and motivated now. Please read it, share it, and come join us to maintain this page and write more on all the topics weighing on our minds.
That went live midday, so of course - OF COURSE - news about the detailed budget request started rolling out within hours. The new HHS “Budget in Brief” document details exactly what the administration proposes to cut to reduce the NIH budget by more than $20 billion dollars. I’m also looking at the proposals for NASA, NSF, and the EPA - but all together, we’re talking about more than 1,200 pages of content in the technical supplement that holds the full request. Please note, I’m trying to be precise in my language here: this is a detailed proposal - a request for Congress, and the beginning of negotiations. It is not an edict or foregone outcome. But yes, it’s bad news for science. We knew it would be. It’s bad, but it’s also weird. Those of us who are new to tracking government processes at this level would not otherwise know that the rollout itself is decidedly not normal. It is not just historically late, but it lacks all the estimates and projections that the White House is expected to provide for impacts on the next ten years of spending, revenues, economic growth, interest rates, etc. Given what we know of how the government is using LLMs and what we’ve seen with last week’s MAHA report (confabulated and mis-cited sources), I am curious what we’ll learn as expert readers make their way through the budget document in the next few days.
Another few items weighing heavily on me this week:
This weekend marks the official beginning of storm season, and it looks to be a busy one, but the disaster we’re confronting is FEMA itself. Internal documents show that risks in critical functions leave us with an agency that is not mission-ready.
The Department of State has announced that student visa applications have been paused in advance of a new, more intensive social media vetting policy for applicants. The administration is specifically targeting Chinese students, as well as all international visitors traveling to Harvard.
Cancellation of the development funding for a new pandemic flu vaccine, as well as termination of the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development. I am watching what’s happening with the latest guidance from the CDC about COVID boosters. Vaccination is still recommended for children, despite conflicting statements from HHS leadership earlier this week.
I’m deeply disturbed by the executive order on “gold standard” science that gives political appointees disciplinary oversight over researchers. I know metascience specialists have been worried about open science being co-opted for a long time. I’m trying to focus on the communications aspect of this, and am thinking about the nature of expertise and “adversarial re-analysis”.
What’s next & what to do
Prepare yourself. What exactly that means depends on your context, vulnerabilities, and history.
Maybe it means coming up to speed on history, like members of this unconventional book club are doing. Maybe it means hardening yourself as a target for harassment, or doing some legwork on legal defense funds before you need them. Maybe it’s learning and practicing de-escalation and other bystander intervention techniques. Maybe it’s leading the book club or teach-ins yourself.
Maybe it means reallocating funds or coming up to speed so you can rebudget effectively. I am specifically thinking about those of us managing lab or organizational budgets. How should we be deploying reserves or resources - when does it make sense to invest those now instead of squirrelling them away?
Maybe preparing means figuring out which groups to join, so that whatever volunteer time you may have is channeled effectively. If intense, sustained call volume to representatives is the best way to avert the budget disasters I’ve written about tonight, and that’s a tactic that makes sense for you to support, do you have what you need? If you are more oriented toward public protest, do you know about the June 14 No Kings protests? Do you have a plan for recruiting people to go with you?
Most importantly, are you prepared to confront the cynicism of those in your circles who will tell you that your efforts are doomed? I’ve struggled with that lately, so I’ll share this Nick Cave quote that helped me:
Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent…
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like… keeps the devil down in the hole.
It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
May it be so,
Liz
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