August 8, 2025

Week 29

Within, amongst, against

Hello friends, 

There is nothing like sitting in a room full of brilliant people, watching them build something new together. I’ve been fortunate to have so many moments of that this summer, and write to you tonight on the way home from another inspired convening. 

For as much as I thrill watching these circuits connecting and crackling to life, I realized that I’m frightened too. The hour is so. so late. 

Things I’ve taken perhaps too much for granted - meeting new people at conferences, listening to thoughtful presentations, geeking out as I scribble new citations to chase down later - feel so precious now. I’ve found myself thinking many times lately, “These are the golden moments. These are the days we’ll look back on.” I can’t help but think how many terrible stories begin with, “We were prosperous in those days…” How many people describe their lives of comfort and freedom, before their worlds were shattered.

I find myself returning over and over again to two questions: how will we survive this authoritarian regime? and what beautiful futures can we make possible, despite it?

To imagine that better world, we need to see this one for what it is. This was week 29, let’s take a look. 

What’s happening now

• My heart dropped when I saw the latest executive order regarding oversight of grants management¹ - telling people about it today felt even worse. As written, it represents the end of the system, and will end careers. Here’s the shape of it: 1) every funding opportunity must be reviewed by a senior political appointee and awards must “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities”; 2) agency directors must overhaul the Uniform Guidance so that both new and existing grants can be terminated at any point, “for convenience”; and 3) review criteria must prioritize deeply partisan political values, including an ominous mention of preferencing institutions with lower indirect cost rates. This passage actually made me snort: “Nothing in this order shall be construed to discourage or prevent the use of peer review methods… provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees.” (Emphasis mine, it’s where I audibly laughed).² Now, it’s likely that this executive order will be challenged in court - maybe even by the time you read this. Time is of the urgent essence, because this represents yet another maneuver to run out the clock. We are in the final quarter of the fiscal year. If agency funds are not spent by September 30, they return to the treasury. NIH officials are anonymously sharing that they do not expect to be able to distribute their allocated funding. The worrisome thing is that although the Government Accountability Office did just find that the administration has violated the law in terminating NIH grants, their finding is nonbinding and the issue is already on the Supreme Court shadow docket, which means we should brace ourselves for an unsigned decision with little to no reasoning provided, and we don’t really know when it will be dropped. I encourage you to read and act on this fiery piece written by NIH insiders in tandem with outside lawyers. 

• In the latest attacks on specific universities, news broke today that the administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from UCLA³ while intensifying its pressure on Harvard. In new court filings today, the administration is attempting, again, to restrict Harvard’s international students⁴ while also going after hundreds of millions of dollars the university earns from its patents. One theme I notice here, as in other instances, is how quiet changes made during the 2016-2020 presidency are becoming instrumental in maneuvers now. On the patents front, the legislation in question is the Bayh-Dole Act,⁵ and the implementing regulations were revised in 2018 to remove the time limit constraining the government’s ability to assert ownership to an invention. 

• There were many other (bad) news items. On Tuesday, we learned that Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is cancelling 22 contracts representing ~$500 million dollars worth of research on mRNA vaccines. This will severely limit our options to rapidly develop new vaccines in the face of a future pandemic. We’ve learned that the Department of Education is now going to collect race, gender, and academic data from college admission processes in their ongoing effort to roll back civil rights. On Thursday, the Secretary of Energy claimed that the administration is going back and editing previously-published National Climate Assessment reports. These research reports are congressionally-mandated. They are the product of hundreds of researchers over a years-long peer review process. Back in April, the administration ended work on the 2027 edition of the report, and fired all the staff. In June, the main website was taken down, though I checked and you can still download a version of the 2023 report from NOAA. All of this is happening on the heels of a new climate report released by the Energy Department that would be laughably bad if it weren’t so serious. There’s more, like the EPA’s move to cancel their union contracts, or planning to destroy remote sensing satellites in orbit, but I’ll stop here. 

What’s next & what to do

I opened tonight’s issue of the newsletter by asking how we are going to survive this turn to authoritarianism. I think it means we need to think of how we allocate our effort and energy doing the work that needs to be done within our institutions, among and between our institutions, and frankly, against institutions. 

I think that also means getting better at figuring out exactly what the threats to us are. Since I’ve just spent the past few days focused on managing threats. As the specifics of the situation feel more and more overwhelming.  I’d like to share the framework I’ve been using to help me take a step back and think more systematically. Whether we are focused on our institutions, our communities, or ourselves, I’ve found it useful to think about breaking the work down into more manageable steps or focus areas. They include:

1. anticipation - assess the nature and source of threats (vector, magnitude, likelihood)

2. deterrence - make deliberate choices about which risks are worth taking on, and then harden ourselves, our institutes, and our communities as targets

3. preparation - create response plans,  pathways, and resources 

4. response - identify emerging situations, activate appropriate countermeasures, communicate internally & externally, escalate/de-escalate 

I will be developing these themes in future weekly updates, but it’s been a very long travel day and I need to go to sleep. Perhaps we can start a little bit backward. Instead of worrying over the question of how we survive, for tonight I just want to show you that we can. Look at Stroika, for example. Watch their videos on “living with integrity, working with creativity, and holding on to hope.” Doesn’t that sound appealing? Don’t you want to do those things? I do.

We have so much to fight against. But we have even more to fight for.

I am ready to fight. I hope you are too.

Liz

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As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me. Please share it with your people.

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This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among friends and colleagues who’ve had a rough week. Every Friday night, I share two or three pieces of news that feel most important to those of us who care about science and higher education. I try to offer a helpful way to think about the problems in front of us, and at least one useful thing to do. If you like what you see ⤵️

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