Hello friends,
This week, we shared initial toplines of a survey we ran with the biomedical scientists who answered it. Each of them is running a research lab at a university here in the US¹ and we wanted to know: how bad is it, exactly? We probed for specifics of how things have been in the past 22 months, looking to understand the extent and severity of funding disruptions, how much longer they project they’ll be able to work before they run out of money, and what this all has meant for their science and their lives. We’ll be sharing those results widely, but for now I’ll just say that it’s grim.²

What surprised me was how hard we had to work to get responses, and just how far short of my goals we landed. These are scientists I know personally, who told me they wanted to see the results. I've been agonizing over where things went wrong and how to interpret what we do have. I told my collaborators how worried I am that our results might only reflect the PIs who are struggling the most. They pointed out a different possibility I hadn’t considered. Maybe our data, grim as it is, underestimates what’s happening. Drowning people often don’t look like they’re in trouble: they’re too busy drowning to cry for help or wave their arms over their head.

We’ll get into these survey results in detail later. For now, I invite you to join me in thinking about how we can better identify the warning signals of individual distress or systems on the verge of collapse.
This was Year 2, Week 41. Let’s get into it.

What’s happening in science & higher ed

• An appellate court has overturned the court decision requiring Penn to give the Trump administration detailed lists of Jewish employees and members of clubs and campus organizations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission first subpoenaed the university for these lists last summer, and when a judge decided to enforce it this spring,³ Penn appealed.⁴
• The latest administration attack on higher education is a new probe into international hiring practices, announced with great fanfare under the guise of “visa fraud.” Nine major research universities⁵ are the initial targets, and the focus is on Exchange Visitor visas.⁶ Most schools have issued statements defending the integrity of their processes, but I was glad to see Brown at least say, “international scholars, students and employees make essential contributions on our campus.” The Vice President’s other big announcement was to announce that they are barring Microsoft, Adobe, and major tech staffing companies⁷ from the H-1B visa program.
• The flip side of this anti-immigration agenda are things like announcing a \$100 million investment in STEM PhD training for US citizens. Before celebrating, you might want to ask not just how far that will theoretically go, but where it comes from exactly and whether that’s actually new money at all. Meanwhile the employer fee for international students who might stay here after graduation to work in the Optional Practice Training (OPT) Program has been set to a mere \$70,000 ⁸ Public comment on the proposed rule is open now and closes November 9.
• While I’m on the subject of proposed rules, I need to mention the US Census. Instead of counting absolutely everyone in the country, as required by the Constitution, the administration is trying to limit the count to “true inhabitants.”⁹ They’re also stripping questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. I think this guest essay from Dr. Justin Gest is a powerful argument against deliberately dropping more than 16 million people from our understanding of this country. As Dr. Johnathan Flowers writes, the census is, “an exercise in world-building via data collection. [This proposal] is an exercise in building a world without them.” Public comment on this topic closes November 2.

And what’s next

This newsletter issue is somewhat abbreviated¹⁰, so I will leave you with two more pieces worth reading that I'm mulling over:

• A solid framing¹¹ on how to think about what changes between the midterms and January 2029 - The NIH veto board got the headlines. The quieter plays are the ones moving the ball.
• How We Got Here, the first chapter of the Stand Up For Science Foundation’s vision for reconstructing the American scientific enterprise.¹²

I’ll be traveling next Friday, but will be back at it for Week 43.
My best, always,
Liz

As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me!

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