Who needs science? Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates With billions in grants put on hold, targeted universities will see research crippled. John Timmer – Apr 9, 2025 6:15 pm | 12 Credit: Bruce Yuanyue Bi Credit: Bruce Yuanyue Bi Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Shortly after its inauguration, the Trump administration has made no secret that it isn't especially interested in funding research. Before January's end, major science agencies had instituted pauses on research funding, and grant funding has not been restored to previous levels since. Many individual grants have been targeted on ideological grounds, and agencies like the National Science Foundation are expected to see significant cuts. Since then, individual universities have been targeted, starting with an ongoing fight with Columbia University over $400 million in research funding. This week, however, it appears that the targeting of university research has entered overdrive, with multiple announcements of funding freezes targeting several universities. Should these last for any considerable amount of time, they will likely cripple research at the targeted universities. On Wednesday, Science learned that the National Institutes of Health has frozen all of its research funding to Columbia, despite the university agreeing to steps previously demanded by the administration and the resignation of its acting president. In 2024, Columbia had received nearly $700 million in grants from the NIH, with the money largely going to the university's prestigious medical and public health schools. But the attack goes well beyond a single university. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced a hold on all research funding to Northwestern University (nearly $800 million) and Cornell University ($1 billion). These involved money granted by multiple government agencies, including a significant amount from the Department of Defense in Cornell's case. Ostensibly, all of these actions were taken because of the university administrators' approach to protests about the conflict in Gaza, which the administration has characterized as allowing antisemitism. However, Princeton University ended up being targeted this week purely due to the results of its research. The Department of Commerce, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), terminated $4 million in funding for climate research at Princeton. It accuses the research programs of fostering "climate anxiety" and, in a remarkable bit of candor, admitted that funding was being cut because it didn't produce results the administration liked: This cooperative agreement suggests that the Earth will have a significant fluctuation in its water availability as a result of global warming. Using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration and such time and resources can be better utilized elsewhere. (Separately, the administration also ended funding for the US Global Change Research Program, which produces a congressionally mandated climate assessment.) While the $4 million hit to Princeton won't precipitate a crisis, the remainder of these actions—all in the neighborhood of $700 million to $1 billion—will lead to a crisis that no amount of university endowment can fix. If they go on for any length of time, researchers will have to be laid off, facilities closed, and populations of research animals will likely need to be culled. It's a series of events that will make it difficult for any university to re-establish a research program anytime soon. John Timmer Senior Science Editor John Timmer Senior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 12 Comments