As we all know, research and acdemic freedom are intricately interconnected. When grants are terminated, or rather specific targeted grants for specific and targeted types of research, such as DEI and LGBTQI+ research, are terminated, academic freedom is directly and negatively impacted.
An article in Inside Higher Ed (6/27/2025) titled “Researchers ‘Cautionsly Optimistic’ NIH will Restore Grants” noted that “a judge ruled last week that the NIH unlawfully terminated hundreds of research grants and ordered the agency to restore them” (Researchers “Cautiously Optimistic” NIH Will Restore Grants).
According to STAT news, “One crowdsourced database estimates there have been over 2,600 terminations, totaling around $8.9 billion. Many of the grants concerned research the administration saw as related to diversity, equity, and inclusion or LGBTQ+ populations” (STAT news, 6/25/2025, https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/25/nih-halts-research-grant-terminations-email-shows).
On January 26th, science.org reported that “the NIH yesterday moved to reinstate about 900 grants that a judge last week ruled had been cancelled illegally because their topics…had been blacklisted by President Donald Trump’s administration” (Following court order, NIH ceases new terminations of politically sensitive grants | Science | AAAS).
The AAUP is not sitting idly by as they and their allies have filed legal challenges to the recent mass termination of grants by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
In addition, the Grant Watch project is tracking the termination of grants fron the NIH and the NSF (Grant Watch).
I will leave you with two quotes from an Op Ed in The Harvard Crimson, titled This Isn’t Negotiation. It’s Authoritarian Extortion, “When presidents can determine whether or not private universities are behaving — as President Trump put it —“appropriately,” according to their own ideological criteria, we no longer live in a democracy” and “to accept demands of this nature would be to surrender basic academic freedoms, as occurred recently in places like Hungary, India, Turkey, and Venezuela.” (This Isn’t Negotiation. It’s Authoritarian Extortion. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson).
Think about that for awhile and then contact your local AAUP chapter and/or the NY State Conference to get involved in united efforts to save academic freedom!
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