Resistance

I'm not talking antibiotics here today

A break from normal TLaM service today …

As a retired scientist in the United States, I have watched what has happened to scientists and their institutions under the Trump Administration these past three months. My former colleague and continuing friend David Asai has written an essay on how scientists and educators should resist the forces unleashed by Trump and his acolytes to make sure that the enterprise of science is available to everyone who makes up this country.

In the event there are readers who do not reside in the United States, here is a short summary of actions taken or planned by the Trump Administration.

1. The removal of “DEI” (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) staff from government offices and material from government websites. They also have threatened (and in some cases initiated) financial and legal actions against universities unless they remove “DEI” from their institutions.

2. The removal of webpages on and funding for research on climate within the federal government and to research universities.

3. Under the cover of “investigating anti-Semitism” or eliminating “racial preferences” (against white men) on campuses, Trump has withheld funding (largely in support of scientific research and totaling hundreds of millions to billions of dollars) to universities such as Columbia, Harvard and others unless they agree to a broad list of demands that eviscerate a university’s constitutional rights and any notion of academic freedom. Columbia bowed to those demands, but is still negotiating for restoration of the funds. Harvard’s President Garber published a pointed letter refusing to cave in to the government.

4. More than 1000 foreign students have had their visas revoked, thereby exposing them to immediate deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (and at a number of institutions with the assistance of university police). In general, the revocations come from action in demonstrations or social media posts in support of Palestinians. There has been a large public outcry and the Trump administration announced it would reinstate the canceled visas.

5. Contractually funded science research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture to many universities have been ‘suspended’, frozen, or terminated.

NSF alone has terminated ~750 grants that had awarded $739 million. On April 30, NSF staff were told to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.” Ongoing careers of young scientists is jeopardized and work in progress may be irrecoverable.

ADDENDUM: Grant Watch tracks grant terminations at the NIH and the National Science Foundation. The author, Scott Delaney, is to give academic researchers and their advocates a tool to resist policy decisions.

6. Proposed budgets for future fiscal years suggest the following:

• a reduction from $45 billion to $27 billion in funding for the National Institues of Health. This would entail a reduction of about 20% of scientists working within the Institutes and of course a large reduction in extramural research grants to universities and medical centers.

• the White House proposes a 55% cut to the National Science Foundation’s $9 billion budget. It is the government agency most devoted to support of basic research.
  A recent macroeconomic analysis suggests 25% cuts in research funding would reduce American economic activity to the same extent as the Great Recession of 2007-2009

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to lay off 20% of its workforce with likely effects on its weather forecasting work ahead of hurricane season. Furthermore, NOAA’s scientific research division may be abolished, with funding slashed by 27%, eliminating “functions of the Department that are misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people” (AKA climate change). The primary locus of climate science, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would be cut by 74% meaning the shutdown of climate data collection and modeling.

• Scientific research divisions within the US Geological Survey, US Forest Service and US Department of Agriculture are also slated for large budget cuts or total elimination.

‘DEI’ in science

The phrase ‘DEI’ is used as a cudgel by Trumpists as if this is a novel recent invention by those they demonize. But as Rob Bradford pointed out to me, it has been around for more than 150 years – the Emancipation Proclamation was DEI, Women’s Suffrage was DEI, school desegregation and elimination of Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1950s and 1960s was DEI. But there remains more work to do to ensure a ‘level playing field’ for all in American society. Whereas Trump and his supporters maintain that women, Black and Hispanic people with positions in society are evidence of discrimination against white males, I think there is stronger evidence that the continued under-representation of people with these visual characteristics is due to the continued presence of structural factors in society that work against their advancement based upon their merits.

The raw data suggests that this is true in science, and the point is particularly clear in biology. Biology attracts more women to graduate school and academic careers than do other science and engineering disciplines. About 50% of graduate students and 40% of postdocs in biology are women. However, only 36% of tenure-track assistant professors and 18% of full professors are women. If one looks to the ethnicity of graduate trainees and faculty at universities, there are large disparities in the proportions of Black or Hispanic Americans compared to their representation in the U.S. population.

Certainly it is within the power (if not the wisdom) of the Executive branches at the federal or state level to expunge references to ‘DEI’ from its websites. In a number of individual states controlled by Republicans, legislation has been passed and signed by governor to force public universities to fire ‘DEI’ staff and close centers devoted to the support of Black or Hispanic students. Others have ‘voluntarily’ closed such centers even without legislation. The Chronicle of Higher Education has documented 37 states where changes have occurred.

But the effects of these actions go beyond public institutions and have generated ‘anticipatory obedience.’ I mentioned my friend David Asai at the top of this post. David finished his career at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), as Senior Director of Inclusive Learning where he oversaw programs that provided financial support to universities developing novel ways to educate and encourage individuals from under-represented groups to pursue science at a high level. His group administered several programs, including SEA-PHAGES, created by Graham Hatfull, in which beginning undergraduates isolate and characterize bacteriophages. SEA-PHAGES now has more than 130 active member schools where 5,500+ students and 600+ faculty annually engage in discovery-based learning. Another program developed by Asai's group was Inclusive Excellence, which challenged colleges and universities to create a more inclusive science learning environment for students from all backgrounds. In early February, HHMI announced that it was terminating the Inclusive Excellence grants to 134 schools ($60M) to those institutions immediately and any mention of this Inclusive Excellence program (past or present) was scrubbed from its website (this last action is literally Stalin-esque).

HHMI gave no reason for the termination but the timing with respect to Trump’s assumption of government power makes it obvious. Note that HHMI is a non-governmental organization that gets no support from the federal government and controls nearly $26 billion in assets which it can use to support biomedical science research and education as it sees fit. My own American Society for Microbiology scrubbed from its website links to Hispanic, Black and Native American web pages in early February. There were angry letters from members and the websites were eventually restored. However, by that time the damage was done to young microbiologists who needed a strong ally that had their back in these tumultuous times but found that ally was AWOL.

David Asai wrote in his essay that “the goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is for individuals with different lived experiences and divergent perspectives to genuinely feel that they belong and can contribute to the success of the larger community.” I concur. As is my wont, I try to frame progressive causes also in terms of their benefits to society – excellence in science is a rare enough commodity that we cannot afford to not welcome and encourage people from a broad variety of backgrounds to pursue it to the limit of their abilities.

Resistance

Who should resist these attacks on universities and science and work to improve science culture? Well, of course everybody but here I will focus on university faculty, laboratory group leaders and department chairs -- positions of privilege which thereby demand responsibility

Universities have multiple layers of bureaucracy, but it is the faculty member who is responsible for fulfilling the fundamental missions of a university: teaching and research. Therefore, it is they who must be at the forefront of effecting change in the cultures of both the classroom and the research laboratory. Good intentions are not enough. This takes work– which involves significant time in a profession where there never seems to be enough of it. The first element of this ‘work’ is to truly listen to students and postdocs, particularly if they are coming from a world of experiences very different from your own. Secondly, be very sensitive to messages that you or others in the laboratory or classroom may be sending (even inadvertently) that someone is not a valued contributor to science.

Institutional leaders can promote this dialogue also. David Asai relates experiences he and I had at Purdue where the School of Science organized weekend retreats for faculty to sensitize themselves to classroom climate for women and PEERs*. We faculty grumbled but after the fact I viewed this as a very positive experience and stimulated me to do better at listening to those with different experiences. The Culture Box is one example of how to raise the awareness of mentors, but I reiterate that this needs to be a ‘life-long learning process’ for faculty.

* David prefers PEERs [Persons Excluded from science because of their Ethnicity or Race] to the term Underrepresented Minority. PEERs are 32% of the U.S. population, 37% of undergraduates, 21% of STEM bachelor’s degrees, 12% of STEM PhDs, and 6% of tenured STEM faculty

On being an ally

Universities, organizations and their constituent departments and staff have proclaimed themselves allies with statements in support of Black Lives Matter and acknowledgment of the occupation of Indigenous Lands. If left at that, these become performative and meaningless. Perhaps an institution goes farther and appoints a Vice-President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But we have seen recently that as soon there is a headwind, these allies may shrink away.

Faculty, postdocs and students can serve as staunch allies at the local level in their research laboratories by listening to and supporting PEERs. Vocally support institutional leaders who stand up to assaults on academic freedoms and resist exclusionary policies, such as President Garber at Harvard. Question leaders who appear to give in to those assaults and ask if it is really required by legislation (not executive orders) or is ‘anticipatory obedience.’ Support efforts for collective resolve by universities, so that individual institutions cannot be so easily targeted. This can require real moral courage by individuals and institutions and comes from a deep understanding of what the most cherished values demand.

Awareness / listening /interventions are important not only for PEERs. Mental health issues in research laboratories among students, postdocs and faculty colleagues are widespread. Fifty percent of 4,000 survey respondents reported struggling with depression and anxiety and >65% had witnessed bullying or harassment in the laboratory . Laboratory leaders are very unlikely to hear about these things unless they are completely open to listening and aware of symptoms so that they can encourage those suffering to seek help. Faculty who serve on graduate examining committees are in the best position to detect cases where there is a problematic relationship between mentor and student and initiate remedial action. The sociologist Erin Hatton’s book Coerced: Work under Threat of Punishment analyzed 4 cases where the power relationship between supervisor and ‘laborers’ can lead to toxicity: prisoners, welfare recipients, college athletes and … graduate students.

Reforming how introductory biology is taught

The status quo has not been working, not only for PEERs but also for many white males and females. More than 50% of first year students in STEM majors switch before their senior year. This despite large investments in ‘student success’ initiatives, academic counseling, enrichment activities and programs aiming to increase access and success of PEERs in biology – none have had measurable effects. Resistance to change often comes from the faculty themselves – deciding upon and implementing a new approach would take significant time and effort. I get it – but biology has experienced revolutionary changes this century in technology, methodology and its interactions with chemistry, physics, math and environmental sciences. How recently was the curriculum at your institution been revised to reflect science as a modern process, rather than as history? Does it remain a silo where students are expected to figure out on their own how to integrate its knowledge with that from other natural sciences and mathematics?

This cannot be mediated at the individual level but requires department and multi-department interactions. I am fully aware that no matter how difficult some of the challenges above are, this is probably the most refractory to change. Certainly individual champions can be catalytic but require not only pedagogical but also political skills to navigate the academic minefield.

Formal laboratory courses provide a rich opportunity to excite students about the power of discovery in science. This requires innovations such that classroom periods are not cookbook exercises but research experiences that emphasize curiosity and critical thinking. May this be more ‘expensive’ in terms of supplies and staff effort? Sure – but what value is lost by the current high dropout rate of biology majors?

Putting on my ecologist hat for a moment, university field stations also have great potential to engage students in formal and informal research experiences. Residence at the station via formal courses or research work will inevitably expose a biology student to chemists, engineers, hydrologists, geologists, soil scientists who are also carrying out work in environmental sciences. I spent quite a bit of time early in my career doing research at several field stations and I think that is what really turned me on to doing interdisciplinary research. These stations are great resources for their institutions – unfortunately, they are at the end of the ‘pipeline’ for financial support. Without a strong on-campus champion, facilities may erode due to benign neglect.

Essays by David Asai

Asai, D.J. 2025. Inclusive Science Education Is Not Zero-Sum. Issues in Science and Technology 41: Spring issue.

Asai, D.J. The Little Red Hen and Culture Change. Plant Science Bulletin 67(3): 174-180.

Asai, D.J. 2020. Race Matters. Cell 181: 754-757.

Asai, D.J. 2020. Excluded. Micro. Biol. Educ. 21(2): 1-2.

Asai, D.J. To Learn Inclusion Skills, Make it Personal. Nature 565: 537.

Asai, D.J. The Little Red Hen and Culture Change. Plant Science Bulletin 67: 174-180.

Asai, D.J. 2020. Race Matters. Cell 181: 754-757.

Asai, D.J. 2020. Excluded. Micro. Biol. Educ. 21(2): 1-2.

Poodry, C.A. and D.J. Asai. 2019. Questioning Assumptions. CBE-Life Sci. Educ. 17:es7.

I’ll be back to microbial ecology soon — thinking about the extent to which we know microbes in communities are socialists or predatory capitalists. But for now …

Your Moment of Zen

Along the coast of Chile, there is a temperate rain forest (1 - 6 m of precipitation per year) that I visited in March. The setting (geographically and geologically) is similar to the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State. But the plants in this Valdivian Rain Forest are different …