Follow COGR on LinkedIn4/7/25Bloomberg
The Atomic Bomb Set the Stage for the College Funding Fight
How did the nation’s elite research universities end up in such an exquisitely vulnerable position? While some blame “woke” campus culture, the roots of this clash go back some 80-plus years, when the US first called on scientists for the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. That historical moment paved the way for unprecedented federal aid — yet also set schools up for the current crisis.
4/6/25Stat, Opinion, AAU President Barbara Snyder
Don’t overlook the continued threat of cuts to universities’ indirect research costs
Imagine that one evening you go out to a neighborhood restaurant and order a steak dinner. It is delicious, and everything is going well — until the check comes, and you demand that the proprietor knock the price down by a third.
4/6/25Wall Street Journal
Trump Is Going After Universities’ Federal Funding. Here’s What to Know.
While many faculty members argue universities shouldn’t yield to Trump, they are in a tricky spot. It isn’t uncommon for a quarter or more of the operating budget of a large university to come from federal sources in the forms of student loans, Pell Grants and research funding—research that supporters say goes on to produce innovations and fuel the broader economy.
4/6/25NPR, Podcast with Transcript, President of Princeton University
How Princeton University is navigating the loss of federal funding
4/6/25Washington Post
Biotech start-ups struggle as Trump throttles NIH funding
The Trump administration’s deep rollbacks on medical research funding are eroding a key pillar of the American biotechnology industry, weakening a financial bridge that helps scientists translate laboratory discoveries into therapies that benefit patients
4/5/25Washington Post
Obama calls on citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Trump agenda
Obama called for universities to be prepared to lose government funding to defend academic freedom and other core values, or dip into their endowments — though endowments are sometimes funded with restrictions from donors on how that money can be spent. “If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?” he said. “If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.
4/4/25
NSF Implementation of Executive Orders New FAQs & Updates:
4/4/25
Trump Presents Harvard With an Ultimatum for Federal Funds (Inside Higher Ed)
The Trump administration presented Harvard University with a letter Thursday outlining “immediate next steps” the institution must take in order to have a “continued financial relationship with the United States government… If the case follows the precedent set at other universities, Harvard and its affiliate medical institutions could lose up to $9 billion in federal grants and contracts if they do not comply.
New York Times, Guest EssaySee also
I Led Harvard’s Medical School, and I Fear for What’s to Come
New York TimesSee also
With Universities Threatened, Can Boston Still Be Boston?
4/4/25NBC Boston
Brown University to see half a billion in federal funding halted by Trump administration
The Trump administration is planning to halt more than half a billion dollars in contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, adding to a list of Ivy League colleges that have had their federal money threatened as a result of their responses to antisemitism, a White House official said Thursday. Nearly $510 million in federal contracts and grants are on the line, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity.
4/4/25Nature
Tariffs hit science labs: Trump levies raise cost of supplies
The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs on imports into the United States — which range from 10% on products from some countries up to 54% on goods from China — are increasing the costs of labware and specialist scientific instruments in the country. The price increases come as research budgets for US labs are stretched thin by unprecedented grant cancellations and cuts to university funding introduced since Donald Trump’s second presidency began in January
4/4/25The Chronicle, Opinion
Colleges Must Stand Together to Resist Trump
The reason higher education has not offered a coordinated response to the administration’s attacks is that it is not designed to do so…Over the past two centuries, competitive fragmentation and plurality of purpose have benefited higher education too much for it to pay the high cost of coordination and coalition. Faced with challenges positive and negative — explosive growth in the 1940s and 1950s, student protest in the 1960s, public defunding in the 1980s — our disconnected system has proved resilient… Today’s challenges require a new, more coordinated approach.
4/4/25Bloomberg Law
Trump NIH Blocked From Cuts to Research Funds, Plans Appeal
The Trump administration was blocked from capping funds from the National Institutes of Health that cover grant recipients’ research overhead costs, a federal judge ruled Friday. States and academic groups showed success on the merits of their argument that the NIH violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued a 15% cap on “indirect funds” in February, Judge Angel Kelley of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled .
4/4/25Holland & Knight
HHS Cuts Impacting Human Subject Research – No More SACHRP?
In a remarkable federal human subject research policy development, it appears that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) has been disbanded. Formed in 2003, SACHRP was a federal advisory committee whose expert volunteers advised government agencies that regulate human subject research.
4/4/25New York Times
16 States Sue to Restore N.I.H. Funding
California, Massachusetts and 14 other states sued the Trump administration on Friday for withholding grant funding from public health and medical research institutions, cuts that have forced universities to curtail research and to delay the hiring of new staff
4/4/25Washington Post
NIH prepares to launch new research into autism causes, a Trump priority
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and other officials are weighing a public competition intended to jump-start research or to pursue a more traditional grant approach.
The HillSee also
See also: GOP senators back crackdown on foreign students
4/4/25FedScoop
Trump White House releases guidance for AI use, acquisition in government
Both memos, which are dated April 3, represent some of the first major policy actions President Donald Trump has taken on the government’s use of AI….The first new memo (M-25-21 ) provides guardrails for use and replaces Biden’s directive on the same topic (M-24-10 )…. Similarly, the second memo on AI acquisition (M-25-22 ) replaces the Biden OMB’s guidance on government purchasing of the tech (M-24-18 ).
4/3/25Politico
Trump will ask Congress to rubber-stamp his funding cuts, a top OMB official says
President Donald Trump will be sending Congress a package of funding to nix and expects enough Republicans to vote for it, according to the acting chief of staff for the White House budget office
4/3/25The Chronicle
We Are in the Crossfire for Just Doing Our Jobs
The Chronicle surveyed 3,844 respondents at two- and four-year colleges in the United States between March 5 and March 20, asking whether they’d recommend their work to others, how their institution has responded to federal actions, and whether they felt free to express their opinions. Here’s what they said.