Updates on NSF Priorities (Updated 4/22):
NEW: 14. Can costs be reimbursed prior to the award termination date?
Yes. Costs may be reimbursed to an NSF award up to and including the award termination date, provided they are allowable, allocable, and reasonable under the sections on Allowable Costs and Termination in your award terms and conditions (e.g., sections 11 and 33 in GC-1). Per the Termination section of your award’s terms and conditions (GC-1 section 33(e)) you must submit the total of costs that were incurred prior to the termination but not drawn down in ACM$ to dgafinalcosts@nsf.gov no later than 30 calendar days after the award termination date.
4/23/25: No NIH Grants for Colleges With DEI Programs or Israel Boycotts (Inside Higher Ed) The change appears to codify parts of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that banned funding for DEI programs and builds on the strategy to leverage colleges’ research funding to compel certain behaviors. But the new policy goes even further than the president’s directives, barring colleges from boycotting Israel or Israeli businesses if they want to receive NIH grants. Such boycotts are rare in higher education, though calls for colleges to rethink their relationship to Israel have ramped up in the last year. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/04/23/no-nih-grants-colleges-dei-programs-or-israel#
See also: Notice of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award (NOT-OD-25-090): https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-090.html
4/22/25: NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women (Science) WHI leaders announced yesterday that contracts supporting its regional centers are being terminated in September and that the study’s clinical coordinating center, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, “will continue operations until January 2026, after which time its funding remains uncertain.” They added that the contract terminations for its four main sites “will significantly impact ongoing research and data collection … severely limit[ing] WHI’s ability to generate new insights into the health of older women, one of the fastest-growing segments of our population.” https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-cancels-its-first-and-largest-study-centered-women
4/22/25: In killing grants, NSF appears to follow Ted Cruz’s blueprint (Science) The National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent billions of dollars over several decades trying to attract more women and members of underrepresented groups into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But President Donald Trump says such efforts “stigmatize” people in the United States based on their race or sex and has ordered the agency to stop funding them. So last week NSF reversed course and began to terminate what could be as much as $2 billion in grants. https://www.science.org/content/article/killing-grants-nsf-appears-follow-ted-cruz-s-blueprint
See also: National Science Foundation Sets New Priorities (Inside Higher Ed) https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/04/22/nsf-terminates-grants-focused-dei-or
4/22/25: Harvard Plans to Use Trump’s Haste Against Him as It Fights Funding Cut (New York Times) The 51-page lawsuit the university filed on Monday, intended to fight the administration’s freeze of billions in federal funding, hinges largely on a statute that provides specific timelines for federal agencies to draft rules and impose penalties. This wonky workhorse of American law, known as the Administrative Procedure Act, has been cited in a majority of lawsuits filed this year against the Trump administration, including complaints seeking to reverse funding reductions to the United States Agency for International Development, local schools and Voice of America. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/trump-harvard-legal-case.html
See also: Harvard sues the Trump administration in escalating confrontation (Washington Post) https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/04/21/harvard-sues-trump-administration-funding-antisemitism/
4/22/25: More Than 220 Academic Leaders Condemn Trump ‘Overreach’ (New York Times) A day after Harvard sued the Trump administration over its decision to freeze billions in federal funds to the school, more than 220 higher education leaders from around the country signed a joint statement on Tuesday condemning the administration’s efforts to control universities. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/politics/university-leaders-letter-trump.html
See also: US college presidents unite against Trump’s higher education policies (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-academic-leaders-unite-against-trumps-higher-education-policies-2025-04-22/
4/22/25: Trump’s China Policy is a Disaster for Higher Education (Opinion, The Chronicle) According to the Institute of International Education , 1.1 million international students generated $43.8 billion and supported 378,175 jobs during the 2023-24 academic year. Of these, about a quarter came from China , which spent over $14.3 billion in educational expenditures in 2023. And these figures do not include their long-term contribution to American society, especially its global leadership in science and technology: Chinese students account for 36 percent of Ph.D. graduates in STEM subjects in the United States , and a majority of them choose to remain after graduation. https://www.chronicle.com/article/trumps-china-policy-is-a-disaster-for-higher-education
See also: Chinese Scientists in America Come Under New Wave of Suspicion (Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/china-us-scientist-suspicions-dd397f03?mod=education_news_article_pos1
4/22/25: Trump Tried to Derail Our Work. We Banded Together and Moved Forward. (Opinion, Guest Essay, New York Times) When knowledge is threatened, don’t just mourn it. Build around it. Not with rage but with the kind of resolve that moves through spreadsheets and shared documents, late nights and collective purpose. Because science is only as resilient as the people who refuse to let it die. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/opinion/earth-day-nature-report-trump.html
4/22/25: Exclusive: a Nature analysis signals the beginnings of a US science brain drain (Nature) Researchers in the United States are seeking career opportunities abroad as President Donald Trump’s administration slashes science funding and workforce numbers, finds an analysis of Nature’s jobs-board data. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01216-7
4/22/25: Medical Journals Fall Under Government Scrutiny (Inside Higher Ed) The Trump administration now appears to be targeting medical journals, questioning at least three different publications about how they represent “competing viewpoints” and assess the influence of funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health on submitted papers, MedPage Today reported . https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/04/22/medical-journals-now-reportedly-under-government-scrutiny
4/21/25: Science Suffers With Trump’s Funding Freeze (Opinion, Wall Street Journal) Industry alone can’t sustain the unpredictable explorations of natural phenomena essential for driving future innovation. Neither can income from university endowments. Our biomedical research programs are supported almost entirely by National Institutes of Health grants…. America’s scientific enterprise demands reliable stewardship, not destabilizing political intervention. Our health, economic prosperity and scientific self-determination depend on responding decisively to this threat. If we let the federal government use science funding as a weapon to control academic discourse and priorities, we risk becoming exactly what we sought to avoid in 1948: a nation dependent on others for the scientific knowledge that shapes our future. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/science-suffers-with-trumps-funding-freeze-6f813ac1
4/21/25: New NIH director defends grant cuts as part of shift to support MAHA vision (Science) Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told biomedical researchers in his first public remarks today that he’s pushing to “restore regular order” to the agency after funding cuts and delays, firings, leadership purges, and other upheaval imposed by the administration of President Donald Trump. But he defended several of those changes, such as the cancellation of diversity-related grants and clinical research in South Africa. NIH’s priority now is “the health of the American people,” he said, and supporting Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, which means focusing “limited resources” directly on chronic diseases. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-nih-director-defends-grant-cuts-part-shift-support-maha-vision
See also: NIH director calls Trump’s anti-DEI orders ‘misunderstood,’ downplays reorganization plans (STAT) https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/21/nih-director-jay-bhattacharya-says-trump-dei-orders-misunderstood/
4/21/25: EPA orders staff to begin canceling research grants (Science) Following in the footsteps of other federal science agencies under President Donald Trump’s administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week ordered its staff to start canceling grants already awarded to universities and research institutes, according to an agency source and an email seen by Science. Although EPA is not a large funder of R&D compared with other federal agencies, it does provide $35 million to $40 million each year to researchers studying the impacts of pollution and ways to reduce them. https://www.science.org/content/article/epa-orders-staff-begin-canceling-research-grants
4/18/25: NIH freezes funds to Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them (Science) In a 16 April email seen by Science, an official from NIH’s Office of Extramural Research told grants managers to halt disbursements to Harvard, Brown, Northwestern, and Cornell universities, as well as Weill-Cornell Medical School. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency, has also instructed NIH staff not to provide any communication to these institutions or to Columbia about whether the funds are frozen or why, according to the email. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-funds-harvard-and-four-other-universities-can-t-tell-them
