By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
The Trump administration is attacking one of the foundations of America’s post-World War II prosperity, the partnership between the U.S. federal government and America’s research universities. America’s dominance in global science and engineering is based on: 1. The creative and innovative environment that results from America’s freedom of expression; 2. The basic and applied research that is nurtured by America’s research universities; 3. Immigration of many of the top scientists in the world to America; 4. Private-sector-funded often university-based research, particularly in pharmaceuticals and computer science/engineering, and; 5. The merit-based, peer-reviewed funding sponsored by federal agencies, including NIH, NSF, NASA, NOAA, EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture. The Trump administration has launched a concerted attack on four of these five pillars of American science. This attack on the foundations of American economic dominance, coupled with tariffs and ideological attacks on top-rated universities, are deep and long-term threats to America’s economy and global standing. It is almost as if this has been designed by America’s opponents to undermine American power. The irony of this attack is that in punishing “woke ideology,” the Trump administration is punishing the least ideological part of American universities.
The great advantage of America’s political structure is federalism and the fact that states retain a measure of sovereignty. Unlike China and many other nations, states and localities can generate their own revenues and create programs that are not supported politically or financially by the federal government. As Trump attacks the powers of Congress and the courts, his main tool for attacking states is the reduction of federal financial support. The best way for states and universities to resist the destructive impulses of the President and his followers is to develop programs that are free of dependence on federal funding. In the case of my employer, Columbia University, that will mean a radically reformulated scientific enterprise. Our researchers will need to teach more in order to be supported by tuition revenue. Our labs will need to develop new revenue streams from the private sector and possibly partnerships with entrepreneurs. Endowment and gifts will need to be used to fund basic research, but by necessity that will be a much smaller enterprise than the one we have built to date. Perhaps foreign governments might be interested in partnerships. We should all study “the art of the deal.” Our scientific enterprise is too important to leave to the whims of an irrational and unreliable federal government. Even if the Trump administration restores some of its cuts to science funding, the impact of even threatened cuts and other efforts to regulate universities are excellent arguments for reducing science’s dependence on the federal government.
The historic partnership between the federal government and universities dates back to agricultural research and extension from the 19th century. Our advances in agriculture generated the food exports that provided much of the capital needed to industrialize. But the Trump administration’s attack on universities for political purposes should not be seen as a one-off, one-time event. It has exposed a critical vulnerability to the intellectual freedom of universities. Even if we manage to claw back some of the resources we once received, we should understand that the old model was based on a world where political consensus could be achieved. That world appears to have disappeared. We need to develop a funding model that enables us to do most of what we now do, but free of federal resources. This will not be easy to do since no one can match the financial scale of our national government. Of course, by reducing federal funding, we also reduce the need to comply with the massive array of regulations that are attached to federal funding. Complying with these regulations adds significant overhead costs to federally-funded research.
Our scientific enterprise was never based on total freedom of inquiry. Scientists have long directed their research agendas to match the funding priorities of federal agencies. If the federal government wanted models predicting climate change, we built them. If climate became a dirty word, we studied extreme weather events. Researchers learned long ago to steer their work in the direction of federal funding priorities. That will need to happen once again as we search for alternatives to federal funding. The irony of Musk and his tech bros attacking science funding is stranger than true. The world that Musk got rich from was built on science funded by the United States federal government. As Arizona State University President Michael Crow observes in a “fireside chat” at Rice University, the technology of the iPhone, Tesla, and space travel was built on the science in thousands of peer-reviewed articles generated by American academia. The internet, GPS, and scores of other technologies were developed by federally funded science.
In my own field of environmental sustainability, there was reporting last week of an effort to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. According to Lisa Friedman of the New York Times:
“The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” being planned by the Trump administration, which is intent on shrinking the federal work force. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency’s budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites, and other parts of the agency’s mission.”
EPA’s Office of Research and Development studies toxicology, human health risks from pollution, environmental clean-up and remediation, air pollution, water pollution, chemical safety, and scores of other environmental issues. It supports EPA decision-making with scientific fact. If this is to disappear, then America’s environmental non-profits, university research labs, and philanthropic foundations should get together and establish replacement programs in each area abandoned by the EPA. A national research network will need to be formed to replace the lost environmental science of the federal government. Only by pooling our remaining resources and talents together can we achieve a measure of continuity in our effort to continue to progress in understanding our natural world and the impact of technology to both harm and repair it.
It is not that I am giving up on the restoration of federal funding; I hope we can regain some of what is being lost. It is simply that we have become too dependent on a single revenue stream, and that is always dangerous for any enterprise. The political attack on universities may be misguided, but in some sense was inevitable in a world dominated by misinformation. Trump and the DOGE (Destruction of Government Effectiveness) bros not only do not understand how government functions, they do not understand contemporary research universities and their role in America’s economy. Paradoxically, the economic importance of research universities is more important in red states than it is here in bright blue New York City. Federal funding of science and even health care is an important element of New York City’s GDP, but we have a very diversified economy and will be able to survive cuts in federal science funding. But in some southern and midwestern states, federally funded research and medical institutions employ a much higher portion of the local workforce and are central to their economy. These cuts will have a devastating impact on local economies in communities hosting university-based science and medical researchers. While I hope that red state representatives in Congress wake up and restore this funding, the uncertainty and even temporary freezing of federal funding is driving talent away from America’s critical scientific enterprise. Our economic future depends on learning from this disaster and reducing our dependence on the federal government.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
