Trump cuts trigger hiring freezes at New York colleges with medical research in jeopardy
New York colleges and universities are freezing hiring and warning that President Trump's federal cuts endanger the very existence of their research programs.
On Thursday, SUNY convened 14 schools in a letter to the New York Congressional Delegation against drastic slashes to medical research. The universities included Columbia, NYU, Cornell, CUNY, Rochester and Syracuse, among others who receive significant funding from the National Institutes of Health.
'Without continued support for academic research, most universities would be unable to sustain their research programs,' the letter warned.
'In total, over $3.5 billion in grants last year contributed to initiatives that are — quite literally — helping cure cancer and leading to the discovery of the next medical breakthrough that will change the world,' it continued. 'This funding directly impacts your constituents.'
NIH is looking to cap the 'indirect' costs associated with medical research, such as for staffing or lab facilities. The plan is currently on hold by the courts after close to two dozen states and organizations representing universities and research institutions sued to reverse the cuts.
Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that maintain diversity programming or are believed to have failed to protect Jewish students from harassment. On Friday, the administration made good on the president's threat, pulling $400 million in federal contracts from Columbia. The stop-work orders are expected to include the university's grants from the federal health department, which is the parent agency of NIH.
The letter did not reference Trump by name. But for many of the signatories, it marked the first time college presidents spoke out publicly against his policies.
In recent weeks, both Columbia and Cornell have implemented hiring freezes university-wide or at their medical programs. Columbia's pause extends to travel reimbursements and events, such as attending medical conferences, while the freeze at Cornell has some carve-outs for positions deemed 'mission-critical' by top administrators.
'Together with all of American higher education, Cornell is entering a time of significant financial uncertainty,' read the Feb. 27 announcement, which cited 'the potential for deep cuts in federal research funding,' among other factors.
At Stony Brook, a SUNY campus on Long Island, research benefiting 9/11 responders, patients with Lyme disease, and people at risk of developing dementia are all at risk of being decimated if the cuts go through. But the school has already started to feel the budget squeeze.
'We have not had to announce a freeze formally, but we are seeing those types of impacts,' said Kevin Gardner, vice president for research at Stony Brook.
'The way these cuts have happened have been quite sudden. We can't — with the values we hold dear as an institution — terminate a graduate student or a post-doc with zero days notice. So we have one training program (that lost federal funding), so we're paying that from the institution. But we can't do that for everything.'
At the CUNY Graduate Center, stop-work orders have been issued for projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the presidential administration has sought to dismantle, and other non-NIH-funded projects on research topics related to diversity and gender.
But the graduate center's president Joshua Brumberg, who sits on a NIH grant review panel, warned that delays to the approval of new research are already taking a toll.
'That's going to prevent the evaluation of proposals, which means funding decisions will be delayed, which means research will be delayed,' Brumberg said.
On top of the threats to research funding, Brumberg added the uncertainty has impacted 'the personal well-being of all the people that are involved in the research enterprise. And by just worrying about it, that takes away from the goal of the research, which is to cure societal ills.'
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