15 hours ago
As Trump cuts funding, these Harvard scholars consider leaving US — and academia
For over three decades, John Quakenbush has been working in biomedical research, investigating the mechanisms that cause healthy people — and ultimately their cells — to become diseased.
He has raised his son in Boston, built a life with his wife and has a mortgage. However, with around $1 million of federal funding cut from his work, he is considering moving out of the United States.
'I'd hate to leave my home. I'd hate to leave my country,' Quakenbush said.
'The idea of walking away from that is really hard to think about — the idea of walking away from my own research is really difficult to imagine, too,' he said.
Quakenbush isn't alone. Many others at Harvard are considering this option.
It comes as a reaction to a wave of federal research grants being cut at Harvard and the Trump administration proposing a budget that would cut around 40% of the National Institutes of Health budget from the prior year.
The Trump administration has also frozen or cut nearly $3 billion in federal funding, giving the reason of antisemitism at Harvard. The administration has claimed the university failed to protect Jewish students, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza.
'In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students,' the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in May as it cut $60 million in grants to Harvard.
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Countries like Australia and France are offering Harvard researchers funding and job opportunities if they leave, at a time of uncertainty for Harvard, both in terms of research funding and the institution's ability to host foreign students.
'I stand behind Harvard in its decision to fight for its First Amendment rights,' Quakenbush said. 'But I'm looking, at this point in my career, at potentially two years with almost no external research funding — maybe longer. And, as you get to that point, and you're not doing research anymore, picking back up and starting up again becomes more difficult. Even securing federal research grants becomes difficult.'
Quakenbush has applied, with some colleagues, for grant opportunities in Europe to continue his work at Harvard — but it is also a way of 'testing the waters' of what possible interest there is for his work overseas.
'We're throwing away tens of millions of dollars of work by prematurely terminating these projects,' Quakenbush said.
Leaving higher education isn't something that Kelsey Tyssowski, a Harvard postdoctoral researcher, wants to do.
Her pathway to getting a tenure-track job has been halted by federal funding cuts. Her research only has funding until the end of the month — then it is up to tenure faculty to determine if she will have any left.
A canceled grant from the National Institutes of Health was supposed to cover her salary through March 2026 and the first three years of research in her own lab.
'I have to get a job this year. And this year it's going to be very hard to get a tenure track faculty job because there's hiring freezes everywhere,' Tyssowski said.
'If I can't stay in this job here, I almost certainly have to leave academia,' she said.
Tyssowski's research involves skilled movement, complex learned movements that can be reproduced accurately and efficiently and take entire body coordination to do, like climbing.
She is pioneering a new way to study skilled movement through deer mice — whose skilled movement might have evolved in a way that humans and primates have.
This could have major impacts on understanding how our brains do skilled movement and ultimately in treating diseases like ALS, where skilled movement is the first thing to go.
If she leaves academia, the work that she has been doing is at risk of completely vanishing.
'No one will do this research. I won't do this research. It will just go away,' she said.
While she has the skillset to work in biotechnology or at a pharmaceutical company and make more money, it's not something she is interested in. She believes in the 'mission of federally funded research' and the work of higher education, she said.
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Jules Riegel, a lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard, agreed.
'We don't go into academia because we want to make money. We go into academia because we believe in the mission of it,' said Riegel, who uses they/them pronouns.
Riegel has a three-year time cap to work at Harvard — a restriction on how long they can work at Harvard as someone who isn't tenured. They are approaching their last year.
While there is bargaining going on to eliminate time restrictions for non-tenure members through the Harvard Academic Workers chapter of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, there is a likelihood that Riegel will soon have to look for another job, they said.
With a tight job market filled with hiring freezes at universities and colleges as a reaction to an onslaught of federal funding cuts, Riegel is considering looking for a job overseas or leaving academia entirely.
'I really don't want to, but I have to be realistic about the world we're now in and that at the end of the day, that lies at the feet of the Trump administration,' Riegel said.
'This is what I've worked for my whole life, really, — certainly my whole adult life — and it's ... my sense of calling. It's my mission,' they said.
Quakenbush said he has had to give notice to four of his staff that they will be laid off and has sat down with each of his postdoctoral students that they should seriously be considering leaving the U.S.
Admittance to the Biostatistics Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's doctoral program has been whittled down from a typical year of 12 to 15 people to now four — two of which are international and are worried they might not be able to get their visas, he said.
Bence Ölveczky, a Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, said as much as he is trying to stay positive, it is difficult to encourage students and researchers to come to Harvard right now.
That is especially true for international students at Harvard, as the Trump administration has attempted to block Harvard international students from entering the country or enrolling at the institution.
'I have an incoming graduate student from Taiwan, who's phenomenal by all accounts, and I can't encourage him about this situation because the degree of uncertainty and anxiety associated with this whole situation is not something that I would necessarily want for myself if I had other options,' Ölveczky said.
When Ölveczky came to the U.S. at the age of 28 from Hungary, he said he found it to be the first place where he didn't feel like a foreigner. Now, that has changed.
'This is a unique country because it's a country of immigrants. And that's why I felt at home because nobody cared,' he said.
Ölveczky is settled in the U.S. now as an American citizen. However, only a few short years ago, that wasn't the case.
If he were making the move again out of Hungary for his doctoral degree, he said there would be 'no chance' of him coming to the country, he said.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
