Thanks for this thought-provoking essay. It’s a thorny question. If one’s work is intended to benefit society and/or the earth community — even indirectly — I’d say it’s possible to take funding with integrity. There’s a wide space between that and “making the Saudi royal family laugh.” (And I’m a big believer in the importance of comedy.) Your further consideration of the ecosystem around scientific research, including staff and grad students, provides a further difference. Sure, okay, big-time comedians have writers and producers too. It’s not black and white, but I say it comes down to intent.
We’ve done science through good and bad administrations (remember the nauties and endless war, torture, Guantanamo, and imaginary WMDs that Colin Powell was sent to the UN to give credibility to/lie). Our tax dollars (and domestic discretionary funds for HHS) pay for good, stringently peer reviewed proposals—and should pay for many more given that paylines are presently in the low single digits.
This regime would like nothing better than to see us shut down our labs, so they can impose Lysenko level science—have you read the ‘autism and environment’ NOFO/RFA? I’ve been asked to review those proposals and the goal is to validate RFK Jrs. discredited ideas about vaccines, other disproven environmental risk factors (e.g. Tylenol) and autism, and establish an autism eugenics database (along with many others likely from the data that DOGE/Musk scraped on us all.
They’d also like nothing better than that my young diverse, smart group of trainees have the rug pulled out from under them and have their science careers derailed before they begin. Hell, trying as hard as I can I’m so relieved to have philanthropic funding for many of my rare disease projects, since it can take years to secure NIH funding at present.
Quitting when fascism/authoritarianism calls is just playing their game. We stay and we fight. And our being there doing real research, showing up for our trainees and the patients and families we truly work for (and the $ they raise to help us do this work) won’t whitewash a thing that they are doing everywhere in this country. It will just bring a little light and hope to the parents of kids with a neurodevelopmental disorder that I worked with today to find a way forward to help their child lead a better life with gene targeted and repurposed drug therapies.
So, no, I will neither be silent nor leave; and, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing what JD Vance and many others think about women, you know they’d love to have us womenfolk out of science and back in the kitchen/bedroom to do our trad wife duties after all—they hate that science expertise and leadership comes in every sex/gender, ethnicity/country of origin, and class more all the time in the USA, despite them. They don’t want us there ‘whitewashing’ or should I say doing our jobs, after all. They want to wipe away every vestige of independent thought, reporting, research that isn’t right wing, authoritarian/fascist, and Christian nationalist propaganda.
I will work for a day when we can root these guys and the foul stench that trails behind them out of DC for good. Until then, I research the voluminous writings of Heather Cox Richardson at present, and listening to her interviews provides me with that ray of light, informed by an honest, hard look at America’s past, present, and potential future—and I plan my next essays and op-eds with other folks here and elsewhere.
I think that scientists and many others would serve us well if they withheld their services. If computer scientists stopped creating new chips and models, Trump and his acolytes would lose something they value. Trump wants to defund NOAA, then we’ll see if he likes life without weather forecasts. He and his Mar a Lago buddies wouldn’t know whether they could play golf. That would get a response.
I used to be a professor at an elite school. I saw a group of computer scientists tell our President we refuse to take certain work. He was stuck and had to turn down the contract. It was for a $100,000,000 plus job. They said essentially if you take this job we will leave and go elsewhere. It can be done. Places like Harvard, MIT or Stanford can’t be replaced by Hillsdale or Grove City.
I was once a NOAA scientist, then a professor totally funded by NOAA grants. Those grants supported a dozen graduate students doing valuable research. It was not blood money, and taking it did not support any foreign policy. The best thing we can do with federal money is use it for beneficial purposes. The house may be burning down but we can still put out little fires.
Thanks for this thought-provoking essay. It’s a thorny question. If one’s work is intended to benefit society and/or the earth community — even indirectly — I’d say it’s possible to take funding with integrity. There’s a wide space between that and “making the Saudi royal family laugh.” (And I’m a big believer in the importance of comedy.) Your further consideration of the ecosystem around scientific research, including staff and grad students, provides a further difference. Sure, okay, big-time comedians have writers and producers too. It’s not black and white, but I say it comes down to intent.
Thank you for your thoughts, Julie. I agree with all these points!
We’ve done science through good and bad administrations (remember the nauties and endless war, torture, Guantanamo, and imaginary WMDs that Colin Powell was sent to the UN to give credibility to/lie). Our tax dollars (and domestic discretionary funds for HHS) pay for good, stringently peer reviewed proposals—and should pay for many more given that paylines are presently in the low single digits.
This regime would like nothing better than to see us shut down our labs, so they can impose Lysenko level science—have you read the ‘autism and environment’ NOFO/RFA? I’ve been asked to review those proposals and the goal is to validate RFK Jrs. discredited ideas about vaccines, other disproven environmental risk factors (e.g. Tylenol) and autism, and establish an autism eugenics database (along with many others likely from the data that DOGE/Musk scraped on us all.
They’d also like nothing better than that my young diverse, smart group of trainees have the rug pulled out from under them and have their science careers derailed before they begin. Hell, trying as hard as I can I’m so relieved to have philanthropic funding for many of my rare disease projects, since it can take years to secure NIH funding at present.
Quitting when fascism/authoritarianism calls is just playing their game. We stay and we fight. And our being there doing real research, showing up for our trainees and the patients and families we truly work for (and the $ they raise to help us do this work) won’t whitewash a thing that they are doing everywhere in this country. It will just bring a little light and hope to the parents of kids with a neurodevelopmental disorder that I worked with today to find a way forward to help their child lead a better life with gene targeted and repurposed drug therapies.
So, no, I will neither be silent nor leave; and, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing what JD Vance and many others think about women, you know they’d love to have us womenfolk out of science and back in the kitchen/bedroom to do our trad wife duties after all—they hate that science expertise and leadership comes in every sex/gender, ethnicity/country of origin, and class more all the time in the USA, despite them. They don’t want us there ‘whitewashing’ or should I say doing our jobs, after all. They want to wipe away every vestige of independent thought, reporting, research that isn’t right wing, authoritarian/fascist, and Christian nationalist propaganda.
I will work for a day when we can root these guys and the foul stench that trails behind them out of DC for good. Until then, I research the voluminous writings of Heather Cox Richardson at present, and listening to her interviews provides me with that ray of light, informed by an honest, hard look at America’s past, present, and potential future—and I plan my next essays and op-eds with other folks here and elsewhere.
Your passion is inspiring, Kristin! I appreciate your point that staying can be the best resistance!
I think that scientists and many others would serve us well if they withheld their services. If computer scientists stopped creating new chips and models, Trump and his acolytes would lose something they value. Trump wants to defund NOAA, then we’ll see if he likes life without weather forecasts. He and his Mar a Lago buddies wouldn’t know whether they could play golf. That would get a response.
Ha! Maybe targeting science that affects golf or the production of gold-leaf decorations is the answer.
I used to be a professor at an elite school. I saw a group of computer scientists tell our President we refuse to take certain work. He was stuck and had to turn down the contract. It was for a $100,000,000 plus job. They said essentially if you take this job we will leave and go elsewhere. It can be done. Places like Harvard, MIT or Stanford can’t be replaced by Hillsdale or Grove City.
It can be done.
Wow, collective action by faculty! Very inspiring.
I was once a NOAA scientist, then a professor totally funded by NOAA grants. Those grants supported a dozen graduate students doing valuable research. It was not blood money, and taking it did not support any foreign policy. The best thing we can do with federal money is use it for beneficial purposes. The house may be burning down but we can still put out little fires.