April 29, 2025
Dear editor;
Under the guise of a conveniently focused concern for antisemitism on our nation’s college campuses, the Donald Trump administration is attempting to impose its own political views and distorted realities on what has been for centuries the bastion of free thinking and independent research, our academic institutions.
Trump’s withholding of billions of dollars from these institutions is reminiscent of his quid pro quo of withholding support for Ukraine in his effort to acquire damaging information on Joe Biden and his family. But since so much of Trump’s ‘governing’ seems to derive from his insatiable appetite for retribution, one has to wonder what might be his true motivation for this unprecedented attack on academia.
Perhaps it’s rooted in the put down he had to absorb when one of the professors at the Wharton School of Business characterized him as “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had”?
In light of the fact that to this day, Trump’s academic records remain sealed and secured with the threat of a law suit if they would ever be revealed, one is left to wonder why such a “stable genius” would be so vigorously protective of this information.
Whatever may be his reasoning, the withholding of these hugely important funds by his administration displays an ignorance of higher education and its impact on the daily lives of so many.
Having spent a good portion of my adult life in academia, as a graduate student, post-doctoral researcher, faculty member, and departmental chairman, I am well aware of the profound effects that the manipulation of these funds can have.
I admire and support Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, in his resisting Trump’s extortion attempt, but most other schools are not as well positioned financially to afford such a gamble.
There are no doubt thousands of academic research projects already under pressure or canceled because of the abrupt termination of financial support from sources such as the NIH, NSF, EPA, NASA, and NOAA, among others. Many of those projects had the potential to improve our health, to improve our safety, to protect our environment, or to guide us in addressing climate change.
Not only are these potential advances being curtailed, but the lives of future and current scientific experts are being disrupted as well. When members of our own scientific community are being successfully recruited to do their work in other countries, it is time to put a stop to this nonsense which is being perpetrated upon us by an administration which displays such blatant disregard for science and the well being of our people.
The Trump administration is far more focused on erasing the past than on building a brighter future. So it’s up to us to make a difference. Speak up! Protest! Donate to the institution of your choice. The futures of your children, of your grandchildren, of you… depend on it.
Vincent Smith, Big Rock