Comment by aoki
5 days ago
I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.
That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.
I guess Harvard saw the decision at Columbia made the situation worse [1], so they decided to make a different one.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-rese...
Some universities should make sacrifices for academic freedom, yes. That's what they are there for!
I wouldn't say this easily if I were the sacrifice, especially as a visa holder.