Reposted by Jake Buzhardt
While the administration has said it is cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans", it actually funded fewer grants in every area of science and medicine.
“They brought everything to a stop,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the N.I.H.’s National Cancer Institute
nytimes.com
The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article)
A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.
![May 17, 2025
SUBJECT: Supporting science and opposing the unfair targeting of universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism
Dear Senators Baldwin and Johnson,
I have previously written to you about my deep concern about the potential loss of American leadership in science, engineering, and medicine stepping from several policies pursued by the White House, including large-scale cuts to our agencies that support fundamental scientific and medical research: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE).
If enacted, the massive cuts to these science agencies will push premier American and global talent out of the United States, and the next set of scientific and medical discoveries will happen elsewhere or will not happen at all. We will miss out on technological progress, our health and national security will be harmed, and our economy will grow far slower than it would if we maintain our leadership in science.
But I also want to write about the extreme harm being caused to American science by individual targeting of individual American universities.
I am a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I run a research group the develops optics/photonics technologies, working at the interface of semiconductor science, quantum science, materials science, and imaging and sensing. My research has been supported by federal government agencies, including the NSF, DOE, DARPA, the Air Force, and the Navy. The alumni of my research group are doing cutting-edge engineering at top American companies like Honeywell, Google, Apple, and Meta, and R&D at government labs and American universities.
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Prior to coming to UW-Madison, I received excellent undergraduate training at Cornell University and graduate training at Harvard University. In recent days, the federal government canceled billions of dollars of grants and contracts for science and medical research that were previously awarded to Harvard, Cornell, and a number of other universities. As far as I can tell, this was done under the guise of fighting antisemitism at these universities.
As a Jewish American whose family moved to the United States in significant part to escape antisemitism in the former Soviet Union, I find our government’s justification for funding cuts to these universities to be preposterous and counterproductive. While I am sure that one can find some amount of antisemitism at every university and in any large organization, major research universities like Harvard, Cornell, and UW-Madison have been some of the biggest drivers of the success and prosperity of Jewish Americans. I am confident that a large majority of Jewish Americans oppose these massive, untargeted cuts to research funding to these universities.
I would like to encourage you to use the power you have as a member of the Senate to support the American science enterprise and to oppose the defunding of major American universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism.
Sincerely,
Mikhail Kats
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but *writing in my personal capacity* and not on behalf of my employer](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:abkp4sglznvkptyncrltve6t/bafkreiajfhhvyzs7y3sm6ylmgzjguuwqhg3zmrqb546ltdg7djrdf2ocv4)
