A Bsky thread I wrote on 22 Feb, which continues to proven to be frighteningly accurate.
This is really bad news. Here’s a thread to explain just how bad it is. [1/x]
The NIH cuts weren’t specifically about NIH. Trump, Musk and/or the P2025 forces chose NIH as a compromise:
- Trump hates Tony Fauci
- Musk wants maximum “disruption”
- P2025 wants to remake higher ed
The last one is the key. [2/x]
Federal research funds (call them FRFs) correlate strongly with “prestige.” The more prestigious an edu, the more FRFs it gets, and the more likely it is to get those funds. P2025 “weaponized” that dynamic: they turned the mechanisms meant to support edus become vectors for attacking them. [3/x]
The attack is simple. FRFs include “indirect” costs, mostly ~50%, but for some “prestigious” edus up to ~70%). So 50–70% of FSFs go to supporting edu infrastructure: facilities, human capacity, operating costs, etc. Those benefit the entire edu, so withdrawing them harms the entire edu. [4/x]
FSFs are a revenue stream for edus, and what do you do when you suddenly lose a revenue stream? Freak out. Except that Rule One of Edu Club is never freak out. Or at least never let anyone see you’re freaking out. Because edus run on reputation, and freaking out is bad for the rep. [5/x]
Bad things happen when folks get the vibe an edu is freaking out: applicants drop, selectivity falls, rankings suffer, recruiting and retaining faculty becomes harder — a vicious circle. So edus try to avoid this by presenting themselves as virtuous circles. So edus lie. It’s in their DNA. [6/x]
You will never see an edu openly freak out. Until their very dying breath, admins will babble in the corporatist language of neoliberalism: restructuring, efficiency, synergy, new approaches, market opportunity, etc, etc. That’s true internally as well: bad news is only ever rumored. [7/x]
…which brings us back to NIH. For Trump it was an easy target: MAGA has been trained to hate it, liberals love it, and MAGA loves owning the libs — so that side of attacking NIH was win-win-win. And when academics finally react, that’ll be an even bigger win for MAGA. [8/x]
or P2025 it’s a different kind of win: it’s a way to defund edus. Not just the science parts, the whole damn thing. Because what do you do when you lose a revenue stream? Freak out. But edus never freak out. So what did they really do? Freak out very, very quietly. [9/x]
Trump & Co. announced the NIH cuts late on a Friday. When people who understand how edus work (which, again, is not most academics) heard the news, they freaked out — quietly. Like what parents do when one of them loses a job: talk — just, you know, not in front of the K. I. D. S. [10/x]
But in this context K. I. D. S = faculty, students, staff, applicants, partners, accreditors, neighbors. So the only people in on the early freak-out talks would be high-level admins: presidents, provosts, trustees/regents, maybe deans, heads of finance, operations, counsel, planning, etc. [11/x]
Schools run on numbers. If an entire edu or a division, a “college” or “school”, a department, a degree program, or even just a course don’t meet their expected numbers, they get cut. Even small variations can have a big impact. But many of those numbers are tiny compared to the NIH cuts. [12/x]
So after Trump & Co. announced reductions of “indirect” FRFs from 50–70% to 15%, the #1 question these high-level admin groups asked was where the f— can we make cuts on that scale?!. The answers definitely weren’t limited to FSF recipients — or their depts / schools / colleges / divs. [13/x]
They’ll come out of everything else (except sports 🤯). From the humanities, arts, social sciences — fields that perfected learned helplessness over 3+ generations of cuts. In those fields, “solidarity” is an idea, not a thing you do, and definitely not something you risk your career over. [14/x]
They’ll come out of all the obvious and non-obvious social and individual support mechanisms that schools had to take on as a way to compensate for systemic failures of other institutions. They’ll come out of the communications that remind everyone outside that what edus do really matters. [15/x]
They’ll cut other services too — library budgets, tech services (equipment, software / info subscriptions), furnishings, etc. Staffing is a big one: they’ll do things like lay off dedicated security employees and hire rent-a-cops. That goes really badly: more tensions, more theft, etc. [16/x]
They’ll cut facilities too, but not as much as you expect. For edus fixed costs — the cost of keeping a campus and maintaining all those facilities and services, etc — are immense. And unforgiving. They desperately need to keep up appearances, and you can’t just mothball buildings now. [17/x]
Modern architecture — needed for STEM fields — is really complex . Not just bricks & mortar + white pillars but dozens of interrelated systems that, like all advanced tech, require constant use and upkeep. [17/x] Especially the fancy “green” stuff that edus love to build and brag about. [18/x]
You can’t just mothball them — they’ll become unusable. Often you can’t even close off certain areas, because green design exploits every efficiency: budgets rely on fluctuations in energy cost, waste water is used in cooling systems, all kinds of brilliant and fragile interdependencies. [19/x]
But those are just concrete examples, so to speak. Edus have become complex ecologies in every way. And the NIH cuts are like a natural disaster. Pick your metaphor: tsunami, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, sinkhole — they all work because none of them care about organizational sturcture. [20/x]
So we have, as they say, a perfect storm:
- a setting where “experts” understand less than they think
- an attack focused on the most “prestigious” institutions
- organizations where “discreet” dishonesty is the norm
And this is only the beginning of the attacks. [21/x]
The next will involve accreditation and tax status. We saw the first sign of this when Trump gave edus two weeks to purge anything and everything that smacks of “DEI.” The only part that mattered was the ridiculously short deadline because it laid the basis for selective enforcement. [22/x]
I think Trump & Co. will ramp up these and more attacks to create a challenge that no edu, however well-resourced or expertly run, could ever comply with. And they’ll tie all access to fed “funding” to complete compliance. The tiniest violation: no funds, no financial aid, no nothing. [23/x]
They’ll give some selectively chosen edus an offer they can’t refuse: either shut down or go into some “receivership” status, where they’ll do what DeSantis did to New College of Florida and what Trump is doing to everything: installing his apparatchiks to demolish everything ASAP. [25/x]
And when faculty and students freak out, Trump & Co. will give the edu an ultimatum: shut them up or lose your tax status. That’s their game, and you’ve been warned. Now it’s up to you, my fine academic friends, to come up with a “playbook” to fight back with every fiber of your being. [26/x]
Here’s the missing 24/x. I’ve been ranting about these systemic risks for somewhere between the last few weeks and, as a few of you know, the last twenty years. Always with this advice: faculty must organize. Admins are not your allies; students could have been — but you ignored the debt issue.
When it rains it pours: Pitt, Vanderbilt, and now Penn, with many more to come:
