Defunding the Future

Since World War II, when government-funded research not only drove innovation but demonstrated the vital link between investment in the sciences, national security, and America’s economic strength, the United States has led the globe in scientific discovery. In July 1945, two months before the war’s end, Vannevar Bush, the head of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development and former dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called for continued postwar funding of research in science, engineering, and medicine. He recommended establishing an agency to promote a robust partnership between the government and universities, through which enhanced federal support would accelerate research and development in ways that would benefit all Americans.

When President Harry Truman finally signed the National Science Foundation (NSF) Act of 1950, it was after five years of controversy and compromise surrounding several key issues, including patent ownership, the nature and scope of research to be funded, and administrative structure. Bush, who feared political control over research based on partisan ideology, was adamant that authority for distributing NSF funding be placed directly in the hands of a board of scientists, which would appoint a director. Instead, Truman insisted that the NSF director be appointed by the president as a signal of accountability to the people.

Since its inception, the NSF has made science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) research and education critical components of its mission, and for nearly half a century the NSF has emphasized broadening the participation of women and historically underrepresented researchers to develop intellectual capital, advance discovery, and meet future workforce needs. Over the years, the agency has reaffirmed its commitment to expanding opportunities for all Americans to participate in STEM, mandating funding for specific programs and consistently reviewing grant proposals based on both intellectual merit and broader impact.

But in a stunning reversal, on April 18, 2025, the NSF announced a change in priorities stating that “awards that are not aligned with program goals or agency priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), environmental justice, and misinformation/disinformation.” More than 1,600 previously awarded grants, worth roughly $1.5 billion, were ended with no opportunity for appeal. The largest number of those were related to STEM education. The NSF’s abrupt cessation of existing grant awards has impeded progress on several initiatives of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) that are central to our mission of advancing the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education. Three of these projects were funded through statutorily required allocations under the NSF’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Undergraduate Program to strengthen STEM education and research at HBCUs. In response, AAC&U in June joined a coalition in filing a suit challenging the mass termination of NSF grants.

The weaponization of research funds that so concerned Bush when he first envisioned the NSF has become a reality under the current administration and will undoubtedly have a profound and lasting effect, especially at HBCUs. Compared to predominantly White institutions, HBCUs have historically been underfunded, and the elimination of NSF grants that support DEI in STEM threatens to circumscribe excellence and reinforce a two-tiered system in higher education. In 2020, during his first term, Trump signed a law to promote public-private partnerships with the goal of making grant programs more accessible to HBCUs, which have long stood as monuments to Black scientific excellence. Indeed, for more than a century, Tuskegee University, for one, has transformed students from under-resourced communities into world-class scientists whose research has led to agricultural innovation and biomedical breakthroughs, including mass producing the HeLa cell line, used in the development of the polio vaccine and treatments for cancer, HIV, and COVID-19. 

But the recent elimination of DEI-centered NSF grants runs counter to the mission of HBCUs. Already, institutions are scaling back lab work, upending mentorship programs, and discouraging promising scholars from entering STEM disciplines. Early-career researchers may be forced to change their lines of inquiry or transfer their research programs to other institutions, including to those in other countries. The need to further allocate scarce resources due to lost NSF funds could worsen inequities in higher education across the curriculum that result from larger class sizes; fewer academic support systems, fellowships, and scholarships; and diminished programs for students with specific needs—first-generation students, those with disabilities, veterans, and low-income students. While all institutions are at risk, approximately 70 percent of students at HBCUs are Pell Grant recipients, compared to 32 percent at non-HBCUs, with about 46 percent of four-year HBCU students experiencing food insecurity and 55 percent facing housing insecurity. 

The potential economic and public health ramifications of the NSF cuts for Black communities are equally dire. HBCUs generate more than 134,000 jobs for their local and regional economies and approximately $14.8 billion in total US economic impact annually. In addition, faculty and students at HBCUs often conduct research on issues relevant to Black communities. 

In The World and Africa, W. E. B. Du Bois reflects on the enduring influence of individuals and their contributions to racial and social justice and describes one of his most fervent dreams as “a world of infinite and valuable variety; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human variety in height and weight, color and skin, hair and nose and lip. But more especially and far above and beyond this, is a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of difference, topped with freedom of soul to do and be, and freedom of thought to give to a world and to build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality.” He was convinced that “each effort to stop this freedom of being is a blow at democracy—the real democracy which is reservoir and opportunity” and that “there can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty.” Du Bois is exactly right, and it is precisely in this way that the NSF’s disavowal of broader impact and refusal to fund research tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion sabotages higher education’s democratic purposes. 

Illustration by Paul Spella