Since taking office, President Trump has leveraged billions of dollars in federal grants from colleges across America.
These funds have affected institutions' ability to conduct research and pursue new breakthroughs. While Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern and Princeton universities have been hit the hardest, BYU is no exception to these cuts.
One BYU public health professor, Erik Nelson, explained that since grants have been revoked, students have had a harder time landing scholarships and being admitted to different programs.
“Many programs have greatly reduced their admissions,” Nelson said. “This impacts students who I believe are talented and have very competitive applications, but are not being brought on by faculty because they cannot guarantee funding.”
Students and professors within programs have also been affected by research grant cuts. BYU communications professor, Ed Carter, had a Fulbright grant lined up to conduct research in Central Asia — until the funding got yanked.
“It was all lined up and we had everything approved,” Carter explained. “Then three weeks after the inauguration, I got an email saying the federal government's priorities had changed and the trip was canceled.”
There was no explanation beyond that. Reading between the lines, Carter assumed that the new administration had no interest in spending money on sending representatives to research journalism and democracy.
This idea goes beyond research and into the Trump administration's “America First” agenda. With this idea, there is less interest in collaborating with international partners and more interest in the zero-sum game.
While Carter stated that this grant cut is not detrimental to his career, it is still a lost opportunity to connect with international partners and build collaboration.
Nelson and Carter were open to discussing this issue. However, not all people approached while researching this topic were willing to speak about their experience. It became clear that the real story wasn’t just in the policies, but in the hesitation to speak about them.
Consulting Carter, a First Amendment expert, he said many professors and BYU faculty members aren’t speaking out because of fear.
“It’s fear,” Carter said. “If faculty speak out, they feel like they could be targeted.”
He continued to link this fear to the broader political climate of extremism, where power is wielded with little interest in compromise.
“The current federal administration is not about accommodation and peacemaking,” Carter said. “It’s about ‘we’re going to win 100 percent because we’ve got the power and the money.'”
Emeritus BYU communications professor, Dale Cressman, expanded on this chilling effect, stating that BYU professors are afraid to draw attention to themselves.
“I think schools, even BYU, are sensitive to donors,” Cressman said. “Anyone who gets funding might be afraid of drawing notice to themselves.”
This chilling effect is now being seen at many universities across the country. At Columbia and Harvard, $400 million and $2.2 billion in grants and contracts were frozen to demand changes from the universities.
Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber spoke out against this freezing in an interview with The New York Times, noting the overarching goal of government cuts against universities across America.
“The government was using its tremendous power over research dollars to try to control what a private university was doing in terms of matters that are generally considered part of academic freedom,” Eisgruber stated.
Because of this threat, many universities are censoring their speech out of concern for the consequences of standing against the cuts. However, Harvard recently stood up to Trump’s administration.
Following the cuts, Harvard filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because of the unlawful government reach. In response, a White House spokesperson told Fox News that their “gravy train of federal assistance” was coming to an end.
Standing with Harvard, more than 150 university presidents have signed a statement to unify as educational institutions against the government. In this statement, the universities explain they are open to constructive reform, but refuse to let the government infiltrate their role as higher education systems.
If academics don’t continue to stand up and speak out against these policies and government cuts, the future of the education system could be heavily impacted.
“What could ultimately happen is we end up harming ourselves or shoot ourselves in the foot in terms of the quality of our American higher education system,” Carter said. “The government should be careful about destroying what’s good about our higher education system and democracy in general.”
This issue goes beyond individual grants — it’s a broader battle over academic freedom, institutional autonomy and the role of education in a polarized political climate. As universities weigh the risks of speaking out, the silence becomes part of the story.