Hedy Tung

This Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on all federal grants and loans. The move aimed to ensure that future federal spending aligns with the administration’s priorities, especially targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives.

Later that day, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered a pause in the funding freeze until this coming Monday afternoon. However, currently approved research grants remain paused, according to Yale researchers the News spoke with. Additionally, since last Wednesday, the National Institutes of Health has not reviewed new grant applications.

“To my knowledge, this kind of pause — outside of a federal shutdown — is unprecedented,” Megan Ranney, dean of the School of Public Health, wrote to the News. “By slowing or stopping the process for funding, this pause has the potential to wreak havoc with the conduct of life-saving health science.”

During the 2024 fiscal year, Yale received $899 million from the federal government in the 2024 fiscal year to support the university’s research and training programs, according to University spokesperson Karen Peart. Over $643 million came from the NIH. 

The next major NIH grant deadline is Feb. 5, but researchers cannot submit applications now. Federal grants fund projects, as well as salaries of researchers and graduate students. The training of many students is also funded by DEI-based grants.

Last Tuesday, the Trump administration told agencies, including the NIH, to pause all public communications until Feb. 1, effectively resulting in a pause on grant reviews. The funding freeze order states that it will provide time to align federal funding with the current administration’s priorities and specifically targets funding for “DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”.

Diane Krause, professor of laboratory medicine and pathology, said that one of her students received a fundable score for a predoctoral fellowship to promote diversity in health-related research. 

“Now we don’t know if this will ever be funded. It’s been a nearly two year process to secure funding and that may all be for nought,” Krause wrote to the News.

Sedona Murphy, an associate research scientist in cell biology at the School of Medicine, explained that historically, NIH funding has been affected by racial inequality. 

Concerns remain about how scientists from underrepresented backgrounds will be affected by the funding freeze and Trump’s anti-DEI priorities.

“It feels like a major goal of the new administration is to re-segregate science under the guise of ‘meritocracy’ which is really just code for only straight white men should be here,” Murphy wrote to the News. “It’s gross and incredibly disheartening to see so much progress towards equity stamped out in such a short period of time.”

Ailong Ke, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, shared that his former trainees benefited from DEI initiatives. He said that it is “saddening” to see these programs end. 

If the funding freeze goes into effect, it is predicted to affect trillions of dollars and cause widespread disruption in global research grants that have been awarded but not yet spent.

According to Ronald Breaker, molecular biophysics and biochemistry chair, the NIH grant processing pause jeopardizes scientific research at Yale.

“Even small breaks in the chain of discovery — from idea generation, to grant writing and reviewing, to timely funds distribution — put at risk the pace of the breakthroughs we’ve been seeing in our labs,” Breaker said.

In a University-wide email sent before the federal judge blocked Trump’s orders, President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel addressed the concerns of the student and staff body regarding their research, studies and work at Yale.

“We want to assure you that we are actively working to understand the implications of any new policies, guidelines, and priorities, including the internal federal memorandum from yesterday that ordered federal agencies to temporarily pause grants and loans issued by the government,” they wrote.

McInnis and Strobel wrote that they do not yet have answers on how the University will proceed. They advised Yale faculty, staff and students to continue federally funded work except for specific cases with stop-work orders. 

In response to the funding freeze, Murphy wrote that “incredibly wealthy universities like Yale have a responsibility to stand up to fascism.”

In the statement, McInnis and Strobel also emphasized that they continue to discuss with legislators the importance of partnership between the federal government and higher education institutions.

Murphy agrees that correspondence with politicians is an important step.

“My current plans are to call my representatives and then organize with other scientists and protest,” Murphy wrote to the News. “This is still America, so I will exercise my rights to speak out against this blatant fascism and I encourage other scientists to do the same.”

On Monday, NIH released a memo explaining that additional guidance and clarification will be provided later.

Hari Viswanathan contributed to the reporting.

ZOE BEKETOVA
Zoe Beketova covers Yale New Haven Hospital for the SciTech desk. From London, UK, she is a graduate student at the School of Medicine studying Developmental Neuroscience.
ASUKA KODA
Asuka Koda covers the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Public Health. From New York City, she is a sophomore in Davenport majoring in Mathematics and Philosophy.