The Trump regime is now attempting, in a fascist manner, to tame American research with budget cuts and executive decrees.
EDITORIAL by Per Koch, editor of Forskningspolitikk, Norway.
We are about to lose the United States.
I know there are some researchers, journalists, and politicians out there who are reluctant to use the f-word, but there can be no doubt that Trump now shares most of the characteristics associated with fascism.
Another word that is often used around kitchen and cafeteria tables is “madness.” You can say a lot about Trump’s mental health, but if you interpret what is happening within the framework of fascism, what the Trump administration is doing is actually quite rational, although in an evil way.
The logic of fascism
The actions are intended to help the regime achieve its overall goals of lasting political, economic and cultural hegemony nationally, and ruthless interest-based use of power internationally.
The hypermasculine ideal of fascism demands complete submission to the strong white man. Phenomena such as trust, diversity, and charity have no place in this paradigm. Loyalty goes only one way.
Universities are dependent on government funding
Many would have thought that research and science would escape Trump 2.0. He had shown no interest in research policy during his first term. American universities and companies are also not formally subject to the American state.
But many leaders and owners of large corporations have embraced Trump and Musk’s deconstruction of the state apparatus. They dream of an economy in which they do not have to consider regulations and institutions that demand accountability, sustainability, and equality.
American universities are mostly private (although some are owned by the states), and they have long traditions of defending the independence of science and researchers. Universities have also been centers of counter-power and counterculture, where students and researchers have criticized abuse of power and oppressive social and political structures.
But they do receive large transfers from federal institutions. 55 percent of university research is funded by the US government. It makes therefor sense for Trump to attack universities. He saves money and he can silence some of his strongest opponents.
Whitewashing of history
Trump’s nationalism demands a whitewashing of American history, where critical views of slavery and the extermination of Native Americans are to be replaced by pride in the American dream and manifest destiny.
Above all, Trump must suppress a systemic understanding of racism, where this kind of bigotry is not just something that individuals practice, but something that is embedded in culture, institutions, and social structures. Such an understanding reveals that inherited privilege gives white Americans (and especially wealthy white Americans) huge advantages in the struggle for jobs, money, status, and influence.
«Critical race theory» must therefore go.
Photo: CNN.
Transphobic terror
The same goes for “gender ideology.” The term is academically meaningless; there is no single “gender ideology” among academics or LGBTQIA people. But it has become a useful catch-all term for and understanding of sex, gender identities and gender roles that the extremists do not understand or like.
The Republican Party has turned trans people into scapegoats for everything they believe threatens inherited gender roles, the traditional family, and male social dominance. Republicans are now engaging in pure terror against trans people , depriving them of healthcare, legal recognition, access to public spaces, and support from schools, families, and health care professionals.
Since an overwhelming majority of researchers who study gender – whether they are natural scientists, from the humanities or social scientists – recognize that gender incongruence and gender dysphoria are real, observable phenomena and that trans people are helped by gender-affirming treatment, this research must be denied and suppressed.
The goal is «patriotic education»
The ideological rationale behind all of this is particularly clear in Trump’s directive on “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” This text claims, without any scientific basis, that support for transgender children is anti-American indoctrination that undermines the family. The opposite of this is “patriotic education.”
Patriotic education should be based on “ an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles,” Trump writes, and provide “a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history.” The rhetoric is more or less the same as the one promoted by Mussolini and Hitler.
We must assume that if this ideology applies to primary education, the ideals must apply to all education. Higher education is to become a tool for fascist propaganda.
The federal level is now attempting to stop loans and financial support for initiatives and projects that include “development aid, NGOs, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal.”
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has become a slur for initiatives that seek to include marginalized groups (including women) in society or stop the destruction of nature and the environment.
Stop collaboration
The president’s decrees have prevented key institutions such as The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and The Food and Drug Administration from attending meetings and conferences.
The staff cannot collaborate with the World Health Organization (WHO), which the United States has now withdrawn from. CDC staff also cannot publish with WHO staff.
Statistics
Many of the institutions are having trouble updating essential databases and statistics. The Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics have had to reduce their production of official statistics due to cuts. The CDC will no longer collect data on transgender identities. In total, the authorities have so far modified or removed over 8,000 websites and around 3,000 data sets due to Trump’s executive orders.
In Norway, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health is now expressing great concern about the quality of American virus and vaccine data . Norwegian researchers are asking the government to secure research data that is currently under American control.
Newspeak and banned terms
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent a lot of time identifying research proposals that contain terms that could conflict with Trump’s directives, including proposals that contain words like anti-racist, disability, diversity, gender, hate speech, inclusive, and intersectional. So has the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed words like transgender, pregnant, LGBT, non-binary, and she/he/they/them from its website. Climate has also become a bad word.
Many websites have replaced text that referred to LGBTQ or LGBTQI with LGB. The goal seems to be to erase transgender, non-binary, and intersex people from reality and divide the queer movement.
Researchers who receive funding from NSF should no longer conduct research of relevance to DEI.
This week, the NIH also canceled funding for research on vaccine refusal and vaccine use. Cancellation notices must contain the following justification:
«It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focus on gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment. … Therefore, the award is terminated.”
The new Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an anti-vaxxer.
The NIH has also made major cuts to research funding for universities in general . The organization has put $1.5 billion in medical research on hold.
Combine all the federal cuts and you can understand why some universities are desperate right now. The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University alone.
The fall of the Ministry of Education
The US Department of Education is not responsible for funding research, but it contributes to studies of education (including higher education); they have programs for research on education and influence the direction of such research; they administer federal student loans and have overall responsibility for accrediting institutions of higher education.
An important reason why Trump and the Republicans have wanted to close the department is probably that it also has a responsibility to stop discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities, victims of sexual assault, people of color, and LGBT people.
Republicans do not have a large enough majority in the Senate to shut down the department, so on March 11, Trump decided to cut the department’s staff by half instead. The New York Times put it this way:
The Education Department announced on Tuesday that it was firing more than 1,300 workers, effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.
Punish universities for student activism
Republicans want all education policy to be left to the state level, with no overarching control from the federal level. But do not think that Democratic-run states will escape attacks because of this.
ProPublica now reports on how several federal departments are now attacking Maine for its trans-friendly policies. For example, Trump is pulling federal research funding for the University of Maine. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has canceled its research funding in this blue state.
The Trump administration has cut $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University because it had allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The goal is clearly to have university administrations police the Trump regime’s control of public debate. This is just the beginning.
Mobilization
American and European researchers are now united in the fight against Trump’s research cuts. That’s good, because the biggest threat now is that individual researchers or university leaders engage in what Timothy Snyder has called “ anticipatory obedience,” i.e. trying to predict and prepare for possible future bans in order to secure continued funding and avoid prosecution.
This is already happening. The Wall Street Journal reports that:
Colleges are rolling back programs that they fear could run afoul of the new administration’s guidance and are making other changes. The University of Virginia voted last week to dissolve its DEI and community partnerships office. “DEI is done at the University of Virginia,” said [Republican] Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
American researchers and research institutions need moral and political support from European and Norwegian researchers, research institutions and politicians.
In the 1930s, European academics fled to the United States. We must now prepare for a flow in the other direction. This will be of great benefit to countries like Norway, but a disaster for American research.
Furthermore, we must do everything we can to prevent a similar development in Europe and in Norway. This includes defending real knowledge, supporting democratic processes and – above all – not giving in to rhetoric that aims at excluding vulnerable groups from society.
This is an expanded version of the editorial in the printed magazine.
The Norwegian language version of this editorial.
See also: Will Trump force the EU to turn its research glasses eastward? (Link to Google translation)
Jill Walker Rettberg on Khrono: How to resist Trump’s attacks on science (Link to Google translation)
Illustration: ThomasShanahan