A vacant hallway at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma, AL, Tuesday, Sep. 3, 2024 in Selma, Ala. (Will McLelland for Alabama Reflector)
Alabama’s research institutions are largely staying quiet about President Donald Trump’s administration’s halt to National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant reviews, potentially impeding major sources of funding from reaching these institutions.
While such interruptions are not uncommon during presidential transitions, Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Monday that the scope of this pause is unprecedented. Institutions that heavily rely on tax dollars, she said, may be hesitant to speak out as they are worried about the consequences of pushing back against an administration known for retaliatory tactics.
“This is absolutely a war up of fear and intimidation,” Jones said. “When you are dependent on the federal government returning those monies back to your community to do that work, those fear and intimidation techniques are having that exact chilling effect they were meant to.”
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NIH grants for Alabama in 2023 totaled about $386 million; spurred nearly $1 billion in economic activity in Alabama that year and supported 4,769 jobs in the state, according to United for Medical Research.
About 85% of that funding went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). UAB and Southern Research Institute, an independent nonprofit research organization based in Birmingham, which received over $4 million in contracts and research awards, issued nearly identical statements about the freeze, saying they were “evaluating the recent orders” but declined further comment.
UAB later responded to a follow-up with “UAB is aware and closely monitoring developments.”
Several researchers affiliated with UAB declined to comment on the record, with one saying it was due to “potential repercussions/retaliation.”
The University of South Alabama said in a statement that it was “a bit premature to discuss the complexity of this issue.” BIO Alabama, an advocacy group for the state’s bioeconomy, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jones said “this is a fundamentally anti-science administration” and that the silence from institutions underscores that hostility toward science. She said that she’s hearing from the research community that “nobody’s getting any information.”
“They have been shut out, and that is to create that chilling, chaos factor … that lack of communication is not normal and not acceptable. That is interference with science,” she said.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the non-medical research counterpart to NIH which provided at least $74 million for research projects in 2024, said that it is also pausing all review panels, new awards and payments under open grants as it conducts a review mandated by the Office of Management and Budget.
“All review panels scheduled for the week of January 28 will be rescheduled to a future date as appropriate,” the agency said in a statement.
The agency also instructed all NSF grantees to comply with the executive orders by halting any grant activities that involve diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility principles or that could be seen as non-compliant with federal anti-discrimination laws. The pause applies to conferences, workshops, and staffing considerations tied to NSF funding. The agency has launched an executive order implementation webpage to provide ongoing updates.
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