ATHENS, Ohio — For the past two months Ohio University professors have been living in chaotic circumstances, as research funding has been frozen, diversity efforts have come under attack and international programs have been halted by the federal government.
On Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget ordered federal agencies to pause “grant, loan, and other financial assistance programs.” Among the agencies affected were the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, both of which paused their grant reviewing and disbursement process.
Although the spending freeze was lifted a few days later, some grants have not been distributed because the Trump administration has labeled the research the grants support as diversity, equity and inclusion projects.
Among the terms that can raise a DEI red flag are “climate science,” “bias,” and “socioeconomic,” according to PEN America, an anti-censorship group.
“If you have a research project that has a keyword in it that is ‘problematic’ like diversity, you feel targeted,” a professor at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine told the Independent. “And that might even be like ‘environmental diversity,’ ‘biodiversity,’ or like ‘climate change.’ It has nothing to do with DEI.”
A professor in a STEM discipline said they and their colleagues are concerned that the funding pause may spread to other governmental agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy.
“It’s entirely possible,” they said.
All the professors who spoke with the Independent for this story requested anonymity for concerns that their comments could threaten current or future grant funding. To protect their privacy, we are not using gendered pronouns or other potentially identifying information.
According to OU’s frequently asked questions page for the spending freeze “[faculty and students] should continue to pursue funding and prepare proposals for submission.”
“At this time, faculty, staff, students and post-docs supported by federal funding in their research or outreach work should continue their normal activities unless otherwise directed by the Office of Research and Creative Activity,” OU spokesperson Daniel Pittman wrote.
But “continue as normal” is meaningless when nothing at the funding agencies is actually normal, the OU-HCOM professor said.
“If you are submitting a grant to the NIH and they’re not even going to evaluate it when they should, then how can [Ohio University] be saying ‘Okay, we’re just proceeding as normal?’” they said.
“Even if things turn around, [there’s] still going to be a gap in your funding, and we don’t really know if it’s going to turn out okay,” they continued. “It may take like several hundred hours of work to write a grant on top of your teaching responsibilities, and if you think that it’s not even going to be evaluated, then that is not a good use of your time.”
Since previous grant funding can be an important resume line, the pause could be especially harmful to graduate students about to receive their degrees, said the OU-HCOM professor.
“[Current graduate students] are very concerned about staying in academia,” they said. “They are also very concerned because a number of job applicants for the industry jobs is expected to shoot way up. People have been laid off because they were supported by grant funds as a postdoc, and so now they’re looking for whatever job they can find.”
Funding pauses will have other long-term consequences, warned another faculty member in the humanities who personally does not receive NSF or NIH funding.
“I think the really concerning part of it is that there is really no way for us to do graduate training in a lot of the fields in the sciences without NSF and NIH support,” they said.
Pauses in funding for university research can have a knock-on effect, the humanities professor noted.
“It is very difficult to do work in [some industries], such as the pharmaceutical industry, without the kinds of basic research that goes on at universities,” they said.
Although some policymakers like to talk about useless research at universities, the findings from purely scientific projects have spawned entire industries, said a professor in the life sciences.
“People studied the refractive character of glass and plastics,” they said. “Who cares? Well, if you have a very high refractive index, you can … channel light down a long cylinder, that [eventually] became fiber optics. That became optical switching in computer systems. That was known from pure science decades before it was known as an application.”
The primary sources of funding for basic research are the NSF and the NIH, the professor said; other sources don’t make big grants or have a narrow research focus.
“Private foundations tend to support research if it has some relevance to recognized social or environmental issues, but they don’t give very much money,” they said. “State agencies give out money in much larger quantities. I had a grant a couple years ago, but it’s narrowly targeted on applied questions. Most people, most faculty, at least at OU do not, address applied issues.”
The funding freeze affects more than the research itself. Many grants include funding for indirect costs, such as maintaining infrastructure and supporting graduate education. In February, NIH announced that it was reducing its funding of indirect costs — which means the university itself will have to pick up the tab.
The life sciences professor speculated that the university may have to increase fees for students to compensate for the loss of income.
“We have managed to take advantage of the increased fees that we are allowed to charge to students, and that has allowed us to keep the wolves away from the door,” they said. “But the financial squeeze for the administration is getting harder and harder, and loss of indirect costs on research is making it even harder.”
International students affected by policy changes
As faculty members grapple with pauses or loss of research funding, international students are facing challenges of their own.
When the U.S. State Department froze funding for study abroad programs — including the Fulbright Program — the 24 international students who attend Ohio University on Fulbright scholarships have either received only part of their monthly stipend or none at all.
The Independent spoke with two Fulbright students about the freeze, but they later asked not to be included to avoid retaliation from the government
In an email statement, OU’s Pittman said the university has reached out directly to students to offer support.
“We recognize the reality that the evolving federal and state legal landscape might be creating concern amongst some of our international student and scholar community,” Pittman wrote.
Students who are impacted should stay in touch with International Student and Scholar Services, the Office of Global Affairs and the Office of Global Opportunities “to ask questions, receive individual support and learn more about the various opportunities for assistance that are available based on their specific needs,” the statement continued.
In a statement on the Fulbright freeze, OU’s International Student Union (ISU) raised the same concerns that faculty have about research funding.
“These uncertainties are felt acutely by those whose work depends on stable support systems, including Fulbright participants whose research often requires long-term planning and institutional backing,” the ISU wrote.
International cultural exchange programs like Fulbright is a form of “soft power” that influences how other countries view the U.S., the humanities professor said. They’re concerned about what a pause to the Fulbright program may mean for international relations.
“We underestimate how much work U.S. universities do in cultivating both good will abroad and also in cultivating respect for U.S. institutions and culture,” they said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s actions against holders of student visas and green cards is making both international students and faculty think twice about traveling outside the country, the OU-HCOM professor said.
“We have graduate students who have come on student visas, and they are afraid that they are going to be deported,” they said. “They have canceled any plans to travel and visit family. That is actually also true for faculty who are from other countries, who are here on permanent green cards, they don’t want to leave the country because they’re concerned about being able to come back.”
The STEM professor said the loss of grant funding, as well as stricter immigration standards, is concerning because STEM graduate programs are dominated by international students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly half of all master’s and doctoral STEM degrees awarded in 2019 went to international students.
Higher education leaders and faculty members need to do a better job of explaining to policymakers that strong universities — including international students and faculty — are critical to both local economies and foreign markets, the humanities professor said.
“We may have an administration that is not that interested in being a draw for international students, but it’s pretty clear that we still want an economy that is a draw for international customers,” they said. “We need to think of those things as a kind of package.”
