Trump's DEI order leaves academic researchers fearful of political influence over grants

Kendra Dahmer, a postdoctoral researcher studying infectious disease, works in a laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, Calif., Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in programs receiving federal money has thrown into doubt the future of research Kendra Dahmer has been doing on intestinal parasites in India and Benin.

Dahmer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the single largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.

The grant is supposed to cover her research through the summer of 2026, but now she wonders if that will be possible. She received diversity-based funding as the first college graduate in her family and a woman in science and, more broadly, she is uncertain how Trump’s anti-DEI executive order could affect support for her areas of study.

“There’s also this aspect of research that funds specific studies in specific populations that are now being deemed DEI,” Dahmer said. “So, like HIV research in Africa may be deemed DEI, malaria research, which also happens in low and middle income countries, may be considered DEI. And these are really important diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.”

Two days after Trump signed the executive order on DEI on Jan. 21 researchers became even more alarmed when the White House called for a funding freeze to conduct an ideological review of all federal grants and loans. After days of chaos and legal wrangling, two judges intervened and the administration rescinded the freeze. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, which fund a large chunk of research in the country, this week began releasing grants.

But that hasn’t eased the fears of scientists and researchers whose work is funded by federal grants. The NSF said it is still conducting a review of “projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.” It’s not yet clear what may happen to new and existing NIH grants either.

On Friday night, the NIH announced it was cutting payments toward overhead costs for research institutions that receive its grants, a policy that could leave universities with major budget gaps. Currently, some universities receive 50 per cent or more of the amount of a grant to put toward support staff and other needs, but that would be capped at 15 per cent.

Universities, which received almost $60 billion for research in the 2023 fiscal year, have been mostly quiet, explaining in statements to their staff and students they are still trying to clarify the implications of the executive order on DEI. Meantime, they are navigating the order’s impact on their own institutional policies supporting underrepresented students.

The University of California said in a statement it is “evaluating recent executive orders issued by President Trump and the subsequent agency guidance to understand their potential impact on our communities.”

Even though there is no clarity on the new policies yet, some projects already have been put on hold amid uncertainty over the future of research touching on issues related to diversity, said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors.

Some of the studies already being halted include research on artificial intelligence and how racism can be coded into systems, he said. Other projects Wolfson has heard about getting stopped include research on health equity and studies on the urban literacy rate as it relates to class in places with large concentrations of Black people.

“I think the people who are making these decisions are very clear that they want to create a society that’s based on deep-set inequities that are hard baked and don’t transform whether that’s around race, whether that’s around class, whether that’s around gender,” he said.

The U.S. Education Department did not respond to an email message seeking comment.

Threats to funding for research related to DEI could eliminate a lifeline for historically Black colleges and universities, which are already significantly underfunded compared to predominantly white institutions.

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the largest HBCU in the country, has been on a yearslong mission to become one of the first to reach R1 status — a distinction from the Carnegie Foundation that denotes a university as having high research activity, but the president’s intervention on federal funding could slow that down, said Joseph Graves, a biology professor. As it is, biology department students have to conduct research in hats and gloves during the winter because of a lack of heat in the old building, he said.

New scrutiny on federal research grants could also hurt students at HBCUs who have federally funded fellowships for research, Graves said. Those scholarships, which could be at risk, allow minority students to pursue opportunities they might not have been able to afford.

The Trump administration’s perception of diversity, equity and inclusion could make HBCUs a target because of its high population of minority students, Graves said.

“They will look at our excellence in doing work that is changing the demography of science, and they will attack it as DEI,” Graves said. “Whatever we do, we’re doing DEI whether they like it or not.”

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Rodriguez reported from San Francisco and Seminera from Raleigh, North Carolina. Associated Press writers Cheyanne Mumphrey in Phoenix and Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed.

Olga R. Rodriguez, Terry Chea And Makiya Seminera, The Associated Press