An unprecedented wave of interventions on the content, personnel and funding of scientific research is currently affecting federal agencies and academic institutions in the United States.
The implementation of Donald Trump's numerous executive orders affecting gender, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), environmental and climate issues and development aid is resulting in a policy of censorship, intimidation, layoffs and budget cuts.
The federal agencies in charge of health (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC), the environment (the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA) and disasters (the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) are the most immediately concerned, and are undergoing real purges of their websites, databases and funding programs. As for the agency in charge of development aid, USAID, it has simply been dissolved.
Funding for universities has also been targeted. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the agency in charge of funding basic research, has been tasked with drawing up lists of thousands of research projects that contain a number of terms related to DEI themes, so that they can be suspended. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds research in the health sector, has announced that overheads granted to universities in addition to funding for research projects will henceforth be capped at 15%, a drastic reduction for many universities which depend on these budgets to ensure the basic missions of the structures in charge of implementing projects (administration, laboratory maintenance, support staff, etc.). Participation fees for scientific conferences have been frozen at the NIH for the time being.
These restrictions on terminologies, subjects, methods and means of research are enduringly compromising these activities and their credibility. The universities of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles are alarmed by these measures and their impact on the independence and integrity of scientific research, which requires that researchers be able to conduct their work freely, collaborate with the people of their choice, communicate their results and discuss them with their peers without hindrance.
They recall that scientific research is a collective process that works towards progress and relies on intense international collaboration. This is all the more essential when it concerns global issues such as pandemic risk prevention or climate change. The impact of these measures on the production of new knowledge and innovation concerns us all.
They pledge to encourage actions aimed at reducing the impact of these measures in their respective academic and scientific communities (involvement in collaborative projects, participation in editorial boards of international journals, organization of conferences, promotion of mobility from the USA, ...) and call on the Belgian and European authorities to reaffirm the importance of freedom of research in all fields of knowledge.
