Marble Falls Trump to American people: Back to the Caves! Yep, that’s the message. Like the old headline from the Daily News during that city’s fiscal crisis: “Ford to New York – Drop Dead.”
I keep harping about the current administration having declared war on the poor. The poor aren’t the only target of course. This is a battle from the right on countless fronts. One of many that is becoming more starkly obvious is their fight against scientific progress and educational achievement.
The problem with science is kind of surprising, since business depends so much on government funded advances in medicine, technology, and more that they get on the cheap from governmentally funded research, and then repackage to make billions. Recent administrations had made a thing out of increasing the numbers of students and workers with STEM backgrounds for example in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. No more, sucker! Trump to people: Go Dig a Ditch!
- National Institute of Health: down 40% to $27 billion.
- National Science Foundation: down 55% to $4 billion.
- Department of Energy science: down 14% to $7.1 billion.
- NASA: down 53% to $3.9 billion.
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: down 24% to $4.6 billion.
- US Geological Survey: down 34% to $1 billion.
You know how it goes. If you have to continue tax breaks to the rich, something has to give, so besides the contributions of millions of people donating their increased hunger and health to the rich, we are also throwing in our future, when it comes to research and scientific breakthroughs.
None of that counts the billions being threatened or frozen in grants to colleges and universities, much of which is also research. This conservative attack was more predictable. The historian Richard Hofstadter’s insights in his 1966 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life continue to be cited regularly in public discourse as a recurring, fundamental trait that infects American culture. The rationale from the administration involves DEI, wokeness, and somehow antisemitism, but basically, they were an easy target always available in the gunsights.
As a serial college dropout, I’m not the one to argue their case, but an editorial that also ran in the same issue of Science caught my eye. Part of their argument was that academia was asking for it. Having benefited hugely from soaring federal support after WWII, some are arguing they made a critical mistake by not saying thanks sufficiently and continually educating the citizenry to the value they were receiving from their investment in higher education. One professor argued that instead of just touting medical breakthroughs, they should now spend more time and effort on medical education that provides more understanding and benefits across the population. That point resonates as well, because it might tap down some of the medical misinformation that we all saw so recently in the pandemic and that is now spewing out of Robert Kennedy, Jr’s HHS department. Harvard Professor Danielle Allen, who is gaining a lot of prominence these days as an advocate for a new social contract between the academy and the people, cites the fact that 70% of the public opposed governmental interference in higher education, but the lack of communication of the public value of education was enabling these attacks. It seems too many conservatives obviously felt bullied and unappreciated in their elite colleges and undervalued, if they sported state school diplomas, so now we all must reap the whirlwind.
For sure, the ivy tower needs to be left behind, but when it comes to science and education, reform makes a lot more sense than destroying and undermining the institutions that have some much potential to determine a better future for all of us.