Pittsburgh professors say research was weaponized in Trump’s higher
education fight
[December 27, 2025]
By MADDY FRANKLIN/Pittsburgh's Public Source
Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump disrupted the
country’s research landscape with a series of executive orders and
administrative actions aimed at slashing key funding sources and
limiting the subjects of federally backed study.
His administration terminated hundreds of grants that were previously
awarded and reduced staff at funding agencies, leaving universities that
depend on federal research dollars scrambling. In Pittsburgh, that meant
paused Ph.D. admissions, hiring freezes and layoffs.
To date, research cuts have resulted in the loss of 104 jobs and $24
million in Allegheny County, according to the Science and Community
Impacts Mapping Project (SCIMaP). And more money would be lost if the
reduced budgets proposed for agencies such as the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are approved by
lawmakers early next year.
Beyond financial impacts, local researchers say Trump’s research funding
cuts have been a vehicle to attack academic freedom, and while
university leaders proclaim a commitment to the educational concept,
faculty members still have their doubts.
What is academic freedom?
They point to settlements between the federal government and
universities such as Columbia, Cornell and Northwestern, that have — in
their view — compromised the core mission of higher education in
exchange for the restoration of research funding.
The Trump administration, though, has defended its actions as necessary
to rebuild trust in American higher education by reversing “left-wing
ideological capture” and eliminating discrimination disguised as
diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Public Source reached out to faculty members at the University of
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University to
understand how this year’s funding challenges affected their ability to
research — a core tenet of academic freedom. Only Pitt researchers were
available by deadline, and those willing to go on record noted they were
not speaking as university representatives.
Disparities studies get ‘no research support’
Miranda Yaver, an assistant public health professor at Pitt, was in the
process of applying for grants from the NSF and Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality when Trump returned to office. She said as soon as
he signed an executive order declaring DEI illegal and ordered agencies
to root out all traces of it, she knew she couldn’t submit her
applications.
Her research looks at health insurance disparities.
“There is some research that can be camouflaged, and a lot of my
colleagues are finding ways to (not) use certain buzzwords in their
applications,” she said, “but my research is pretty hard to camouflage.”
Pivoting, she turned to private foundations for assistance, but nothing
panned out. “Starting next year, I will have no research support,” she
said.
Yaver wondered whether she didn’t receive a grant because of the quality
of her projects, or increased competition for foundation grants in light
of the federal challenges.
While she has enough projects to continue working on next year to
satisfy “internal and external pressures” to be productive, Yaver also
said there are a lot of ideas in her head — concepts that would be
beneficial for the health care industry — that she can’t pursue.
“To say that we can’t do research that intersects with equity is
mind-boggling,” she said.
This year’s federal actions have even been disorienting for a former NIH
institute director.
Jeremy Berg, who ran the National Institute of General Medical Sciences
from 2003 to 2011 and now works at Pitt, questions if agency shifts are
real or just language changes.
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 “If you’re working on health
disparities research, even if they won’t let you say
‘underrepresented group,’ or ‘Black’ or ‘Latina,’ can you still go
to the Hill District and recruit people?”
He believes researchers are continuing to do what they consider to
be important work, but are talking about it differently. Others feel
the act of removing language can be a deterrent from conducting
research at all.
Language rules have real impact
Pitt neurobiology professor Michael Gold was involved in a grant
that helped trainees from marginalized groups attend an annual pain
research conference. The grant would’ve been in its third year (out
of five) of funding, but the NIH sent a modification request asking
for the grant to be rewritten to better align with the agency’s
funding priorities.
These priorities include training programs for future doctors and
scientists that are “based on merit,” research into the causes of
autism, and disparities research that is “scientifically justified.”
The NIH says, “research based on ideologies that promote
differential treatment of people based on race or ethnicity, rely on
poorly defined concepts or on unfalsifiable theories, does not
follow the principles of gold-standard science.” An example given of
a poorly defined concept is systemic racism.
“We certainly couldn’t talk about diversity, equity and inclusion,”
said Gold about the resubmission. The NIH hadn’t reviewed the new
application as of publication time.
Gold called out the Trump administration’s efforts to deny the
existence of concepts like systemic racism and gender identity
differences, saying that “not only does it impact academic freedom,
but it impacts the ability to do valuable and important research
that has an impact on people’s lives.”
He said the loss of momentum on important topics has generational
impact, which is “something that you just don’t come back from.”
Federal agencies have sent modification requests for 212 of the
Pitt’s research awards. A CMU spokesperson said that university does
not track modification requests.
A Public Source analysis of NIH grant funding revealed that, in line
with nationwide data, the number of grants awarded this year that
included keywords such as “racial,” “gender,” “diversity,” “equity”
and “inclusion” declined by 20% across universities in Pittsburgh.
Pitt saw the largest total reduction.
Researchers have expressed frustration about how local universities
that receive significant federal funding have addressed this year’s
issues. Berg said their strategy has been “basically keeping their
heads down and not calling any attention to themselves.”
Since January, the leaders of these universities have issued few
public statements about the upheaval — and none of those have
outright condemned the federal administration’s moves. They have,
however, joined lawsuits against proposed research cuts or co-signed
broad statements with other college presidents around the country.
But, as the challenges facing higher education continue to mount,
researchers urge school leaders to change their strategies heading
into the new year.
“I think universities are running the risk of losing the faith and
trust of their faculty, staff and students who feel that they don’t
really have any principles that aren’t kind of negotiable, (like),
‘We absolutely agree in academic freedom as long as we don’t get a
really good offer, we’re not going to give it away,’” Berg said.
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This story was originally published by Pittsburgh’s Public Source as
part of its Gagging Academia series and distributed through a
partnership with The Associated Press.
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