Say goodbye to your research project
The long arm of Trump
Door Marit Bonne
By Marit Bonne
Marit Bonne
‘It feels like a bomb just went off. It only just happened.’ Sitting in his office, Jelle Stekelenburg takes a sip of his coffee. The sun shines through his windows, the beams hitting what looks like a pelvis scale model lying on top of a stack of books.
While the professor of international reproductive rights and safe motherhood is showing in inscrutable expression, his words are crystal clear. ‘Yesterday, I had to phone my student in Nepal’, he says. ‘Two weeks ago, he was told he had to cease his research effective immediately.’
In the seven weeks since his inauguration, US president Donald Trump has been busy. The large-scale re-design of government expenditures and the myriad of executive orders he’s signed not only affect the academic world in the US, but also in Groningen. Research on climate change, foreign aid, and gender-specific healthcare are expected to be affected the most.
Health programmes
Stekelenburg’s work has also been affected. A few days a week, he works as a gynaecologist at the MC Frisius in Leeuwarden. The rest of the week, he’s doing implementation research in developing countries on mother and child care. The effects of Trump’s policies are impacting these countries severely, he says. ‘I expect we’ll be seeing a change in maternal and child mortality. And not in a good way.’
The academic has a long-standing collaboration with the Vrije Universiteit as well as non-profit organisation Jhpiego, located in Baltimore, which set up health programmes for mother and child care in developing countries ranging from Ethiopia and Rwanda to India and Nepal.
I expect a change in mortality, and not in a good way
The work is important; while it is often clear which interventions are needed to improve healthcare, the countries in question don’t always know how to best implement them, Stekelenburg explains. ‘You have to take into account the context, as well as the culture and the position of women, among other things.’
Because Trump is cutting almost sixty billion dollars from the foreign aid budget, countless research projects all over the world have come to a halt. That includes his PhD student’s in Nepal, who was trying to lower the rate of maternal and child mortality. ‘In Ethiopia, they were working on improving the nursing programmes, but this project was also abruptly halted.’
‘It’s unseemly’, says Stekelenburg. ‘Millions benefit from these projects. The supply of contraceptives, HIV drugs, and tuberculosis medication; it all stopped. This is going to kill people.’
Gender diversity
Other academics at the UG are also feeling uncertain and anxious, even if their research hasn’t been affected yet. One of them is neuroscientist Sarah Burke, who works at the UMCG and studies gender diversity and mental health. She often collaborates with post-doctoral researcher Aranka Ballering, who focuses on the links between gender, sex, and physical symptoms, among other things.
It didn’t take Trump long to implement measures to ‘protect women from gender ideology’. This means that projects using terms such as ‘transgender’ or ‘gender identity’ now run the risk of being cancelled. On 6 March, sixteen grants were revoked effective immediately because the research project used similar terminology, Nature reported.
Censorship has no place in science
Although neither academic currently has a direct international partnership with colleagues in the US, Ballering and Burke are concerned about the situation. ‘A while ago, we co-authored a manuscript that looked at gender diversity in Dutch society’, says Burke. ‘We weren’t sure whether to take it to an American or a British academic journal.’
They’re also even more careful in the words they use in their grant applications and academic publications. Burke has always made sure to choose her words carefully, but this is a whole new ball game. ‘Trump is all about changing or banning certain terminology, and that makes me very rebellious.’ Ballering: ‘Censorship has no place in science.’
Alternatives
Climate scientists are also wary about what the future might bring, professor of climate and environmental change Richard Bintanja has noticed. His colleagues have no choice but to exclude the United States in their project applications.
‘I’ve noticed my colleagues looking into alternatives’, he says. ‘We’re comparing all the different scenarios to explore how we as climate researchers can get around it.’
Just like Stekelenburg, Bintanja says it’s ‘a shame’ to see so many of his American colleagues getting fired. It affects not only the people themselves, but climate research as a whole. ‘I imagine most research will be halted.’
This directly impacts important climate reports that lie at the basis of climate policies, such as the IPCC report. ‘Even if Trump leaves again in four years, it will take immense time and energy to get climate research back on track.’
Securing data
His biggest concern is that essential data will be deleted. ‘The US develops a lot of models and has data that goes really far back.’ That data is extremely valuable to climate science. ‘We absolutely have to secure that data.’
It will take immense time and energy to get climate research back on track
But Bintanja emphasises that the US is just one country and we’re not completely lost without them. ‘It may make models and predictions less accurate, but I don’t know whether this will be by 1 percent or by 10.’
Ballering is mainly worried about the change in the way of thinking in the US. ‘I’m concerned that they’ll start denying any kind of diversity. That the only two categories are “men” and “women” and they’ll refuse to acknowledge anything outside or in between’, she says. ‘Diversity is inherent to earth, inherent to humanity. What the US is doing will cost lives.’
Research is negatively affected as well, she agrees. ‘If you exclude gender as a variable, you only get half the story. My fear is that all the progress we’ve made in research will be negated in one fell swoop and we have to invent the wheel all over again.’
Wake-up call
In late February, the Volkskrant published an op-ed that was signed by three hundred experts, including Ballering, Burke, and Stekelenburg. Ballering says it’s part of a larger counter-movement. ‘People in the Netherlands agree that we can’t let it get too far.’ Burke nods. ‘This petition is a signal: that we shouldn’t underestimate what’s happening in the US.’
Burke: ‘Aranka and I have been researchers for years and our field isn’t that big in the Netherlands. I feel obligated to use our position to voice our dissent. The loudest people get the most attention, so I figured we’d better start shouting.’
According to Stekelenburg, the US policy is a wake-up call for many. ‘African countries have realised that it’s time to stop being dependent on other countries for things like drug manufacturing.’
The resilience of people in places like Ethiopia gives him hope. ‘I admire the way they live, and the courage with which they face the situation when another child dies’, he says. ‘It’s so special.’
That’s why Stekelenburg thinks we shouldn’t give up just yet. ‘We have to start thinking of a way to fight this’, he emphasises. ‘How we can band together and find other ways of financing, among other things.’
Questionnaire from the US government
Two academics from Wageningen who work together with the United State Geological Survey (USGS) for a project monitoring deforestation received a request from that government organisation to fill out a questionnaire containing thirty-six political questions, Dutch newspaper NRC reported last Friday.
Among other things, the USGS wants to know if the institute they’re connected to has any partnerships with ‘communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties’ and whether the research project is taking ‘suitable measures’ to ‘protect against gender ideology’.
Overarching organisation Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) is currently taking stock of who else received this email. Various universities have since advised their employees not to fill out any such questionnaire.