Top UK universities forced to cancel projects as Trump pulls funding in ‘assault on science’
Leading British institutions have been forced to scrap research projects as Donald Trump ramps up his battle on universities.
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Several Russell Group universities have been issued ‘stop notices’, which formally notify the researchers to stop working on their projects as their funding is being halted.
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping cuts in several federal departments. After his inauguration in January, Trump signed several executive orders that suspended or cancelled billions of dollars in US research grants.
The US president has also suggested cutting the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at $47 billion, by 40%. The NIH is the largest global funder of biomedical research.
Leading scientific journal Nature has accused Trump of conducting an “assault on science” and imposing “Orwellian restrictions” on DEI policies, as the US National Academies of Scholars warn that the academic field is being “decimated”.
The controversial president’s attack on universities has now moved across the pond, as at least nine UK-based research groups were issued formal stop notices.
Another 14 schools have lost funding they were sharing with American collaborators as sub-recipients, according to responses to Freedom of Information requests obtained by Research Professional News.
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In total, more than 20 projects at Russell Group universities have been affected by the cuts, five of which – Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Southampton – had grants directly cancelled or paused.
One of the projects that were cancelled at the University of Liverpool was centred on helping farmers in Ethiopia to raise their chickens to improve child nutrition.
Part of the US funding the project received was spent on a successful pilot field study, but when USaid, the US’ international aid agency, was almost completely de-funded, the project was “significantly disrupted” according to a researcher.
Meanwhile, the University of Nottingham was slapped with two stop notices – one of which was a project aimed at helping the US Institute of Peace (USIP). Trump shut down USIP in February and fired its board members.
Another project at the university was related to child begging in Niger, which had to be suspended but has since resumed.
Durham University had four grants scrapped or paused, including one related to the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), for which the funding came through the US embassy. The money was pulled after the BAAS refused to stop considering DEI factors in its funding decisions.
Since his inauguration, Trump has been waging war on American institutions over DEI, including Harvard University, who is suing the president’s administration to halt a federal freeze on more than 2.2 billion dollars (£1.6 billion) in grants.
It came after the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university and changes to its admissions policies, and demanded it audit its views of diversity on campus and stop recognising some student clubs.
Harvard is one of several Ivy League schools targeted in the pressure campaign, which also has paused federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Columbia and Princeton to force compliance with its agenda.