Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

What's Happening With Federal Funding of Research? Understanding the administration's recent changes

April 24, 2025, 6:00-8:00pm
1080 Biolabs, 16 Divinity Avenue

Abstract

The Harvard Griffin GSAS Science Policy Group and the Science, Technology and Society program present "What's happening with federal funding of research? Understanding the administration's recent changes." In the past two months, longstanding practices and assumptions underlying the organization of academic research have faced fundamental challenges. From indirect cost rates, to federal grant review processes, conventional mechanisms for sponsoring scientific research are no longer taken for granted, creating uncertainties for universities and disruptions in hiring, research projects, and graduate training. Since the end of WWII, science and technology have been constitutional to our understanding and advancement of American society, and while state sponsorship of science has been renegotiated in the past, such a radical realignment between state and science is unprecedented. If knowledge production is to be defended as a public good, now is the moment to re-familiarize ourselves with the US research enterprise, its mechanisms, contributions, accountability, and positioning vis-à-vis broader society.

Speakers

Willie May (former AAAS president)
Lisa Margonelli (Editor-in-Chief of Issues in Science and Technology)
Yasheng Huang (Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School)
Arthur Daemmrich (Director of the ASU Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes)
David Guston (Foundation Professor and Founding Director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at ASU)
Moderated by: Sheila Jasanoff (Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Director of the STS Program at Harvard)

Register here