Hundreds of graduate students rallied at the Arbor steps on April 8, decrying cuts to federal funding vital to research at UC Santa Barbara. While the cuts have impacted several departments and research centers, research in life sciences has taken a significant hit as funding from the National Institutes of Health — one of its biggest funding sources — may be slashed.
Hundreds gathered to rally against potential funding cuts to vital research at UCSB. Lizzy Rager/Daily Nexus
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funding institute of biomedical research, has slashed nearly 800 research projects since March as they no longer meet “agency priorities,” according to notices sent to NIH institutes. Members of the NIH have been instructed to cut funding to projects that mention studying workplace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, transgender people, environmental justice, gender identity and any other research that could be seen as discrimination based on ethnicity or race, documents and recordings obtained by the scientific journal Nature found.
In February, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a suit against the federal government for “unlawfully decimating funds that support cutting-edge medical and public health research at universities and research institutions across the country.” In anticipation of the potential funding cuts, the University of California (UC) initiated a systemwide hiring freeze on March 19. UC President Michael V. Drake has also instructed campuses to roll out other cost-cutting measures, including delaying maintenance and travel expenses.
In response to the recent orders, hundreds of graduate students and supporters gathered for a UC-wide research rally. Representatives from United Auto Workers Local 4811, the UC union for graduate workers, gave speeches as well.
Participants held signs that read “kill the cuts.” Shengyu Zhang/Daily Nexus
“These cuts mean additional cuts to the life-saving research funded by the NIH as well as fewer [teaching assistant] positions, larger class sizes and scaling back on the courses that we offer. Let it be known that these cuts are not disconnected from attacks on free speech and civil liberties at college campuses across the country,” religious studies graduate student Emma Hanlon said.
Hanlon referenced the recent detainment of student activists such as Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and Rumeysa Öztürk at Tufts University, who participated in pro-Palestine activism. She said these attacks are “part of the Trump administration’s border efforts to exert control over higher education.”
“The state is using threats of funding cuts as leverage to push universities to censor free speech and restrict free expression. We are here today to say that we will not be intimidated by these cuts, and that we will, say with me, kill the cuts,” Hanlon said.
Some graduate school admission offers, including those from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh, have been rescinded by universities due to forecasted cuts to funding. The tightening of funding also deters access to higher education from the “poor and working class communities of color,” Hanlon said. She said this has closed the door to future generations in academia.
“I will not stand idly by and watch as this administration does what it wants to higher education. Will you? I will not stand idly by as research that employs so many of you, so many of my colleagues and saves so many lives is undermined right here at our campus,” Hanlon asked.
Fifty percent of the research done by the Wilson Lab, a medicinal inorganic chemistry group on campus under the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is funded by NIH grants — other federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and Department of Education fund the rest. The Wilson Lab works on developing and testing drugs for the treatment of various illnesses, Wilson Lab assistant specialist and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry doctoral student Piyusha Lotlikar said. The research helps to prevent nearly 600,000 deaths that occur annually as a result of various cancers, according to Lotlikar.
“Development of drugs like these opens up new avenues of care for patients who’d otherwise be at death’s door,” Lotlikar said. “It gives families hope that they’ll be able to hold on to their loved ones for decades instead of just mere months, and it gives clinicians options to tailor make treatment plans for each of their patients, all with diverging needs.”
Lotlikar said that she could not rely on teacher assistantships to support her if there was a lapse in funding. She said she’s disappointed that her four years working on her doctorate and moving across the country to UCSB from Cornell University for her studies could be for naught if her principal investigator loses “vital funding.”
“And believe it or not, the groundwork for most candidates that go into drug clinical trials is done in NIH-funded labs, just like mine,” she said.
The NIH has two missions: to be a “world-class research hospital” and to be “part of a contract between universities and society,” assistant physics professor Sebastian Streichan said.
Internally, thousands of people working at the NIH have been laid off, and funding researchers use for protective equipment and transportation has been cut, he said. At the universities, he said indirect costs, or overhead, that help researchers get the infrastructure to do research safely, are being cut.
Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC), UCSB’s program to increase the number of individuals from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds in biomedical science, will not be renewed according to the NIH, Streichan said.
Some graduate students and research groups have had long-anticipated projects canceled outright. Lizzy Rager / Daily Nexus
Alongside outright cuts, some funding is being delayed to groups, which can put research at a standstill. Congress has appropriated these funds, but they are stuck in limbo. Almost half of its budget is still not dispersed, Streichan said.
“You can imagine that some of my colleagues are actually facing the dire decision whether they are going to let somebody go in the lab. If you let people go in the lab, you’re losing expertise, unique expertise that is often only present in one individual,” Streichan said. “When you let this expertise go, what you do is you slow down research. When you slow down research, you’re beginning to jeopardize the development of cures, and you’re risking essentially the whole society.”
Some graduate students and research groups have had long-anticipated projects canceled outright. Keneni Godana, a doctoral student in the earth sciences department, studies ocean plate tectonics and the interior of the Earth’s structure, using earthquakes to image them. The week after the rally, her research group was meant to travel to the Pacific Ocean and deploy a “groundbreaking” seismic array to plant a ground-motion connecting instruments on the sea floor. Due to the anticipated slashing of the NIH budget, the project was indefinitely postponed and likely to be cut completely, she said.
“Seismic imaging of the Earth’s interior has been used to model earthquake shaking for years, with similar research being done in Southern California,” Godana said. “The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world equipped to do this kind of research and has been at the forefront of marine geophysics for decades. Without this legacy, vital scientific questions would not be answered.”
After speeches from graduate students and researchers, the group marched down to Cheadle Hall. They chanted “kill the cuts” and “Who runs the UC? We run the UC.”
“[The university] is where the rebellion starts. Now. Here, and with workers and workers in education, who are the strongest unions in this country. [They] have to really put their foot down against, also, the institutions that we inhabit. Because what happened at Columbia should never be repeated anywhere in the UC,” Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) Secretary and Italian studies professor Claudio Fogu said at Cheadle Hall.
CUCFA secretary and professor of Italian Studies Claudio Fugo read out demands in front of Cheadle Hall. Lizzy Rager / Daily Nexus
He added that Governor Gavin Newsom should revert the cuts, as it is within his power. He mentioned that humanities departments have been hit especially hard — all of the grants from the endowments for the humanities across the UC have been canceled.
Fugo reiterated demands from a letter from CUCFA and University Council-American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 1474 for the UC Office of the President (UCOP). It said that the University should advocate for and provide legal support to those whose visas are revoked, ensure that those whose visas are revoked or are detained can remain enrolled and complete their studies and students who are deported and are receiving funding can continue to receive funding until the completion of their studies. Additionally, it demanded that faculty and staff whose visas are revoked or who are deported can continue to receive their salary and work remotely.
The final demand called for the University to seek action in federal courts to halt the termination of legal status without due process or prior communication to the University. Fugo called for the group to return on April 17 for another day of action in higher education.
After hearing the demands, the group engaged in a “calling blitz,” reading out a script calling for action to be taken regarding the potential cuts to the offices of local representatives and the office of the state governor. Hanlon said a group of protestors took the letter of demands inside Cheadle Hall to the chancellor’s office and asked him to sign onto the demands. The Nexus was unable to confirm if they saw the chancellor.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the Apr. 17, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
