A Call for Harm Reduction Strategies

The new US presidential administration has launched an unprecedented assault on research and higher education. This isn’t just collateral damage from wide-ranging realignment of budgets, which would be bad enough, but an orchestrated attack on academic freedom, research funding, and the institutional autonomy that underpins intellectual progress. Each of these will have immediate and downstream impacts on academic libraries.

The assault has taken two main forms. First is the systematic dismantling of research areas deemed politically inconvenient, including climate change, aspects of public health, and swathes of the humanities and social sciences. Second is the threatened financial strangulation of American universities, through tax hikes on endowments and the slashing of administrative support for research grants. At the same time, pressure to constrain scholarly inquiry is mounting, tenure protections are being eroded, and public trust in expertise is being actively undermined.

The consequences of the administration’s approach—a research sector stripped of independence and education reduced to a tool of political expediency—would be devastating. But they are not inevitable: immediate, collective action could stave off the most damaging effects.

Here, we—a newly appointed library dean and the CEO of an academic publishing house—offer our perspective, drawing on years of ongoing collaboration and shared professional interests.

It goes without saying that each of us must have a plan shaped by our unique circumstances. Each research group, library, department, faculty, institution, affiliated system; every publisher, service provider, standards body, and infrastructure steward; as well as all research-funding organizations must develop tailored approaches to minimize damage and mitigate threats.

Equally crucial is the need to weave these independent efforts into a unified front. Resistance is most effective when collective action amplifies individual efforts rather than occurring in isolation. This means fostering more frequent and open dialogue across all sectors of the academic and research community.

This collaboration is long overdue—not just in response to the current threats, but also to advance broader goals such as open science, global research equity, inclusive career development, and the responsible application of AI. The time has come to set aside our differences and build consensus, ensuring that our shared objectives take priority over isolated interests.

While that may sound simple, it won’t be. Not every targeted program or organization is equally important to preserve, and the level of threat varies across different areas. Prioritization is essential but will require difficult conversations about where to focus our collective efforts, including initiatives to raise awareness and mobilize support. Crucially, these decisions must be made transparently and with broad participation, with the goal of achieving genuine consensus.

Starting this week, Katina will publish an ongoing series of articles outlining the impact and damage from the fast-moving changes roiling science, higher education, and libraries. We will surface stories from the front lines that capture the advocacy, hard work, and perseverance of our community. And we will advance a dialogue about how we, as a community, should respond.

The series begins tomorrow with an article by Lauren Collister, Kaitlin Thaney, and Katherine Skinner from Invest in Open Infrastructure examining the effect of the administration’s blizzard of executive orders on research infrastructure. If you would like to contribute a timely article that explores the impact of these changes in the library workplace, open science, and the academy, please get in touch.

There is of course room to improve science, higher education, and libraries. But if academic freedom, scientific judgement, and open inquiry in the United States are dismantled by partisan approaches they may never fully recover.

That’s what we’re fighting for. In this country, the future of education, of research—of progress itself—is at stake.