By Johan Ahlander
Stockholm.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has introduced or proposed a strip of measures in his second term that critics argue that he will hinder education and scientific research.
Ylva Engstrom, vice president of the Royal Academy of Swedish Sciences, which awards the prizes for Chemistry, Physics and Economics, said the changes of the Trump administration were reckless.
‘Pilar of the Democratic System’
“I think that both in the short and long term, it can have devastating effects,” he told Reuters in an interview. “Academic freedom … is one of the pillars of the democratic system.”
The Trump administration denies quelling academic freedom, saying that its measures will reduce waste and promote scientific innovation of the United States.
Engstrom, who is also a member of the Board of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, is not found in any of the three committees granted by the Chemistry, Physics or Economy Awards.
The Nobel Awards, considered by many as the most prestigious science awards in the world, will be announced from next week, starting with the award for medicine or physiology on Monday and ending with the presentation of the winners in economics a week later.
The awards were created by the rich inventor of the Swedish dynamite Alfred Nobel and are also delivered by outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, literature and peace. They come with a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns ($ 1.2 million).
Trump has said several times that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, although experts say his possibilities are very scarce.
Budget cuts and prioritize ‘patriotic education’
Trump has proposed to cut the budget for the National Health Institutes, the largest financier of the world’s biomedical research, and wants to dismantle the Department of Education, in an attempt to reduce the role of the federal government in education in favor of greater control by the States.
His administration has also said that he would prioritize granting money to programs that focus on “patriotic education”, and demanded that schools limit the international enrollment of undergraduate to 15%.
“For research, it will be a great dip in what American scientists can do and what they are allowed to do, what they can publish, what they can get money. So this will have great effects,” said Engstrom, president of the Royal Sweden Research Policies Committee of the Royal Sweden Academy of Sciences.
The White House said in a response sent by email that the United States was the largest financier of the world’s scientific research.
“The specific cuts of administration to waste, fraud and abuse in the financing programs of the research and visa grant will strengthen the innovative and scientific domain of Americans,” he said.
The laureate Nobel warns about the drag of economic growth
Trump has also been fighting with several prestigious universities, some of whose faculty may be among the winners of the Nobel Prize in the next few days, threatening to retain federal funds on issues, including pro -palestinians against the Israel War in Gaza, the diversity of campus and transgender policies.
The American economist born in British, Simon Johnson, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024 for his studies on how institutions affect prosperity, said that, although he thought it was too early to know how Trump’s actions would affect academic freedom, they would certainly hinder economic growth.
“These policies are absolutely, unequivocally very negative and particularly for job creation,” said Johnson, a professor at the Mit Sloan School of Administration.
“All engineering and science activities, I think, will be affected,” he said. “The life of life is a particularly dynamic sector at this time and NIH is, for any reason, to be the goal of truly massive cuts.”
The Nobel Foundation, which supervises Nobel’s will and legacy, said there were challenges for academic freedom, since there has been previously in the 124 years of the Foundation, and that it was “watching the eye attentive.”
“Let’s protect knowledge,” said Hanna Stjarne, president of the Foundation. “We protect … freedom, the opportunity for researchers to work freely, so that writers can write exactly as they want, and so that peace initiatives are taken in all kinds of conflicts that exist throughout the world.”
(Johan Ahlander report; Niklas Pollard and Alex Richardson edition)
(Tagstotranslate) Donald Trump (T) Academic Freedom (T) Scientific Research (T) Ylva Engstrom
Source link