Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

When ideology takes top priority, America’s world leadership is in jeopardy.

The Trump administration’s threats to academic freedom at leading U.S. universities could slow the pace of scientific research and commercial development of research findings. For instance, federal devotion to right-wing “purity” could undermine our race to stay ahead of China—which should disturb Americans of every political stripe.

President Donald Trump has threatened to cut grant funding (and in some cases followed through on those threats) in his effort to wipe out diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) practices, as well as supposed “woke” ideology (whatever that is), at a number of leading institutions of higher education.

One example, out of many dozens: the administration has frozen $175 million in grant money at the University of Pennsylvania—Trump’s alma mater—because the university allowed a transgender female on its women’s swimming team three years ago.

As of late July, the feds had proposed slashing federal funds for all university research in fiscal year 2026 by 22 percent, and for basic research by 34 percent. Cultural issues were used to justify a significant number of those reductions. A huge chunk of research in the U.S. happens at colleges and universities, and we would be in a sorry state without it.

Want a few examples? Check these out:

• Pap smear, Cornell University, 1939.
• Blood preservation, Columbia University, 1940 (allowed stored blood to be used for World War Two transfusions).
• Streptomycin, Rutgers University, 1943 (antibiotic against tuberculosis).
• Heart-lung machine, 1955, pacemaker, 1958, and seat belt, 1963, all University of Minnesota.
• LCD displays, Kent State University, 1967.
• Hepatitis B vaccine, University of Pennsylvania, 1969.
• MRI scanner and related technology, State University of New York, 1970s.
• Kennel cough vaccine, Iowa State University, 1970s.
• Recombinant DNA technology, Stanford University and University of California – San Francisco, 1974.
• Cisplatin, Michigan State University, 1977 (one of the post-cancer chemicals I took in 2011-12), 1977.
• Canine parvovirus vaccine, Cornell University, 1979.
• LASER cataract surgery, University of California – Los Angeles, 1988.
• Combination PET/CT scanner, University of Pittsburgh, 2000.

Those examples are all related to health and medicine. I could list many, many more research breakthroughs in other areas, such as defense, industrial technology, or agriculture.

Bringing it closer to home, Iowa State University received just $24.5 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture funding in fiscal year 2024-25, the lowest amount in five years and less than half the amount of ag funding that it received in fiscal 2023-24.

To be clear: there’s no indication that those cuts resulted from federal displeasure with anything related to Iowa State’s cultural or ideological orientation, whatever that might be. But Iowa State and the University of Iowa, as research institutions, are under the same federal scrutiny as their sister institutions across the nation.

It just doesn’t make sense to jeopardize America’s research leadership at the academic level because federal right-wingers decide a university’s practices “don’t square with the president’s priorities,” to quote the standard phrase.

John King Jr., former Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama and current Chancellor of the State University of New York system, said it best:
 “From the technology inside of your phone to the treatment you may receive at your doctor—all of that can be traced back to research conducted at America’s higher ed institutions. And it’s under threat.”

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Top image of College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania is by Michel Alexandre Salim, CC BY-SA 2.0, available via Wikimedia Commons.