Many Humboldtians have no doubt been concerned about recent directives from the federal government regarding science research. At Pennsylvania State University where I teach, for example, one of my colleagues was among hundreds nationwide to have an active research grant cancelled mid-research. Moreover, the ordered reduction of indirect cost rates to 15% for National Institutes of Health grants will result in a shortfall of over 40 million dollars in the Penn State budget if the current court-ordered pause is lifted. At many other universities, the shortfall is significantly higher. All of this has led many scientists to worry about the future of science in the United States, and many students are questioning if there is a future career to be had in scientific research. Will the recent directives halt the discovery of important new scientific insights, and what will be the impact on the production of future scientific knowledge?
My perspective on the future of scientific inquiry is colored by a colleague’s recent book on science, which emphasizes the internationalization of scientific inquiry. David Baker and Justin Powell’s book Global Mega-Science (Stanford University Press, 2024) examines the development of scientific knowledge over the twentieth and twenty first centuries and notes two different prevailing trends. Increases in government funding alone do not account for the great scientific innovation we see over that time period; rather, they argue that the rise in scientific discovery was aided by two other major shifts. The first was the emergence of the modern research university; the second was the explosion of international collaboration among scientists.
Baker and Powell argue that university settings have not always been the focus of scientific research. It was only in the 1940s and 50s that most authors of scientific publications were affiliated with a university, and it was not until the late 1980s that universities began to dominate the research enterprise (Baker and Powell 2024: 37). Linking research and education within the university makes sense because student learning is enhanced by the research enterprise. Students who study with active researchers learn the process of inquiry, which can lead to important skills—like lifelong learning—that prepares them to thrive amid fast-paced technological and scientific innovation. What is less widely appreciated is that undergraduate education has also facilitated research by supporting scientific infrastructure. Unfortunately, the synergy between research and teaching is already under stress, with declining public funding for undergraduate education and the long-predicted decrease in the number of college age Americans.
The second shift, toward international collaboration, is well known to alumni of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Baker and Powell note that scientific progress has benefited from multi-country research teams and global collaboration. Such international collaborations are not new; indeed, Alexander von Humboldt himself was a member of multiple international learned societies that shared research results and information. But far more than in Humboldt’s time, today’s scientific inquiry is often spearheaded by multi-country teams like the IceCube Neutrino Collaboration, discussed in Baker and Powell’s book, which brings together researchers from over a dozen countries. International collaboration is increasing even in the social sciences, fields that in 1960 had been dominated by single investigator projects.
How exactly the proposed reductions in US government–sponsored research will impact international collaboration remains unclear. It is also too early to tell whether financial austerity policies at major research universities will have downstream consequences for international collaboration. But international collaboration has many sources of support that both predate the rise of global megascience and also do not solely rely on one country. This suggests that while recent events feel cataclysmic, there are other sources of support for the transnational scientific cooperation that can help the US scientific community. These sources can be found in networks and programs like those facilitated by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Given the current circumstances, now is the time to cultivate and deepen transnational connections with your counterparts across the Atlantic (and around the globe). It is also a great time to encourage junior scholars to develop more transnational connections by applying for Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowships. But we also need to strengthen our global scientific communities. In Humboldt’s day, scientific associations of independent researchers across countries played important roles in scientific endeavors beyond the communication of scientific findings and networks of knowledge. Scientific societies worked hard to raise and disseminate funding for research and actively engaged both politicians and the public on the importance of scientific research. Although international collaborations cannot alleviate all the threats to science, global connections within the scientific community and transnational activism in support of science might dampen the precipitous changes that occur in any single nation.
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