Columbia University announced on Tuesday that nearly 180 people whose salaries had been funded by federal research fairs would be dismissed because the effect of the cutbacks of the Trump government on the campus is getting deeper.
With reference to intense pressure on the finances and research mission of Columbia, Claire Shipman, the acting president of the university, said in the announcement That Columbia would also be “lighter footprints of research infrastructure” in some areas affected by the cuts. The university, she added, continues to negotiate with the federal government for the return of the subsidies and is looking for alternative sources of financing.
“We have had to make deliberate, considered decisions about the allocation of our financial resources,” wrote Mrs. Shipman in a note to the campus, which was also signed by other managers. “Those decisions also influence our greatest source, our people. We understand that this news will be difficult.”
A Trump administration -Antisemitism Task Force Short $ 400 million in financing In March because of what it described as the failure of the school to protect Jewish students against intimidation. It demanded that Columbia makes changes to how it functions to restore the money. Columbia met With a first round of requirements, but the negotiations about bringing the money on.
More than 300 research fairs for several years have been cut considerably, many of them in medical research. Columbia received around $ 1.3 billion in federal research funds in 2023, with the National Institutes of Health $ 747 million of them. An extra $ 206 million came from other programs within the Health and Human Services department.
Columbia had temporarily paid the salaries of some of the affected researchers, because departments came up with plans to endure the cuts, but the announcement on Tuesday indicated that the effort ended. In the future, Scientists from Columbia can apply for subsidies for a limited time to complete their research and support graduated students who would otherwise be dismissed.
Tamara Sussman, a researcher in Psychiatry in Columbia, had canceled a federal subsidy in March for research that investigated the consequences of structural racism on the risk of drug use from Puerto Rican adolescents. The research assistant she recently hired was one of the let go.
“This is really a difficult time for everyone who wants to do research, but especially for people who start,” said Dr. Sussman Tuesday. “It is very discouraging to see the wheels of science grinding in certain ways.”
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