He worries students will be discouraged from coming 

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Academia vs. Trump

Will America’s democratic institutions survive Trump?

As unrest spreads, researchers and lecturers at universities are doing what they can to keep activities running as normally as possible. In laboratories and lecture halls, it’s business as usual. But the disruptions are mounting. What are faculty thinking about their situation—now, in the near future, and in the longer term? How are the students doing?

In a series of articles funded by the Fritt Ord Foundation, The University Newspaper and Uniforum will visit a number of universities in the United States this fall. We report on the situation as it is experienced on the ground.

- Professor Schacter, how do you think this situation is going to unfold?

- There are several important questions. What can we do? What should we do? And what’s under our control? What's not under our control? A lot of these questions come up again and again, professor Schacter says.

There was a mass termination by the government, of Harvard federal grants back in the middle of May, affected the long time Harvard professor significantly.

- I have a longstanding grant from the National Institute of Mental Health going on 25 years that has supported work in my lab on the brain and memory, broadly construed. And this grant is one of the grants that was terminated, he explains.

After a hearing in a federal court, the grants were restored. Professor Schacter’s were among them.

- Of course, we don't know how long that will last. The government's going to probably appeal. So again, there's just this element of uncertainty about how we proceed, he says.

- I think they are going to come for all of us

Will they be discouraged by what they see?

This unnerving uncertainty is what troubles him the most, in particular when it comes to the future of his students.

- Probably the main thing I'm concerned about is that a lot of the young people coming into our field, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, are they going to be discouraged by what they see, and thus not pursue a career in science, he asks.

Everybody is trying to figure out how long is this going to last, the Harvard professor explains, what exactly are the consequences in general going to be, not just for Harvard in particular, but for all universities. As of this moment, he deems those initial proposed cuts are not going to be reality. Still, he worries how this is going to affect young people coming into the field.

- It's hard enough to forge a career in scientific research under normal circumstances, and when there's all this uncertainty with respect to federal support, that just makes the situation worse.

Accordingly, people who want to make a career in research are at least raising questions about how viable that's going to be.

- I know of examples of people who are looking outside the United States, moving elsewhere where there might be more support. So those are the bigger issues that concern me, he says.

Garber has done a good job

- What do you think of how Harvard’s president Alan Garber has handled the situation with mounting pressure as well as direct financial attacks from the federal government?

- I think he has handled a very difficult situation pretty well. There were outside forces proposing to tell us who we can hire and what we should teach. That obviously is not a palatable situation for any university, really. I think Garber's done a good job in terms of not capitulating to these demands.

- If the attacks continue after the midterm elections next year, what will happen then, will he be able to hold the line?

- I wish I could answer that question. That's above my pay grade. It is, though, a widely shared feeling that there is a red line that you can't cross in terms of concessions that one would make, professor Schacter comments.

Not the first time things look grim

Still, he reminds, academia has experienced recurring periods of mounting problems.

- I got my PhD in 1981, so I've been around for a while. There have always been periodic challenges or times when it seemed like things were looking really grim.

Professor Schacter remembers the early to mid-90s, there was talk of labs closing because funding had gotten so difficult in the early to mid-90s. But then by the end of the 90s, things were up and going again. Then came the financial crisis in 2008. That too passed.

- Are you counting on waiting this out, for things to go back to normal?

- Waiting it out is probably a little too passive, at least for me. But on the other hand, we've got to focus on getting our work done. Keep our eye on the ball.

- That is not what I do

- You've been at Harvard for many years before Garber's time. To what extent do you agree with the critics of how free speech at campus has been taken care of, with cancellation culture and the like?

- I, as a faculty member here for 34 years, have never felt inhibited in what I could say. However, my views are mostly about scientific issues. Still, I think there may be a misconception in the outside that all faculty members are somehow in their classrooms trying to enlist students in some political ideology. I can tell you that in 34 years of teaching here, you could ask the question, how often have I ever raised political issues or tried to enlist students in some kind of political ideology? And the answer would be none. That's just not what I do.

In his daily work, professor Schacter focuses on for the students to have a time at Harvard as normal as possible.

- We want for our graduate students to have the same kind of experience as we had when we were students, he says.

- Do you talk to your students about the present issues, how concerned are they?

- Graduate students, people who are in my lab, they're concerned, for the reasons we've discussed. The uncertainty. Are things changing in a fundamental way so that the opportunities and the funding that we've had for people in our field, will they be there in the future? They worry, says professor Daniel Schacter.