Figuring out what to focus on now & next in science and higher ed

This newsletter is my part of an ongoing conversation among colleagues who’ve had a rough week. I share two or three pieces of the puzzle that feel are most important, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.

MEETING THE MOMENT: 2025-04-11

Hi friends, surprise!

I’m publishing the debrief early this week because I’m taking my own advice, and will be spending this weekend deep in conversation with the Liminal Collective. I’m sure nothing notable will happen while we’re offline, right?

One of the things I’m most looking forward to the most is having large blocks of less-structured time together. For the past few weeks, I’ve been coping with long hours and horrifying uncertainties by making sure I always know exactly what needs to happen next in the sequence. I find a certain kind of comfort in a brutal regimen of fifteen-minute sprints: it makes the rapid-response work more manageable and makes exhausting days more satisfying. But my relentless to-do list is its own kind of distraction. It’s essential that I put it aside and spend these precious hours with these precious people, not knowing precisely what each quarter of the hour will hold.  

It makes me think of Jenny Odell’s work.

“One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention.”

I am so ready to render a better reality together, so let’s get to it.

This was week 12.

What’s happening now

As the weeks have worn on, I feel like the bullets in this section are much more predictable. The patterns that emerge from the chaos show how power is being wielded against science. Think about the different capacities of the government, for example, as an employer, or a funder, or an enforcer of laws. There are more, but these are the ones I’m going to cover today:

• As an employer: The jobs of federal employees have been in litigation and limbo for weeks. This week, decisions from the Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals undid previous rulings that protected or restored jobs to thousands of workers. In just over a month, some folks at NOAA were fired, rehired, put on administrative leave, and re-fired again. Sometimes it’s more straightforward, but no less dire. Some entire teams have been cut, like the NIH Office of Pain Policy and Planning and the CDC Vessel Sanitation Program: in other places, whole categories of expertise were cut, as when the FDA fired essentially all communication staff. And to be clear, the issue is not simply official employment status either - it’s the ability of civil servants to actually do their jobs. They are coping with whiplash around permitted conference attendance, frozen credit cards, and return-to-office conditions that include a lack of critical resources like wifi, desk space, and toilet paper.
• As a funder: The House passed a new budget resolution yesterday. We can go through and analyze its potential impact on agencies like NASA, because the specifics of program cuts matter. It’s important to understand how stop-work orders affect the National Climate Assessment, for example, versus halving the number of NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, as well as distinctions between FEMA’s cancellation of $750 million allocated for future BRIC grants versus attempting to claw back more than $880 million dollars of SSP grants that have already been disbursed. To get a handle on the scope of this issue, I find it helpful to move back and forth between concrete details and visualizations of cumulative impacts. The newly-launched and still-in-progress Impact Map brings both together powerfully.
• As an enforcer: This week, hundreds of students and recent graduates have had their visas revoked and now must leave the country. Neither the affected students nor their universities seem to be receiving reliable notification or communication about what is happening. Some universities have emergency mechanisms in place to support their students, like UMass Amherst’s Angel Fund. Other campus communities are self-organizing. Examples you may find useful include this informational email from UIUC Department of Physics, this Immigrants Rights Resource from Princeton, and the We Are LA student resource compilation from the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science.New fronts and tactics keep emerging, such as the news that migrants’ Social Security numbers are being moved into the so-called “death master file.”

What’s next & what to do

I saw a blog post today that had a lovely reminder “of our power to respond to chaos with calm, deliberative action. To diffuse confusion with clarity of purpose and values, with facts and evidence. To curtail fear by feeding and nourishing our collective courage. To bridge isolation by curating our connection to each other. It’s a reminder of the power in taking small actions that add up.”

It feels fitting because for the first time, I’m going to directly invite you to come take a small action with me. This Monday, we are hosting our first Scientists in Solidarity action hour. These will be a chance to connect with other researchers, make sense of what’s happening, and move into collective action. We’ll share updates, strategize together, and offer specific ways to plug into Meeting the Moment and other projects. Registration is here. Please join us.

As Jenny writes, “Realities are, after all, inhabitable. If we can render a new reality together—with attention—perhaps we can meet each other there.”

I dearly hope so,

Liz