Trump’s DEI crackdown ‘could block US-UK research collaborations’

Questions have been raised about the future of UK-US research collaborations amid growing concerns that transatlantic projects could fall foul of new directives targeting diversity and equity.

The uncertainty over the UK’s links with its biggest research partner come after the collapse of a US Embassy-funded grants scheme run jointly with the British Association of American Studies, when the UK learned society was asked erase any mention of diversity from its awarding criteria.

It follows Donald Trump’s slate of executive orders to end “radical and wasteful” spending on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, which have seen US research funders and government agencies scramble to amend policies designed to promote inclusion and diversity.

There are, however, concerns that far larger US-UK research partnerships could be caught up in the anti-DEI crackdown, potentially jeopardising hundreds of existing collaborations and future projects. According to a 2023 report, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded about 3,000 awards involving North American collaboration to the tune of £3 billion, mostly in the US, in the eight years up to 2023-24.

“No academic friend of mine is not deeply worried about this,” said Kevin Waite, associate professor of history at Durham University, on the potential risks to US-UK collaboration.

“People are worried and not without reason – these policies are moving so fast that it’s hard to get your head round them as they’re likely to affect researchers from all sorts of backgrounds,” said Waite, who ran a project from 2019 to 2022 studying the origins of black Los Angeles, funded by a collaborative grant from America’s National Endowment for the Humanities and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Asked how the apparent ban on DEI-inflected research could affect his discipline, Waite said it was “very hard, as an American historian, to come up with any research project that does not cover diversity in some way”. “It’s an enormously diverse country populated by people from different races, religions and backgrounds,” he said.

His own project focused on the 19th-century black philanthropist Biddy Mason was a good example of something likely to have been cut as “ostensibly it’s a DEI project”. “But Mason’s success came in real estate development. In some ways, she is poster child of the possibilities of the American Dream, that anyone can make it with some elbow grease,” Waite reflected.

The DEI clampdown should also be understood as part of a “much bigger assault on funding of research” that was also likely to inhibit international collaborations, the US-born academic said.

“It’s the canary in the coal mine for the broader defunding on research and universities – and it’s a pretty low-risk strategy for Trump as universities are mostly populated by liberal people,” he said.

Resources offering guidance on equity, diversity and inclusion in higher education

Darby Saxbe, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, who has criticised the screening of research projects for DEI language, said it was “likely that efforts to chill or dismantle science in the US will also lead to issues with international collaborations and consortiums”.

“Unfortunately, I think the effect will be to weaken the US’ global standing and make academics in other countries less likely to work with researchers in the US,” she said.  

For its part, UKRI said the “US is one of the UK’s closest research and innovation partners” and that “collaborations are driven by excellence and therefore depend on high-quality research culture and research environments”.

“UKRI will continue to work across the globe to enable the full range of people needed to work together to tackle the research and innovation challenges of our time and beyond, ensuring the long-term sustainability and excellence of our research and innovation system,” it added.

It was not clear whether UKRI’s stance on diversity could endanger some of its joint US-UK projects, although its equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policy calls on staff to “identify opportunities to promote inclusion across their areas of work” – a potential red flag under the Trump directives. The funder adds that it “recognise[s] all gender identities and sexualities” and that “gender is a spectrum”, again a position that might run contrary to new White House directives.

However, Rachel Oliver, professor of materials science at the University of Cambridge, said she suspected scientists might be able to avoid mentioning EDI in grant proposals, which is not required by UKRI, unlike in the US.

“Applicants sometimes add comments on equity-related issues when trying to demonstrate the impacts of their work or explain management strategies. I suspect that many applicants will choose independently to step away from this approach if they are applying for funding for joint US-UK projects in the current climate, and that is a matter for individual conscience,” she said.

“Any attempt by UKRI to censor the content of applications in terms of the use of specific words would – in my view – be a profound attack on academic freedom,” continued Oliver, who said it would also be “significantly more damaging” if UKRI emulated any element of the Trump-led crackdown, such as removing mention of EDI from its guidelines.

“Building a more diverse scientific community is – in my opinion – a question of fairness and justice, and I would be ashamed to see UKRI backing away from stated principles on this matter,” said Oliver. “It’s also a question of what is good for science and innovation. There is an ever-increasing body of evidence that more diverse teams do more innovative science both in academic research and in industry. For UKRI to step away from its commitment to EDI has the potential to be damaging to UK innovation as a driver of economic growth.”  

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com