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Graduate leaders warn NIH cuts and detentions threaten UC research and academic freedom
Summary
Ryan Marquez, representing graduate and professional students, told the regents that proposed NIH funding cuts would imperil research, threaten the future pipeline of scientists and harm patients; he also raised concerns about federal detentions of student activists and urged the UC to defend academic freedom and research funding.
March 20 — Ryan Marquez, president of the UC graduate and professional council, told the Board of Regents that proposed cuts to National Institutes of Health funding and recent federal detentions of student activists pose existential risks to public research, graduate education and academic freedom.
“Over the last decade, 99.4 percent of all new FDA-approved drugs were developed with NIH funding,” Marquez said, describing NIH-supported research as central to medical advances and to graduate training. He warned that deep NIH cuts would close labs, stall promising research and reduce opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
Why it matters: Graduate researchers and postdoctoral fellows depend on NIH grants for training, stipends and laboratory infrastructure. Marquez said cuts would reduce diversity in research careers by limiting opportunities for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Marquez also described a personal account of receiving an NIH-supported therapy: he said he benefited from SPINRAZA, a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy that he said was the product of NIH-funded research, and used that example to underscore the real-world consequences of research funding decisions.
The speaker raised academic-freedom concerns tied to federal enforcement and detentions. He cited the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian American graduate student at Columbia University, and other recent detentions as part of a pattern that, he said, chills student activism and debate.
Marquez urged the University of California and the state to oppose NIH cuts, to affirm academic freedom and to support students’ right to protest regardless of immigration status. He said the UC should take a public stand in defense of research funding and campus free speech.
The regents received the comments; no formal action was taken during the public-comment period.
