Retired Harvard Chan School professors call federal grant cuts a ‘tragedy’
A group of professors who have retired from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are speaking out against the federal government’s cancellation of all research grants to Harvard University and the impact the move will have on public health in the U.S. and globally.
More than 20 retired professors signed a “statement of solidarity and concern” in the wake of the cuts, which affected roughly 200 grants for about 140 scientists at Harvard Chan School.
“The cancellation of federal funding to HSPH is not only a tragedy for our colleagues and their staff and students, but it will also prove to be a tragedy for the health of our fellow citizens,” wrote the professors in a statement shared with School administrators. The statement listed a dozen fundamental discoveries that came from experts at the School, such as the finding that fine particles in pollution cause not only lung diseases but also heart disease and strokes, the elucidation of risk factors for cancers and heart disease, and foundational nutrition studies that define healthy eating.
The professors also noted that these discoveries and others were made possible because of the partnership between Harvard Chan School and federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. For more than 70 years, they wrote, “this system has driven research excellence in our country and set the global standard in public health and the medical sciences.”
One of the signatories was David Hunter, Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention, Emeritus, and former acting dean and dean for academic affairs. Hunter, who currently serves as Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of Oxford, noted in an email that the partnership between the federal government and universities has enabled the government to tap the best minds in areas of research deemed critical to the U.S. He added that while some may view these grants as automatic or “gifts, they are not. “They are hard-won after an increasingly competitive … selection process,” he said.
The across-the-board cancellation of grants at Harvard, he added, “is supremely wasteful, as the sunk cost of the research that is terminated may not be recoverable, let alone the research careers that are truncated and young scientists who are discouraged from pursuing careers in public health research.” Hunter and the other signatories called the grant cuts “counterproductive” and said that they are “doing irreparable harm to public health in the U.S. and internationally for generations to come.”
Other retired professors who signed the statement include Hans-Olov Adami, Barry Bloom, James Butler, Douglas Dockery, Felton James Earls, Myron Essex, Jeffrey Fredberg, Steve Gortmaker, Victor De Gruttola, David Harrington, William Hsiao, Nancy Kane, Ana Langer, Tun-hou Lee, Michael Reich, Rima Rudd, Katherine Swartz, Alec Walker, Milton Weinstein, and Daniel Wikler.
