Outside U.S. Sen. McCormick’s Philly office, protesters decry academic funding cuts

Waving signs with slogans like “When Science Works, People Thrive,” more than 200 unionized graduate students, researchers, university faculty, and their supporters rallied on Wednesday in front of U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick's Philadelphia office. They decried the proposed federal funding cuts, which they said would decimate their institutions’ – and the nation’s – critical research while imperiling their livelihoods.

Bradley Philbert, who helped organize the event in his role as vice president of United Academics of Philadelphia, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, said the protesters chose to target McCormick because the Republican “has hid on the issue.” “His Philly offices are notoriously empty,” added Philbert, a literature instructor at Penn State Brandywine. “It’s an abandonment of folks that are at the heart of Pennsylvania’s economy.”

Phone calls to Sen. McCormick’s Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. offices seeking comment went unreturned on Wednesday.

Several Philadelphia-area labor leaders and legislators attended the February 19 rally, which was part of a multi-city “National Day of Action” organized by Labor for Higher Education, a coalition of unions representing higher-education workers and students across the U.S. Despite the bitter cold, protesters came from at least a half-dozen area institutions, including the Community College of Philadelphia, Drexel University, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The protesters were chiefly concerned about the impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institute of Health, which funds hundreds of millions of dollars in research at commonwealth universities.

If the cuts, which are currently blocked by court order, go through as proposed, many scholars will lose the primary source of revenue that not only supports critical research into medicine, technology and other fields, but also funds their employment. The measures would effectively winnow two fields – education and health sciences – that are among Pennsylvania’s premier economic engines.

Penn State has said its research efforts could lose at least $35 million in NIH grants, while the University of Pennsylvania has estimated its potential research funding losses at $250 million. But researchers say the threatening nature of recent federal directives has already prompted numerous scientists to scale back research activity.

Several attendees also expressed concerns about the impact of federal crackdowns on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and about what they see as a new climate of academic censorship. Philbert said his class in social justice literature is “squarely in the crosshairs” of an anti-DEI directive he and colleagues recently received from the federal Department of Education.

Another protester on Wednesday was Sam Layding, a Penn doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a bargaining representative for the graduate teaching assistants’ union. Layding’s work is funded by a National Science Foundation grant that was targeted by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office for potential investigation “as being, to put it bluntly, too woke of a use of funds,” the researcher said, explaining that the lab’s work touches on environmental sustainability.

Layding called on McCormick to advocate for the intellectual activity that makes Pennsylvania a world-class research hub: “As the senator for an important state, he has the opportunity to play an important role in guaranteeing the continued funding of scientific research in this country.”