“Is your institution taking appropriate measures to defend against gender ideology?”
“Can you confirm that this is not a climate or environmental law project?”
“Does this project directly contribute to limiting illegal immigration or strengthening U.S. border security?”
At the beginning of March, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands opened their inboxes to find questions like this — shocking in tone, political in substance, and chilling in implication. The questions came from the US administration.
“Some of the questions really send a shiver down your spine“, said one of the two researchers in the university magazine Resource, which published the questionnaire online. The questionnaire came not from their own government, but from the United States, with which they had a scientific partnership.
Trump’s War on Science, Exported
Researchers in allied nations including Australia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Canada have received the document, often distributed via the very US government agencies that fund or collaborate on their work. Surveys came from the likes of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of Agriculture, on behalf of an executive memo from the office of the president.
The survey was delivered with demanding 48-hour deadlines, probing fears far beyond standard grant compliance. It ventured deep into ideological territory with a clear emphasis on “MAGA” doctrine.
The questionnaire ranks research projects on a scale of up to 180 points. Higher scores go to proposals that do not include “diversity, equity and inclusion,” that avoid climate or gender topics, and that steer clear of collaboration with institutions tied to China, Cuba, Russia, Iran — or any organizations that “espouse anti-American beliefs” (which includes environmental parties, for instance). It also rewards projects that support Christian communities, stop illegal immigration to the U.S., or assist with securing rare earth minerals.
Science and Policy
Science and policy are never truly free from one another. Well… science is never free from policy. You can build policies on no science whatsoever (or even make them anti-scientific). At any rate, whenever a new administration comes, it tends to change research investments and priorities. Yet, what the Trump administration is doing right now amounts to a war on science — and on scientists.
Funding was slashed for climate research. Federal language guidelines were changed to suppress terms like “climate change,” “diversity,” and “gender.” Health agencies were told to avoid “problematic language.” Environmental agencies are riddled with climate deniers and health agencies are headed by antivaxxers.
Science, for the current US administration, is not about data and discovery. It’s a battleground of values. That one country asks researchers from another country to justify their ideology is already striking — that the questions are so virulent is just stunning.
Researchers from over a dozen Australian universities received the questionnaire. And so did scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), and members of major university associations across Europe and Canada. In many cases, the surveys were relayed via U.S. partners or sent directly by federal agencies.
Universally, scientists did not take this well.
The survey “is at the extreme end of foreign influence in a way that we have never seen from any of our research partners”, says Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8) consortium of Australia’s leading research universities. Wagenigen Chairman Caspar van den Berg described the questionnaire as ‘indicative of the deteriorating climate for free scientific inquiry in the US’.
This threatens scientific advancement
President Trump aims to cut billions in funding for research into areas such as climate, gender, health, and the environment. Research proposals are scrutinized for ‘problematic language’ surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusivity. Leading researchers outside of the US have described the pace at which science policy is being dismantled in the US as ‘almost incomprehensible’. Anja Schreijer, medical director of the Dutch Pandemic & Disaster Preparedness Center, notes that her American colleagues are afraid to speak freely. “They can only do so at the weekend via private phones. They are afraid of losing their jobs or funding.”
The fact that US research is facing an ideological purge is already concerning enough. The US has (or had) the most scientific output of all countries. But attempting to export this ideological purge to other countries is unprecedented in the free world.
European institutions have taken a clear stance. The League of European Research Universities (LERU), representing 24 top universities across the continent, advised all its members not to respond. “As far as we are informed, none of the LERU members which received the questionnaire answered it,” said communications officer Yasmine Nowicki.
But this is a very bad sign of what’s to come for science in the US.
The Trump questionnaire’s definition of anti-American beliefs is strikingly broad. It attacks environmentalism and vast swaths of public health and social science.
Science thrives on collaboration. Climate data is global, regardless of your political views. Virus genomes cross borders. Satellites monitor entire hemispheres. These are scientific realities that cannot be walled off with ideology.
Yet the Trump administration’s ideological survey suggests a different vision — one where every grant, every partnership, every scientist, is subject to a litmus test. The test is not of science or of merit, but of loyalty.
Free science cannot function like this.
