What the media tells you. And what they don’t.

Columbia Lays Off Nearly 180 People Because of Trump Research Cuts – The New York Times

Columbia University lays off around 180 staff after Trump administration revokes grants – Fox News

Columbia University cuts 180 staffers funded by federal grants revoked by Trump administration – NBC News

Who are the researchers? What were they doing?

That’s information the media doesn’t care about or seem interested in following up on. You’re meant to think they were doing some sort of important medical or scientific research. Columbia’s paper did however, have a profile on some of the researchers who had their grants canceled.

Camilla Green, BC ’22, a research staff assistant at the Center for Integrated Earth System Information at the Climate School in Lamont, works on the production of NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, a research project founded in 1994 and managed by CIESIN.

CIESIN’s research is “at the intersection of the social, natural, and information sciences, and specializes in on-line data and information management, spatial data integration and training, and interdisciplinary research related to human interactions in the environment,” according to the Climate School’s website.

As a part of the canceled $400 million, the federal government cut funding to SEDAC—one of the largest grant terminations thus far.

SEDAC appears rather creepy and it’s the sort of thing that taints NASA’s important space exploration work. The whole thing needs to disappear.

Samantha Winter, professor at the School of Social Work, saw two of her grants canceled. The grants funded climate change research in East Africa and its impacts on community health and well-being in the most impacted areas.

Winter told Spectator that the canceled grant was aimed at helping the Anga Center for Climate Justice, Health Equity, and Community Well-Being, an SSW initiative launched in October 2024

Whatever will we do without paying social workers to study climate equity and justice in East Africa?

Or schizophrenia in South Africa?

Ezra Susser, CC ’74, Public Health ’82, Public Health ’92, professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at the Mailman School of Public Health, said that hearing that two of his grants were cancelled was “soul-crushing.” He said the cuts are affecting a “whole legacy of work.”

Susser’s grants were for his research on the genomics of schizophrenia in South Africa and for a psychiatric epidemiology training program.

There’s a reason the media isn’t doing deep dives into the details here. If the canceled contracts were for saving lives, we’d be hearing about it non-stop from the media. Instead the media pushes the public into assuming that important researcher, rather than leftist equity and global warming work, is being canceled.

But maybe the private sector wants to fund climate research in East Africa?