In early April, I travelled to Chicago and Baltimore to attend meetings with several associations of Canadian and American graduate schools. The atmosphere at these events was sombre, marked by a profound sense of uncertainty. Just two months before, the Trump administration had proposed caps on federal funding for scientific research administered by the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Around the same time, the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, abruptly cancelled more than $1 billion in research contracts, many of which had been awarded to universities. My American colleagues told me that the humanities, psychology, and social and life sciences were particularly vulnerable. Research led by women and people of colour was disproportionately at risk.

As they lost funding, many U.S. universities rescinded admission offers. Students who received Ph.D. offers—which often meant they were in the top five to 10 per cent of all applicants—were later told that their spots had been relinquished, and their hopes of pursuing their research were dashed. Their lives were thrown into disarray as the schools’ anticipated funding vanished. The leaders of graduate schools I spoke with were deeply distressed. They were eager to support the prospective students they’d been forced to turn away, yet their hands were tied.

Universities have depended on federal funding for decades; sustaining research at the same scale is impossible without it. At Harvard, for example, funding uncertainties have jeopardized........

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