Open Source: Duke ‘no comments’ canceled NIH grants as elite schools feel Trump pressure
I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
Duke University probably has something to say about the federal government canceling its medical research grants. The school routinely ranks among the top National Institutes of Health recipients nationwide — and it is the largest recipient in North Carolina, taking in $580 million from the federal agency last year.
NIH has terminated five Duke grants over the past month according to the government’s database, part of sweeping withdrawals affecting hundreds of projects nationwide. Duke’s smallest canceled grant supported a study on sexual health among Black gay men. Its four other impacted awards were larger and funded coronavirus research. Combined, they left more than $92 million in original commitments unpaid.
It is unprecedented for NIH to end active grants at scale, especially due to their subject matter. The current Trump administration has axed funding for studying LGBTQ issues, health conditions among specific racial groups and the coronavirus. It has also targeted broader medical research at institutions like Columbia University that have drawn the government’s ire for political reasons.
But whether Duke University has thoughts about all this is different from whether the school is willing to share them.
“We have no comment at this time,” Duke University School of Medicine spokesperson Sarah Avery said in an email last Friday when asked about NIH grant cancellations.
The same day, a federal judge in Massachusetts permanently blocked NIH from applying a flat 15% rate for its indirect grant payments, which cover administrative and facilities costs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has appealed the ruling.
Back in February, the university had put me in touch with its vice dean for basic and preclinical science, who detailed “seismic” financial ramifications if the lower 15% indirect payment rates became standard. Yet asked for thoughts on what last week’s ruling could mean for the university, Duke again did not offer a comment.
Concerns over public statements that run against the current federal administration have heightened, some local academics say.
“It’s better to keep our names out of the press because we certainly feel like there’s a little vindictive mentality,” a Triangle-based researcher who had their NIH grant canceled told The News & Observer. “We didn’t think that ongoing and funded research would be, you know, terminated instantly.”
Outside of Duke, NIH has ended awards for 13 projects at UNC-Chapel Hill and one at the Durham-based research nonprofit RTI International. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has nixed additional UNC grants.
Elite universities have been singled out for substantial funding cuts and freezes. Last month, the Trump administration announced it would cut $400 million for Columbia University for the school’s response to Israel campus protests last year. In a March 19 essay in The Atlantic, Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber called this decision “a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research.”
Princeton, along with fellow Ivy League members Cornell University, Harvard University, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, have each had hundreds of millions in federal dollars frozen or threatened by the current administration. Reasons given for withholding this money have included campus antisemitism and diversity promotions, as well as because Penn had a transgender athlete on its women’s swim team.
The University of North Carolina itself was one of 60 higher education institutions to receive a March 10 letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights warning of “potential enforcement actions” if it failed “to protect Jewish students on campus.”
UNC-Chapel Hill is the state’s second-largest recipient of NIH funding, and in contrast to Duke, the public university has commented on the latest actions regarding the agency’s funding.
“Research fuels our state’s economy, technological innovations, and health discoveries, but it cannot thrive without the proper infrastructure to support it,” UNC vice chancellor of research Penny Gordon-Larsen said in an email Wednesday, addressing last week’s decision blocking the 15% indirect payment rates.
“(Facilities and Administrative) reimburses costs that form the backbone of research — essential facility expenses like specialized laboratory equipment and high-performance computing, as well as research administrative expenses that cover compliance of many mandated regulatory requirements like safety measures and the management of large, complex research grants.”
On canceled NIH grants, UNC also commented last last month while Duke did not, with a university spokesperson sharing that “terminating funding has previously been an uncommon action.”
Clearing my cache
- The federal health department last week laid off a few dozen Triangle-based NIH workers — and then asked some of them to come back. Of the 27 NIH centers and institutes, Research Triangle Park has the only one outside greater Washington, D.C.
- More layoff news. FHI 360 has officially laid off more than 480 furloughed U.S. workers, including over 140 in North Carolina, as the Durham global research nonprofit reels from the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
- North Carolina’s Bitcoin pension investment bill will advance to the House Pensions and Retirement Committee next week, the last committee before it would go to the Rules Committee and then the floor for a vote.
- Swiss pharma giant Novartis will still operate its gene therapies manufacturing site near RTP, but the company’s expected headcount there was lowered after Novartis exited a 2019 state hiring incentive.
- Did MrBeast pause the tariffs? Might be a long shot, but the YouTube star (and North Carolina resident) made headlines for pointing out how U.S. tariffs would actually lead his chocolate brand Feastables to produce more overseas.
- NASA and China this week each announced progress toward quieter supersonic air travel. The Colorado company Boom Supersonic hopes to build and test passenger supersonic jets at its future Greensboro factory. This week, Boom CEO Blake Scholl was on Fox Business where he called China’s new supersonic jet “really scary.”
National Tech Happenings
- So... tariffs. President Trump paused tariffs on most countries for 90 days while raising tariffs against China in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
- The United States’ “beautiful clean coal resources” will help the nation power AI data centers, Trump wrote in an executive order promoting domestic coal production. For more on NC data centers and why they consume tons of electricity.
- A U.S. bankruptcy judge rejected Johnson & Johnson’s $10 billion offer to settle lawsuits over whether talc in its baby powder caused cancer. It was the third time the company has sought to resolve the case in bankruptcy court.
Thanks for reading!
This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 8:41 AM with the headline "Open Source: Duke ‘no comments’ canceled NIH grants as elite schools feel Trump pressure."
