Federal Funding Restrictions, Academic Research, and the First Amendment
Academic research is integral to discovery, innovation, and economic prosperity. The
funding that sustains this enterprise is also indispensable to American universities’ financial
sustainability. Seizing on universities’ reliance on this funding, the Trump Administration has
leveraged the federal government’s position as the leading funder of academic research to make
its mark on America’s higher education system. Specifically targeting diversity, equity, and
inclusion, environmental justice, and progressive notions of gender identity, the Trump
Administration has revoked research funding and instructed federal agencies to decline to fund
any research that touches on ideas it disfavors. It has also threatened to broadly strip funding
from universities that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in curriculum, instruction, and
programming. Given the significant amounts of money at stake—as much as billions of dollars
for the wealthiest universities—higher education institutions and researchers are understandably
feeling the chill. But some universities and academics have fought back successfully, prevailing
in court challenges to the Trump Administration’s executive orders, agency policies, and grant
terminations.
This Essay will assess the role the First Amendment is playing in the disputes between the
Trump administration and higher education. Speech doctrine unfortunately does not provide
easy answers. The Trump Administration’s restrictions on academic research fall within a
doctrinal quagmire of competing and conflicting rules. Implicated in these disputes are the
unconstitutional conditions doctrine, government speech, subsidized speech, academic freedom,
coercion, and viewpoint discrimination. This Essay clarifies how these doctrines fit together and
provides advice to universities and academics on how to most effectively repel the federal
government’s overreach. Ultimately, it concludes that most of the Trump Administration’s threats
to and conditions on federal funding in the higher education context violate the First
Amendment.
Continue reading Federal Funding Restrictions, Academic Research, and the First Amendment.