Emails shed light on University of Iowa reaction to federal funding cuts

IOWA CITY — In the throes of confusion in the hours and days after federal officials in early February delivered news of calamitous cuts to National Institutes of Health research funding, University of Iowa faculty and staff rushed to grasp the impact, craft a response, mitigate the harm, and communicate their plan.

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“Is there anything that individual faculty can do to help?” acclaimed UI microbiology and immunology professor Stanley Perlman asked UI Interim Vice President for Research Lois Geist on Feb. 10 — three days after the NIH announced a new 15-percent cap on its reimbursement of “indirect research costs.”

Acknowledging the current political landscape and Iowa’s position in it, Geist urged Perlman to act “as a private citizen.”

“Call our legislators and tell them what a bad idea this is (from your own phone or using your own email),” Geist said. “Being located where we are, we have limited ability to publicly fight this as faculty or as an institution.”

That exchange and other internal emails lobbed back and forth between UI administrators and researchers in early February paint a fearful portrait of a campus facing funding cuts in the tens of millions, lost research on the cusp of discovery, eliminated graduate student jobs, and political threat from a Republican-led Legislature holding a paramount piece of the university’s annual budget.

“Will we be joining the ongoing litigation brought forth by other states regarding this?” UI Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Karen Cyndari asked Geist in an email Feb. 10.

To Geist’s response that, “We will not be joining the litigation at this time,” Cyndari suggested a meeting between researchers and deans “to discuss this.”

“It feels very much like an ‘all hands on deck’ situation,” she said.

‘Lose grants and the ability to hire’

A court in April permanently blocked the Feb. 7 NIH attempt at a 15-percent cap on indirect research expenses for things like laboratory maintenance, high-speed data processing, security, patient safety, hazardous waste disposal, personnel, and cleaning.

But in the hours after that news first broke, UI psychology professor Jacob Michaelson wrote in an email to Geist, “I don't know how one is supposed to afford research infrastructure on that little.”

Over the next few days, administrators across the UI Office of the Vice President for Research and Division of Sponsored Programs scrambled to get a “ballpark sense of the impact this would have on an annual basis.”

Calculating the university’s average NIH indirect dollars awarded over the last three years at about 56 percent of a project’s funding, a UI Division of Sponsored Programs financial manager determined the 73 percent drop would amount to “an estimated average annual shortfall of about $45M.”

“We will lose roughly $50 million in support for infrastructure and compliance programs,” Geist told a UI internal medicine professor in response to his question of impact.

“We will then, of course, lose grants and the ability to hire people on those grants because the amount of available money will be inadequate,” she said, urging help from the private sector. “We need the foundations to weigh in to stop this as it will also impact our ability to do their research.”

‘Our own risk tolerance’

Administrators also discussed campus messaging — including to deans and faculty unsure of how to proceed with ongoing research and grant applications.

“We will need to keep track of the approaches people are taking, and what our own risk tolerance will be,” Geist said after colleagues began sharing other universities’ messages — including the University of Michigan.

Michigan’s statement said the change would “result in a significant decrease in the amount that U-M receives from the federal government to conduct vital research” and “Federal agency program officers have the authority, and the responsibility, to clarify whether a new federal directive applies to a grant.”

Geist, in response to Michigan’s statement, said, “We will need to tone it down a bit.”

Administrators met Monday morning, Feb. 10, to discuss the “best message to send” — even as faculty emailed Geist’s office with questions.

“The question is what to propose as indirect rates for NIH proposals due this week while things are unclear,” UI Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics Robert Piper asked.

“We will be communicating later this afternoon and will address this indirectly by suggesting that no one put in a grant at this point and let us see where the dust settles,” Geist said, to which Piper responded, “I don’t think the dust will settle …

“But I agree a stay would allow a legit proposal of our negotiated rate,” he said.

After UI distributed its message pushing pause on grant submissions and research assistant hiring and urging caution in grant spending, faculty weighed in — including UI pediatric-infectious disease professor Damian Krysan, who asked “why stopping submissions, when the NIH is still accepting them, is necessary.”

“This is particularly damaging to those of us with renewal applications,” he said. “If we cannot continue to get our grants reviewed, then our projects and programs will be at greater risk no matter what plays out with (indirect cost) rates in the future.”

‘It won’t stop them’

UI administrators in emails about the cap flagged legal arguments and looming litigation — which in April won a court order permanently blocking implementation of the 15-percent limit, pending appeal.

“Federal appropriations language essentially states that the administration cannot take this action (but it won’t stop them from trying),” UI Provost Kevin Kregel told Geist in advance of the legal battle that would play out.

Although officials didn’t discuss many specific grants potentially affected by federal cuts, they did raise questions of “what we want to do about the USAID grant.”

“Institutionally, we need to figure out how to support this,” Geist said. “I doubt education will be able to foot the bill.”

In March 2024, the university announced it was joining Iowa State University and the Kosova Education Center in a $3.9 million USAID-funded cooperative agreement to develop private-sector partnerships that will strengthen higher education.

The Trump administration has moved to fully close the U.S. Agency for International Development — or USAID — pending several lawsuits.

In seeking help managing the university’s USAID grant, Geist flagged her interim appointment.

“If I were a real VPR I would just be handling all this and not looking for help,” she said.

The next permanent UI vice president for research — David C. Schwebel, associate vice president for research facilities and infrastructure and psychology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — is scheduled to start July 1.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com