The University’s provost, Jennifer Rexford ’91, submitted a declaration supporting a lawsuit against the National Institute of Health (NIH). The lawsuit, filed on Monday, seeks a temporary halt of a Feb. 7 order that slashed research funding. The plaintiffs in the suit are the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and American Council on Education (ACE), alongside 13 universities.
“This suit challenges a flagrantly unlawful action by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that, if allowed to stand, will devastate medical research at America’s universities,” the lawsuit reads. “Cutting-edge work to cure disease and lengthen lifespans will suffer, and our country will lose its status as the destination for solving the world’s biggest health problems.”
The NIH directive on Friday sought to cap overhead research costs on grants to 15 percent. As of July 2024, Princeton’s indirect cost rate stood at 64 percent.
Princeton is not among the plaintiffs, though three other schools in the Ivy League have joined the suit: Brown University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Notably, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 currently serves as the chair of the board of the AAU — Princeton has been a member of the AAU since the association was founded in 1900. A number of other prominent universities, including Harvard and Yale, also filed declarations in support of the suit.
Rexford, who serves as the chief academic and budgetary officer of the University, wrote in her declaration that NIH funding “supports research and drives innovation” in fields ranging from cancer research to machine learning.
“The drastic reduction in indirect cost recovery proposed by NIH may hinder the development of certain research projects, or impede the progress of a broad swath of research efforts,” Rexford wrote in her statement. “Naturally, there would be effects on employment if staffing, including research-related staffing, was impacted.”
Rexford added that the NIH funding cuts would have a “substantial negative impact” on the University’s research collaborations with other universities. She cited initiatives with Rutgers University, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and Rowan University as partnerships that could be affected. These collaborative initiatives between academic institutions include research topics such as cancer, New Jersey health care, and mental health.
In a joint press statement, the AAU, APLU, and ACE wrote that “a cut to F&A for NIH grants is a cut to the medical research that helps countless American families whose loved ones face incurable diseases or untreatable debilitating conditions.”
Doug Schwartz is a staff News writer and an associate Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Annapolis, Md., and typically covers town and gown, facilities and housing, and health for News.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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