ClimateChangeFork

Figure 1 –  Preparation of the World Summit on Inclusive Global Governance Plan of Action: Roadmap to 2023 (Source: Democracy without Borders)

Are we ready to change global governance to face threats that do not recognize state boundaries? The figure above shows that some people are working on it. However, the trends in many countries (led by the US) indicate growing tendencies to work against such a change.

Here is how Google AI defines the present state of global governance:

Global governance refers to the system of institutions, rules, norms, and processes that enable international cooperation on issues that transcend national borders, aiming to address collective challenges and promote shared interests.

Key Aspects of Global Governance:

• Focus on Transnational Issues:

Global governance deals with problems like climate change, pandemics, trade, human rights, and economic development that require international collaboration.

• Diverse Actors:

It involves various actors, including states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, and civil society groups.

• Rules and Institutions:

Global governance relies on a framework of international law, treaties, and institutions to facilitate cooperation and resolve disputes.

• Examples of Global Governance:
  • The United Nations (UN) system, with its specialized agencies and programs.
  • The World Trade Organization (WTO).
  • The International Monetary Fund (IMF).
  • The Paris Agreement on climate change.
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Evolving Landscape:

Global governance is not static; it adapts to new challenges and actors in the international system.

• Challenges:

Global governance faces challenges related to the rise of nationalism, the changing global power dynamics, and the need to address inequalities and injustices.

• Importance of Multilateralism:

Multilateralism, or cooperation among multiple nations, is crucial for effective global governance.

An important tool of global governance that is not mentioned above is international law. Below is how international law is described by AI:

International law is a system of rules and principles that governs the relations and conduct of sovereign states, international organizations, and individuals, encompassing areas like trade, human rights, diplomacy, and environmental preservation.

Here’s a more detailed overview:

Key Aspects of International Law:

• Scope:

International law deals with a wide range of issues, including:

• • Human Rights: Protecting fundamental rights and freedoms.
  • Trade: Regulating international commerce and economic relations.
  • Diplomacy: Establishing rules for interactions between states.
  • Environmental Preservation: Addressing global environmental challenges.
  • War Crimes: Defining and addressing violations of international law during armed conflict.
  • State Sovereignty: Recognizing the independence and authority of states.

• Sources of International Law:

  • Treaties: Agreements between states that create binding legal obligations.
  • Customary International Law: Practices followed by states that are considered legally binding.
  • General Principles of Law: Principles recognized by civilized nations.
  • Judicial Decisions and Writings of Scholars: Can be used to interpret and develop international law.

• Enforcement:

  • International law relies on a combination of mechanisms for enforcement, including:
    • International Organizations: Such as the United Nations, which can play a role in promoting and enforcing international law.
    • International Courts and Tribunals: For resolving disputes between states.
    • State Responsibility: States are responsible for upholding international law and can be held accountable for violations.

• Relationship to National Law:

  • International law and national law are distinct but interconnected.

  • National law is the law of a particular country, while international law governs relations between states.

  • States are generally obligated to comply with international law in their domestic legal systems.

In essence, the definition of international law (as described by this AI) is circular: international law can only be enforced by sovereign states, but state sovereignty is defined through international law. If we click on the Google entry of state sovereignty in the definition of international law, we get the following:

State sovereignty refers to a state’s supreme authority within its own territory, meaning it’s independent from other states and can govern itself without foreign interference. This includes the power to make its own laws, operate its own judicial system, and effectively govern itself.

Elaboration:

• Definition:

State sovereignty is the legal authority and responsibility of a state to govern its internal affairs and external relations without interference from other states. It’s a key concept in international law and political science.

• Internal vs. External:

Sovereignty encompasses both internal independence (governing its own territory) and external independence (being free from foreign control).

• Sovereign Equality:

Under international law, states are generally considered equal in their sovereignty, regardless of their size, population, or power.

• Limitations:

While sovereignty is a core principle, it’s not absolute. States can voluntarily enter into agreements that limit their sovereignty, such as international treaties or alliances.

The interesting entry here is the concept of sovereign equality. Size doesn’t matter. As I mentioned in previous blogs, this blog will be posted while I am in Europe. As part of the trip, we will visit the country of Montenegro, which used to be part of Yugoslavia. I asked AI to provide us with a “list of sovereign states smaller than Montenegro that are members of the UN”:

The following UN member states have smaller populations than Montenegro (627,859 in 2021): Monaco (36,686), San Marino (35,436), Liechtenstein (41,232), Malta (526,748), and Vatican City (764).

Here’s a more detailed breakdown:

• Monaco:

With a population of 36,686 in 2021, Monaco is a city-state located in Western Europe.

• San Marino:

With a population of 35,436 in 2021, San Marino is a microstate located in Italy.

• Liechtenstein:

With a population of 41,232 in 2021, Liechtenstein is a microstate located in Western Europe.

• Malta:

With a population of 526,748 in 2021, Malta is an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea.

• Vatican City:

With a population of 764 in 2023-2024, Vatican City is the smallest country in the world by size and is located in Italy.

All these countries have the same degree of sovereignty as China (1.4 billion people), India (1.4 billion people), and the US (340 million people). Power, in terms of people, economy, and development, is a better enforcer of influence (but not by law).

(Source: Eur0m0ney)

Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution provides:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The citation is from the US Constitution but there is no doubt in my mind that security is a prime requirement of every sovereign state. The article states that the protection should be provided for all its citizens against “invasion.” It does not specify human or non-human invasions. To my understanding, if a state can do something to alleviate deadly consequences of any sort, it should. Some threats don’t recognize human-created borders, so the “Make America Great Again” policy of letting other countries fend for themselves in this context is folly, and such a government should be replaced. Figure 2 summarizes the death toll of global natural disasters from 1950 to 2022. None of the threats in Figure 2 recognized state borders. Humans cannot do much about earthquakes yet, but the other threats are amplified by climate change, which is an anthropogenic threat.

Figure 2 – The 10 most significant natural disasters worldwide by death toll 1950-2022 

All these disasters are events that took place in the past. All are natural, cross-border disasters. The United States is not mentioned in the list but Wikipedia has a separate entry for cross-border disasters in the US. It includes COVID-19 (1,131,819 fatalities), the opioid epidemic (750,000), HIV/AIDS (750,000), two influenza pandemics (226,000), and a variety of floods, hurricanes, and fires that have been amplified through anthropogenic climate change.

Almost all the countries mentioned in Figure 2 are populated developing countries (Taiwan does not fit into this category and China is classified as a middle-income country). Any disaster of that magnitude that hits a developing country triggers mass immigration to safer countries, which, in turn, triggers instability in the rest of the world.

Possible future global disasters were discussed in two previous blogs:

The general trend in “What Are We Trying to Teach Our Children?” (June 11, 2024) :

Humanity is in the middle of at least 5 existential transitions; all of these started around WWII. They include climate change, nuclear energy, declining fertility, global electrification, and digitization. These transitions started around the time that I was born, but they will hopefully last (if some of them do not lead to extinction in the meantime) at least through the lifetime of my grandchildren (I call this time “now” in some of my writing). For the purpose of this blog, I will now change the word “hopefully” to probably.

And specific numbers in “Back to Self-Inflicted Genocide” (March 25, 2025):

A global all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia with over four thousand 100-kiloton nuclear warheads would lead, at minimum, to 360 million quick deaths.*  That’s about 30 million people more than the entire US population.

360,000,000

The Cretaceous mass extinction event occurred 66 million years ago, killing 78% of all species, including the remaining non-avian dinosaurs. This was most likely caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth in what is now Mexico, potentially compounded by ongoing flood volcanism in what is now India.

Unabated climate change will cause 3.4 million deaths per year by the end of the Century, new data presented to COP27 today shows. Health-related deaths of the over-65s will increase by 1,540%, and in India alone there will be 1 million additional heat-related deaths by 2090, if no action to limit warming is taken, the data shows.

One can find comparisons of global casualties from interstate wars since 1945 in Table 1.

Table 1 – Interstate wars since 1945 with more than 50,000 estimated casualties

It’s obvious from this that the number of casualties in interstate wars is higher than in cross-border disasters. However, a closer look at Table 1 reveals that most interstate wars take place in areas that were once held under colonial rule. These are generally developing countries; meanwhile, the developed countries that could provide the most help are not taking part in most of them.

The next blog will focus on the tools that sovereign countries have and existing attempts to increase the set of tools to fight global threats.

(Source: Kosmos Journal)

Next week, my wife and I are taking a trip to Europe. The main objective is to celebrate 80 years since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British army on April 15, 1945. My own liberation, along with my mother and uncle, happened on April 13, 1945, when we were rescued by the American army near Farsleben, Germany. My previous description of the background of these events can be found in the September 13, 2022 blog. We now have many friends in these communities, and I am sure that many will pose the same question of my citizenship that this blog’s title does.

As of 2023, there were close to 50 million foreign-born people in the US. I am sure that many are being asked a similar question. I was born in Poland in 1939 and I am passport holder in both the US and Israel. I was directly confronted with the question when I needed a security clearance to be a summer guest at a US government laboratory. I was asked what I would do if the US and Israel went to war with each other. This was a hypothetical question (I was above recruitment age), but it was a fair and relevant one, for which I didn’t have a good answer. Not surprisingly, I was denied the clearance.

A historical perspective of the interactions between global and country citizenship was given in a guest opinion in the Sunday, April 6th, NYT by Tara Zahra. A key example from this article, that is also relevant to the situation we are facing now, is given below:

The economist John Maynard Keynes, conjuring an Edwardian version of Amazon, recalled how “the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep.” After drinking his tea (from India), sweetened by sugar (from Jamaica), that Londoner might later enjoy toast (made from wheat grown in Kansas), butter (from New Zealand), beef (from Argentina) and oranges (from Palestine).

My trip to Europe is for three weeks. As is my habit in such cases, I will leave two blogs to be posted on a weekly schedule when I am away, and take a one-week break. I should be back on schedule on May 14^th. Meanwhile, one blog will deal with cross-border global threats and opportunities, and the other will be on global governance.

To be prepared for the trip, I posed the title question to AI (through Google). Here is what I got, on both a superficial level and on a deeper one:

You can be both a citizen of a particular nation (American, Israeli, Polish, etc.) and a global citizen, as these concepts are not mutually exclusive; a global citizen is someone who recognizes their interconnectedness with the wider world while still holding a national identity.

Here’s a breakdown:

• National Identity:

Belonging to a specific country grants you citizenship, rights, and responsibilities within that nation’s borders.

• Global Citizenship:

This concept emphasizes a broader sense of belonging to a global community, recognizing shared challenges and opportunities, and taking an active role in making the world a better place.

• Overlap:

Individuals can hold both identities simultaneously, recognizing their national identity while also understanding their role in the global community.

In essence, you can be an American (or Israeli, or Polish, etc.) and a global citizen, as these are not opposing concepts but rather complementary aspects of identity.

 

Go Deeper

The answer to your question is a nuanced “all of the above” – you can hold national citizenship and identify as a global citizen simultaneously.

Here’s a breakdown:

1. National Citizenship:

• Definition:National citizenship refers to the legal status of being a citizen of a particular country, with specific rights and responsibilities within that nation’s borders.
• Examples:You can be an American citizen, an Israeli citizen, a Polish citizen, or any other nationality.
• Rights and Responsibilities:These are defined by the laws and policies of the respective country, such as voting rights, paying taxes, and obeying the laws.

2. Global Citizenship:

• Definition:Global citizenship is a perspective or a way of seeing oneself as part of a broader, interconnected global community.
• Key Aspects:
  • Awareness of Global Issues: Understanding interconnected global challenges like poverty, climate change, and inequality.
  • Respect for Diversity: Valuing and appreciating different cultures, perspectives, and backgrounds.
  • Sense of Global Community: Recognizing that one’s actions can have a global impact and feeling a sense of responsibility towards the world.
  • Action and Advocacy: Taking action to address global challenges and promote positive change.

3. The “All of the Above” Perspective:

• Overlapping Identities:Global citizenship doesn’t negate or diminish one’s national identity.
• Complementary Roles:You can fulfill your responsibilities as a national citizen while also acting as a global citizen, addressing issues within your community and also supporting initiatives for global well-being.
• Layered Identities:You can have multiple identities – a local identity, a national identity, and a global identity.

In essence: Being a national citizen means having a legal connection to a specific country, while being a global citizen represents a sense of belonging to and responsibility towards the global community.

Back to my security clearance question. If asked for my choice in a conflict between my perception of my global citizenship and my state citizenship, where should my loyalties stand? I would have to consider the following: disobedience under state citizenship has penalties tied to the privileges: I could be arrested and my citizenship could be withdrawn (through judicial actions). States are sovereign; our planet is not. I will discuss state sovereignty in more detail over the next two blogs. I will also discuss attempts to make global citizenship more structural. In doing so, we automatically dilute the invincibility of state sovereignty. If anybody would like to know how such a process works, they should observe the current dynamics of the European Union.

 (Source: Notes from the Middle Ground Substack)

When we vote to destroy a country, we shouldn’t be surprised when the country gets destroyed. By the same token, when we continue to vote to destroy many countries, we shouldn’t be surprised when the world gets destroyed. On an individual level, we call such actions suicidal. On a collective level, the language is not yet well developed. Fortunately, there is a strong and powerful counterforce. In physics and philosophy we call it inertia. Here is how AI (through Google) defines inertia in humans (as distinguished from physics):

Inertia refers to humans’ inability to alter the ways they process information, sticking with default mental models. As a result, inertia has also been linked to the status quo bias, which describes our resistance to change.

On March 31^st, I gave a talk to Cardozo Law School students, trying to relate my life experiences with their prospective experiences, once they finish school. In preparation for this, I posted last week’s blog, which tried to summarize the legal fights awaiting them after graduation. This week, the terrain has sort of shifted. Everything seems to be changing. A few days prior to my talk, four NYT journalists, who are considered conservatives by NYT standards (David Brooks, Ross Douthart, David French, and Bret Stephens), tried to summarize why President Trump’s followers love him even more now than when they initially won him a second term last year. What caught my attention was the short exchange cited below:

David Brooks: I’d start with the world we’ve been living in for the last decade or so. According to an Ipsos survey last year, 59 percent of Americans think our country is in decline. Sixty percent believe “the system is broken.” Sixty-nine percent believe the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.” If those are your priors, then you’re going to be happy with a president who wields a wrecking ball.

Healy: As Trump liked to say while campaigning, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Brooks: I’d add another phrase: “brokenism.” This is the belief system popularized by Alana Newhouse in Tablet magazine in 2022. It’s the idea that everything is broken and we just need to burn it all down. Personally, I think some things are broken and some things are OK, but most of my Trump-supporting friends are brokenists. They get this from media consumption. Do you remember that 2013 study that people who consumed a lot of media about the Boston Marathon bombing experienced “higher acute stress” than those who were actually at the bombing? There’s something about screens that contributes to a catastrophizing mind-set.

The concept was new to me and I went to the definition given by Brooks that is shared below:

The real debate today isn’t between the left and right. It’s between those invested in our current institutions, and those who want to build anew.

I am not a historian, but I am fully aware that destroying stuff is much easier than building it anew. Most revolutions teach us this lesson. The statistics that Brooks mentioned could easily sway every election. Hillary Clinton referring to Trump’s supporters during his first presidential election as “deplorables” didn’t help much:

Let’s start with the obvious: “Basket of deplorables” is a weird turn of phrase. There are baskets and there are deplorable people, but pairing the two is the oddest of linguistic odd couples.

Hillary Clinton said those three words in the final months of her 2016 presidential campaign, making rhetorical and political history. There were two kinds of Donald Trump supporters, she explained: Voters who feel abandoned and desperate, who she placed in one metaphorical basket, and those she called “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic” — her “basket of deplorables.”

Trump — the same man who announced his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” — clutched his proverbial pearls, aghast that his opponent had uttered such a shocking slander. His campaign turned that insult into an asset; supporters wore hats and shirts proudly declaring themselves deplorable. Pundits seized on the phrase, debating who does and doesn’t deserve to be called that. Five years later, many believe “deplorables” — figuratively and literally — are here to stay.

To President Trump’s credit, almost all that he has done during the two months of his 2^nd term has been to follow through on the promises that he made before the election. These included an emphasis on reducing immigration, major cuts to the size of the federal government, and reliance on duties to encourage domestic manufacturing. What was somewhat surprising is that some of these cuts resembled complete destruction. These included federal support for education and foreign aid. The common denominator of all these is the federated (and the constitutional) nature of the country. My wife oversaw a few research groups before she retired (she is continuing to work with the groups) and was notified a few days ago that their federal support is being terminated.

Immediately after President Trump’s November win, I wrote a blog titled “Resilience,” which said that the American constitutional system is resilient enough to stop anything that the voters don’t like. I mentioned that the 1^st test will be in two years, when a new congress will be up for election – the full House of Representatives and third of the Senate.  Actually, a mini test happened two days ago (April 1^st), when two special elections for Congress and an election of a State Supreme Court judge took place in Wisconsin, one of the swing states that Trump won, that could shift the balance of the court from liberal to conservative. The results of these elections are summarized below:

Elon Musk’s money can buy him love from Republicans, but not, it turns out, a Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

A campaign awash in more than $25 million in spending by the world’s richest man and groups tied to him ended up much like the other elections of the first months of President Trump’s second term: with a surge of energy from Democratic Wisconsin voters that overwhelmed whatever turnout Republicans could manage in response.

On the same night that Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, was delivering a thumping to Judge Brad Schimel, the Trump-backed conservative, Democrats saw a silver lining in losses in two special congressional elections in Florida. In both races, they were able to cut sharply into the much wider Republican victory margins from November. In all, the night’s results demonstrated what Democratic officials have been saying in recent weeks: that their voters are fired up to fight back against a Trump administration set on tearing down large chunks of the federal government.

These were very local tests, all in areas dominated by Trump supporters. The stock market is a much more general testing area, that is also known for its strong fluctuations. Figure 2 shows the performance of the US market compared to the international market.

Figure 2 – The American stock market since President Trump’s inauguration, compared to international markets (Source: Personal Finance Club)

The day after “Liberation Day” (Thursday, April 3), when President Trump announced the “complete” list of trade barriers for friends and foes alike, the market was reduced by additional 5%. The next day started with a continuing decline, with major drops in international markets (Stocks Drop Again as Trade War Intensifies) and continued in the US with a continued drop of close to 6%. A rough calculation indicates that this meant approximately 6 trillion US$ in this country were wiped out in two days. Next week, I will start to make the case that you cannot “Make America Great Again” with the rest of the world in decline.

The American Constitution, and its interpretation by the judiciary, is responsible for the strong inertia and the resiliency that American governance seems to show.  It is difficult, although not impossible, for an individual to confiscate federal power. Time works in favor of inertia.

As a newly retired guy, I am spending quality time trying to formalize my (and my wife’s) modest estate. It looks like President Trump (age 78) is doing the same on a much larger scale. It seems that all eyes are on the large US federal deficit. Republicans will have a hard time advocating for a major tax cut unless they can first achieve a reduction of the deficit. Figure 3 shows the American debt deficit compared to other major countries.

Figure 3 – Gross government debt in 2023 of leading developed countries as a percentage of their GDP (Source: Visual Capitalist)

We will continue to follow.

https://bsky.app/profile/annsharon.bsky.social/post/3liderfg7ak25

A previous blog (November 12, 2024), titled “Resilience,” was posted a few days after President Trump won the November election. It emphasized the constitutional resilience of the American government system. That blog focused on the term limits of the executive and the legislative branches. It left out the judiciary. The role of this branch, during the first two months of the Trump administration, is now rising to be a focus. An important aspect of the role that the judiciary plays in the resiliency of the US government includes the election and tenure of judges. A short summary is included in the publication of the Center for Effective Government

(20240306_Centre_of_Effective_Government_Primer_SummaryPDF_ElectedVsAppointed.pdf), the beginning of which is cited below:

In the United States, the federal judiciary is composed of judges who were nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serve life terms. In contrast, judges in state courts come to occupy their positions through a vast array of different procedures, and once in office, generally require additional procedures to stay there. The debate over whether judges should be elected or appointed hinges on a conflict between two competing ideals of judicial independence and accountability. Judicial independence is the belief that judges should be insulated from undue or improper influence by other political institutions, interests, and/or the general public. Independence is closely related to the idea of the rule of law: legal structures should be applied in a consistent and unbiased manner irrespective of the identity of litigants or judges. Pulling against judicial independence is the demand for accountability, the belief that public officials should answer to someone for their decisions in office.

I strongly recommend that readers read through the full publication.

The code of conduct required by the judiciary is summarized by the American Bar Association as the Model Code of judicial conduct:

ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct
(2020 Edition).  The Model Code of Judicial Conduct was adopted by the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association on August 7, 1990 and amended on August 6, 1997, August 10, 1999, August 12, 2003, February 12, 2007, and August 10, 2010. (Purchase hard copy)

CANON 1
A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

CANON 2
A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially, competently, and diligently.

CANON 3
A judge shall conduct the judge’s personal and extrajudicial activities to minimize the risk of conflict with the obligations of judicial office.

CANON 4
A judge or candidate for judicial office shall not engage in political or campaign activity that is inconsistent with the independence, integrity, or impartiality of the judiciary.

With the Trump administration winning majorities in the November election of the Senate, the House, and the Presidency (a trifecta) and gaining the majority vote, the judiciary became the critical battlefield.

The legal war is described by the two NYT articles, key paragraphs of which are cited below:

A Quick Guide to the Lawsuits Against the Trump Orders

The legal war over President Trump’s blizzard of executive actions is intensifying, with new lawsuits and fresh rulings emerging now day and night.

Judges are already making their mark: As of Saturday, eight rulings have at least temporarily paused the president’s initiatives. Other cases have not been decided. No matter the initial rulings by judges, many decisions are likely to be appealed, and some might reach the Supreme Court in the months to come.

The dozens of lawsuits fall into four main categories.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Immigration

• Budget Freezes and Firings

• Transgender Rights

• 6 Investigators

Why Federal Courts May Be the Last Bulwark Against Trump

More than 40 lawsuits filed in recent days by state attorneys general, unions and nonprofits seek to erect a bulwark in the federal courts against President Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive actions that have upended much of the federal government and challenged the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.

Unlike the opening of Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, little significant resistance to his second term has arisen in the streets, the halls of Congress or within his own Republican Party. For now at least, lawyers say, the judicial branch may be it.

“The courts really are the front line,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward, which has filed nine lawsuits and won four court orders against the Trump administration.

In addition, what appear to be solid constitutional standings such as birthright citizenship, are now being challenged:

Feb 6 (Reuters) – A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday accused Donald Trump of ignoring the rule of law for political and personal gain as he declared an executive order that the Republican president signed seeking to curtail birthright citizenship to be unconstitutional.

There was applause in the courtroom after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour extended an order he had issued two weeks ago temporarily blocking Trump’s order from being implemented into a nationwide injunction lasting indefinitely.

The battle became not only issue-oriented but personal:

United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of a federal judge, calling him “radical left” for blocking the deportation of Venezuelan migrants, as his administration ramps up rhetoric against the courts.

Trump on Tuesday called for the impeachment of Judge James Boasberg, accusing him of putting the US at risk. “We don’t want vicious, violent, and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers, in our country,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has criticised calls to impeach Judge Boasberg, but that has not stopped Trump from attacking the judge. The US president lashed out at Roberts as well, suggesting the Supreme Court itself was compromised by political bias.

The personal vendettas targeted not only specific judges who have ruled on present issues but also extended to revenge against judges who ruled against him between his two presidential terms:

As Donald Trump aggressively seeks revenge against multiple foes in the US, he’s waging a vendetta using executive orders and social media against judges, law firms, prosecutors, the press and other vital American institutions to stifle dissent and exact retribution.

Legal scholars say the president’s menacing attacks, some of which Trump’s biggest campaign backer, the billionaire Elon Musk, has echoed, are aimed at silencing critics of his radical agenda and undercut the rule of law in authoritarian ways that expand his own powers.

“Trump’s moves are from the authoritarian playbook,” said the Harvard law school lecturer and retired Massachusetts judge Nancy Gertner. “You need to delegitimize institutions that could be critics. Trump is seeking to use the power of the presidency to delegitimize institutions including universities, law firms, judges and others. It’s the opposite of American democracy.”

The fear of hostile presidential power has encouraged many to capitulate without a fight:

Feb 21 (Reuters) – The American Bar Association will temporarily suspend enforcement of its diversity and inclusion standard for law schools.

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted on Friday to halt enforcement of its current standard until August 31 while it reviews a pending proposed revision to the rule.

All of these battles came on top of the expanding role of the judiciary in deciding the blame for climate change-related natural disasters (see blogs June 13, 2023 and July 23, 2024 on needed prerequisites). See Figure 2 for the expanding climate change litigations.

Figure 2 – Global climate litigations (Source: Nature)

In August of last year, prior to Trump’s second term, the International Court of Justice got involved:

This is where the entry of the world’s highest court could be a game changer. In the next few months, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ principal judicial organ in The Hague, the Netherlands, will begin hearing evidence on two broad questions: first, what are countries’ obligations in international law to protect the climate system from anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, and second, what should the legal consequences be for states when their actions — or failure to act — cause harm?

By the time this blog is posted, I will be giving a talk to law school students, trying to map my experiences to their prospective experiences after graduation. To have them leave class with a smile, I don’t intend to mention that according to Bill Gates their whole profession (and most others) will disappear shortly after their graduation.

They might find some remedy for this issue (or a postponement) by moving to Europe.

Stay tuned.

(Source: ASU)

 Last week’s blog was focused on learning, from the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation, how to try to oppose a deadly hostile environment in a non-violent manner. The proposed remedy was to create a modern (computer-based) Ringelblum archive that is opaque to the hostile environment, and that can be opened when the political environment gets more friendly. At the end of that blog, I promised to show an example in this blog. Not surprisingly, the examples that I will use relate to the current global trends that may lead to existential global threats.  Collectively, I define the processes as “self-inflicted genocide.”

Before I go into these trends, I need to discuss two important elements in the concept: my degree of certainty in its continuation and the embedded assumption of “business as usual,” without which we might mitigate the crisis. The best entry to these uncertainties is through an invited talk that I gave on December 1, 2016, at the University of Pennsylvania. The assembly aimed to convince the University to disconnect from investing in fossil fuels. I was invited by a student, Richard Ling, who—together with Thomas Lee—wrote a detailed paper summarizing the concept. I strongly suggest that you read the full manuscript. Here, I am including part of their summary that includes my position on the issue:

As a Holocaust survivor and professor of physics at Brooklyn College, Micha Tomkiewicz has a nuanced understanding of genocide in the context of climate change. In a talk at the University of Pennsylvania on December 1, 2016, Tomkiewicz painted climate change as a prospective “self-inflicted genocide.” With greenhouse emissions (whose increase is primarily attributed to fossil fuel combustion) threatening irreversible harms to ecosystems, living organisms, and the human race, Tomkiewicz makes it salient that his comparison of climate change to genocide should be used as a marker of direction and pointer to clear evil. He warned: “It’s easy today to teach students to condemn the Holocaust, but it’s much more difficult to teach them how to try to prevent future genocides.” As moral agents, we ought to maintain an active memory of past injustices and proactively act in the face of new moral evils. Truth and justice ought not to be dismissed in 19 words.

Following the talk, I wrote a blog that summarizes my position on that event, including some relevant information not included by the students’ summary:

Richard’s request forced me to take another look at my claim that by the end of this century the impact of climate change would amount to “self-inflicted genocide.” I decided to see whether such an association didn’t need some narrowing. Reading Philippe Sands’ new book, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity helped me with this reassessment. The word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin and used in the 3^rd indictment of the Nuremberg Trials. The definition used in the trial was: “Extermination of racial and religious groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particular Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others.” From Sands’ book I also learned that Lemkin’s best friend in Poland was my great uncle. I suddenly started to feel even more personal pressure to specify my use of the term in a context that I am almost sure Lemkin would not have agreed with.

The definition of genocide is now moving well beyond Lemkin and the UN’s original definition.

I went to AI (through Google) for a recent summary of the definition:

• • Definition:

Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. 

• • Key Elements:
    • Intent to Destroy:The most crucial element is the intent of the perpetrators to destroy the group, not just to harm or persecute individuals. 
    • Targeted Group:The victims are targeted because of their membership in a specific group, not because of their individual actions or characteristics. 
    • Acts of Destruction:These acts can include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 
  • Historical Context:

The term “genocide” was coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish-Polish lawyer, who combined the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill). 

• • Distinction from Other Atrocities:

While genocide is a specific crime with a unique intent requirement, it’s important to distinguish it from other mass atrocities like crimes against humanity and war crimes, which may not involve the intent to destroy a group. 

The global trends that we are currently experiencing were summarized in a previous blog titled “What Are We Trying to Teach Our Children?” (June 11, 2024). A key paragraph from that blog is given below:

Humanity is in the middle of at least 5 existential transitions; all of these started around WWII. They include climate change, nuclear energy, declining fertility, global electrification, and digitization. These transitions started around the time that I was born, but they will hopefully last (if some of them do not lead to extinction in the meantime) at least through the lifetime of my grandchildren (I call this time “now” in some of my writing).

For the purpose of this blog, I will now change the word “hopefully” to probably.

In “business as usual” scenarios, some of these trends could lead to global genocide. Such trends include: climate change, global epidemics, nuclear war, a large asteroid hitting Earth, and the digitization that has led to AI.

All of these threats are projected to take place in the future. Some of these threats are the same age as Lemkin and myself (digitization/AI, climate change, and nuclear war) while two others have a longer history (global epidemics and a large asteroid hitting Earth).

I will go now through the projections of the magnitude of these threats, starting with the newest and “simplest” threat – AI.

AI

About two weeks ago, an article came out describing how AI can revolutionize science:

Across the spectrum of uses for artificial intelligence, one stands out.

The big, inspiring A.I. opportunity on the horizon, experts agree, lies in accelerating and transforming scientific discovery and development. Fed by vast troves of scientific data, A.I. promises to generate new drugs to combat disease, new agriculture to feed the world’s population and new materials to unlock green energy — all in a tiny fraction of the time of traditional research.

Technology companies like Microsoft and Google are making A.I. tools for science and collaborating with partners in fields like drug discovery. And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year went to scientists using A.I. to predict and create proteins.

This month, Lila Sciences went public with its own ambitions to revolutionize science through A.I. The start-up, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., had worked in secret for two years “to build scientific superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.”

Relying on an experienced team of scientists and $200 million in initial funding, Lila has been developing an A.I. program trained on published and experimental data, as well as the scientific process and reasoning. The start-up then lets that A.I. software run experiments in automated, physical labs with a few scientists to assist.

The description of the global threats posed by this technology is much shorter:

I can ask it a “simple” question: “how to destroy the world” or “how to prevent the destruction of the world?” For certain individuals within our 8 billion people, the two opposing perspectives of the question are basically the same. If these individuals have the right prerequisites to be able to put the AI suggestions to work – would the result be considered genocide?

Nuclear War

Threats of nuclear war (often labeled WWIII) are now spreading. The Russians are reacting negatively to almost any step associated with the West’s help for Ukraine. Trump is threatening Zelensky that there will be major consequences if the US continues to defend Ukraine. Meanwhile, the West is trying to strategize on a new nuclear umbrella to replace the US.

The results, if the current nuclear arsenal of both the US and Russia were to be triggered, have been summarized by Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

A global all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia with over four thousand 100-kiloton nuclear warheads would lead, at minimum, to 360 million quick deaths.*  That’s about 30 million people more than the entire US population.

360,000,000

*  This estimate is based on a scenario of an all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States involving 4,400 100-kiloton weapons under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) limits, where each country can deploy up to 2,200 strategic warheads. The 2010 New START Treaty further limits the US- and Russian-deployed long-range nuclear forces down to 1,550 warheads. But as the average yield of today’s strategic nuclear forces of Russia and the United States far exceeds 100 kilotons, a full nuclear exchange between the two countries involving around 3,000 weapons likely

An asteroid hitting Earth

From Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS):

CNEOS analysis of near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4, which is estimated to be about 40 to 90 meters wide, indicates it has a more than 1% chance of impacting Earth on Dec. 22, 2032 — which also means there is almost a 99% chance this asteroid will not impact. These analyses will change from day to day as more observations are gathered. The CNEOS analyses are used for NASA’s contribution to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). After the impact probability for this asteroid reached 1%, IAWN issued its official notification for the potential impact.

Cosmological collisions are not unusual. However, the last one that hit Earth was about 66 million years ago, well before the emergence of humans:

The Cretaceous mass extinction event occurred 66 million years ago, killing 78% of all species, including the remaining non-avian dinosaurs. This was most likely caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth in what is now Mexico, potentially compounded by ongoing flood volcanism in what is now India.

A 1% probability within 7 years leaves a 99% probability of a non-event. But in case that 1% were to grow, a human response would take time. As small of a probability as it is, we can’t discount the effects of the last asteroid.

Epidemics

Covid-19 – 14.9 million excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 (According to the UN)

Spanish Flu – (Wikipedia)

The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million,^[6][7] and possibly as high as 100 million,^[8] making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

Climate change – New Health Data Shows Unabated Climate Change Will Cause 3.4 Million Deaths Per Year by Century End – V20: The Vulnerable Twenty Group

Unabated climate change will cause 3.4 million deaths per year by the end of the Century, new data presented to COP27 today shows. Health-related deaths of the over-65s will increase by 1,540%, and in India alone there will be 1 million additional heat-related deaths by 2090, if no action to limit warming is taken, the data shows.

Back to the definition and inclusion of the modern Ringelblum Archive. The point is to protect the ideas and arguments that could currently be dangerous to publish in this hostile environment. Inclusions into the archive should include arguments for and against a contribution and it should be used, as all research should be used, as an argument to encourage further research on the issue. In this case, we are talking about the lifespan of infrastructure (e.g. the built environment) that is estimated based on the global threats (e.g. climate change) that the hostile environment (e.g. the government) discounts. In many cases, two versions of the same related issue could be collected; one might be acceptable and publishable in the present environment and the other, with the “speculation” of future consequences, could be stored in the archive.

As I am finishing writing this blog, President Trump is issuing another executive order:

March 19 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Wednesday related to state and local infrastructure preparedness for responding to natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes, along with other threats like cyber attacks.

“This order empowers state, local, and individual preparedness and injects common sense into infrastructure prioritization and strategic investments through risk-informed decisions,” the order said.

The only way to comply is to make a new, modern Ringelblum Archive that can stay transparent to any administration.

Stay tuned!

The last few blogs explored some of the steps that the new Trump administration is taking against the roles of government that many of us cherish. My emphasis in these blogs was on academic institutions, but I went well beyond that.

One good example could be seen on Tuesday, March 4^th, when President Trump gave his televised speech to a joint session of Congress (technically it was not a State of the Union because of his short tenure as President) where he gave a list of his government’s accomplishments since his inauguration on January 20^th and his plans for the future of his presidency. One could clearly see a house divided: Republicans were enthusiastic, and Democrats didn’t like any of it. Figure 1 shows the dominant Democratic response – they raised tiny placards with objections to almost every reference that the president brought up. The most popular placards said “False” or “Save Medicaid.” One Democratic congressman, representative Al Green from Texas, heckled Trump loudly and consistently. He got the attention of viewers but was ejected from the chamber and was later denounced by the Republican House majority.

Figure 1 – Democratic lawmakers hold up signs in protest as President Donald Trump delivers an address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on March 4, 2025 (Source: Politico)

April is approaching with its many Holocaust-related events. One of these is Yom HaShoah (which translates from Hebrew to “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day”). It commemorates the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and the heroism of both survivors and rescuers. The date was set by the Israeli parliament (Knesset) to coincide with the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the Hebrew calendar (27^th of Nisan). This year it begins on the evening of April 23^rd. Meanwhile, International Holocaust Day, as decided by the UN, is dated to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union. Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where I spent two years with my mother and uncle, was liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945. However, my mother, uncle, and I were liberated earlier—on April 13, 1945—from our train “ride” through Farsleben from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. I was invited to participate in a commemoration of the 80^th anniversary of these events and my wife and I will leave for Europe in April (see the April 12, 2022 blog for more details about our previous visit). Aprils are busy for us and for many others.

Figure 2 – the exhibition Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, organized in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, and the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism

Uprisings against evil are not unusual throughout history but intellectual uprisings are more rare. One such piece of resistance, which took place during the Nazi occupation of the Warsaw Ghetto, is not as popularly known as the Ghetto uprising. This is called the Ringelblum Archive, or in Hebrew, “Oneg Shabbat,” and its post-war discovery is shown in Figure 2:

The Ringelblum Archive is a collection of documents from the World War II Warsaw Ghetto, collected and preserved by a group known by the codename Oyneg Shabbos (in Modern Israeli Hebrew, Oneg Shabbat; Hebrew: עונג שבת), led by Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum. The group, which included historians, writers, rabbis, and social workers, was dedicated to chronicling life in the Ghetto during the German occupation. They worked as a team, collecting documents and soliciting testimonies and reports from dozens of volunteers of all ages. The materials submitted included essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters, and other materials describing life in the Ghetto. The archive assembly began in September 1939 and ended in January 1943; the material was buried in the ghetto in three caches.

After the war, two of the three caches were recovered and today the re-discovered archive, containing about 6,000 documents (some 35,000 pages),^[1] is preserved in the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.^[2]

An earlier blog that was posted on September 17, 2024, a few months before last November’s elections, started with the following paragraph:

From my perspective, the top photograph encapsulates the way we vote. The picture is not AI generated or even edited; I took it with my iPhone. It shows a mirror in my apartment that faces my terrace, which looks out onto my city. It is a mixture of the “me,” “us,” and “them” that constitute the general trajectory of every political election. The collective weight that we put on each component determines the outcome. In the US we are now facing the presidential election, which has already started in some states and will be concluded on Election Day (November 5^th).

Almost every action that we take is a mixture of “me,” “us,” and “them” in various proportions. This is true for individuals, groups, and institutions. The amount of power that surrounds us determines our responses to various issues that we confront. Obviously, there are large differences between our present environment and the environment that surrounded the Jewish population of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. Ringelblum and his followers were aware that in terms of deadly conflicts, history is written by the winners. From 1939-1943, the Nazis looked to be the sure winners; many in the Ghetto, with Ringelblum in leadership, wanted to make sure that the truth was not forgotten and they succeeded. In many cases, the “us” won (after the war) while often the “me” lost their lives (including Ringelblum) in circumstances not connected with the archive.

Back to our present reality:

The Republican party presently controls the presidency and the two arms of Congress. They fully control the executive branch and, to a lesser degree, the legislative branch. However, unlike the Ghetto environment, their absolute control is time-limited by constitutional guardrails. As I mentioned before (November 12, 2024), the American governance system is among the most resilient systems known. The nation’s fathers didn’t write a perfect constitution but the Constitution is good enough to offer a lot of resiliency. Opposition to the government which is associated with fear, such as that shown in Figure 1, does not have very effective results.

However, it leaves the door open for congressional election-driven resiliency in two years that could be tested by the judicial arm by removing a legislative majority of at least one chamber. Some issues that the government is facing are critical long-term ones that cannot be disrupted and reintroduced with fluctuating governments as is happening with the shutdowns of important departments. These issues need to be handled in a way that prevents the easy destruction of vital information. What we need in such cases is an equivalent, modern version of the Ringelblum archives. Examples of such issues will be explored in the next blog.

In the next blog, I will return to the issue of “self-inflicted genocide” (December 3, 2019) but this time expand the concept well beyond climate change. Per definition, every global catastrophe that inflicts death on hundreds of millions and was anticipated but not mitigated can be labeled as a collective “self-inflicted genocide.” The blog will include a few concrete examples. Since the possible triggers for any such event are now ignored by the present administration, I will try to be discreet. Mitigating most of these triggers takes time. I am now approaching 13 years since I started to write this blog, and from the beginning of this process, I have tried to connect my “status” as a survivor of one of the larger global genocides—the Holocaust—with my small effort to contribute to preventing the next one. Per definition (it has been 80 years since my liberation by the American army from transport from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt) my life span is approaching its end. If I want to have a chance to prolong my legacy, I must connect with an institutional objective. Fortunately, there is one familiar to me: The Holocaust Institute in the US, with its Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, has a collection of 23 country case studies. “All I must do” is to add one more case study: the global one. However, around 50% of the support of the Holocaust center comes from the government. The danger of having the government stop its support and close the genocide center the way they did the Kennedy center needs to be addressed. An electronic Ringelblum archive needs to be designed.

Below are two cherry-picked opinions on President Trump’s attitude toward academia and academic research, one from the NYT and the other from Forbes:

Michelle Goldberg in the NYT: (Opinion | Trump Wants to Destroy All Academia, Not Just the Woke Parts – The New York Times):

“But there’s a lot of madness in the air these days. In December, Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute published an article about how Linda McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive whom Trump nominated to be secretary of education, could give the “college cartel” the “body slamming they deserve.” One of the first items on Eden’s list was capping the reimbursement of indirect research costs at 15 percent, exactly as the Trump team is trying to do. From there, Eden proposed that McMahon “should simply destroy Columbia University” — home, among other things, to one of the best medical schools in America — as a warning to other schools about the price of tolerating anti-Israel protest.

“Ultimately, however much some in the Trump administration want to gut American universities, Carey doesn’t think they’ll fully succeed. These are deeply rooted institutions, some older than the Republic itself, many with powerful constituencies. After four years of Trump, he said, “they’ll still be there, but they certainly could be weakened. The quality of their work could certainly be diminished in ways that will take time to recover from.” Their weakness could be an opportunity for others. Eden suggested that Trump take steps to make it easier to start schools like the anti-woke University of Austin, ‘and even newer ones that no one has dreamed up yet. Musk University?’ But why stop there? Trump University could be due for a comeback.”

David Rosowsky in Forbes: (The Role Of Research At Universities: Why It Matters):

“Universities engage in research as part of their missions around learning and discovery. This, in turn, contributes directly and indirectly to their primary mission of teaching. Universities and many colleges (the exception being those dedicated exclusively to undergraduate teaching) have as part of their mission the pursuit of scholarship. This can come in the form of fundamental or applied research (both are most common in the STEM fields, broadly defined), research-based scholarship or what often is called “scholarly activity” (most common in the social sciences and humanities), or creative activity (most common in the arts). Increasingly, these simple categorizations are being blurred, for all good reasons and to the good of the discovery of new knowledge and greater understanding of complex (transdisciplinary) challenges and the creation of increasingly interrelated fields needed to address them.

“It goes without saying that the advancement of knowledge (discovery, innovation, creation) is essential to any civilization. Our nation’s research universities represent some of the most concentrated communities of scholars, facilities, and collective expertise engaged in these activities. But more importantly, this is where higher education is delivered, where students develop breadth and depth of knowledge in foundational and advanced subjects, where the skills for knowledge acquisition and understanding (including contextualization, interpretation, and inference) are honed, and where students are educated, trained, and otherwise prepared for successful careers. Part of that training and preparation derives from exposure to faculty who are engaged at the leading-edge of their fields, through their research and scholarly work. The best faculty, the teacher-scholars, seamlessly weave their teaching and research efforts together, to their mutual benefit, and in a way that excites and engages their students. In this way, the next generation of scholars (academic or otherwise) is trained, research and discovery continue to advance intergenerationally, and the cycle is perpetuated.”

Not all research, pure or applied, is the prerogative of universities. There are many research institutions that do not do research for the benefit of students and industrial research, such as Bell Laboratories, that are responsible for some of the most outstanding research, not to mention Nobel Prize recipients, for achievements such as the semiconducting transistor. The other side of this coin is also true: not all universities are research universities. Two weeks ago (February 25^th), I discussed the research ranking of universities. In addition, research on various levels plays an important role in the earlier academic life of students in high schools and elementary schools. The new attacks on academic research will likely have direct impact on advanced degrees such as PhD and Masters degrees that are based on student’ research.

Here is how AI (through Google) discussed the role of research in students’ learning:

Research significantly impacts students by developing their critical thinking skills, enhancing problem-solving abilities, improving communication skills, fostering a deeper understanding of their field, and preparing them for further academic pursuits or professional careers by exposing them to the process of inquiry and knowledge creation; essentially, it allows students to actively engage with information and contribute to new knowledge rather than passively absorbing facts.

Key benefits of student research participation:

• • • Critical thinking:

Research encourages students to analyze information critically, evaluate evidence, and form informed opinions based on data, not just assumptions. 

• • • Problem-solving skills:

By designing research questions, collecting data, and interpreting results, students develop strong problem-solving skills applicable to various situations. 

• • • Communication skills:

Writing research papers and presenting findings to peers enhances students’ ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively. 

• • • Deeper knowledge acquisition:

Engaging in research allows students to explore a subject in greater depth, gaining a nuanced understanding beyond basic textbook knowledge. 

• • • Research methodology skills:

Students learn how to design research studies, collect data, analyze results, and interpret findings using appropriate methodologies. 

• • • Career preparation:

Research experience is highly valued by employers, demonstrating a student’s ability to think critically, solve problems, and contribute to new knowledge. 

• • • Increased motivation and engagement:

When students actively participate in research, they often feel more invested in their learning, leading to increased motivation and engagement. 

• • • Exploration of interests:

Research provides opportunities for students to investigate areas of personal interest within their field, potentially sparking future research endeavors or career paths. 

Important considerations:

• • • Access to research opportunities:

Students need access to faculty mentors and research projects suitable for their level to fully benefit from research experiences. 

• • • Ethical considerations:

Students must be aware of ethical guidelines when conducting research, particularly when involving human subjects. 

• • • Time commitment:

Research can be time-intensive, requiring students to manage their workload effectively.

We live in a period in which the global penetration of digitization has revolutionized teaching and learning in a way that can only compare (in my opinion) to the mid-15^th century’s printing press. (See the August 13, 2024 blog.)

Here is how Britannica Kids describes the impact of the printing press on teaching and learning:

“Few single inventions have had such far-reaching consequences as the printing press, a machine by which images are transferred to paper by means of ink. It was invented in Europe in the mid-15th century, during the period known as the Renaissance. The printing press made possible the mass production of printed books and other texts. Before its invention, most books were copied out individually by hand, a time-consuming process. Books were rare and so expensive that only the very wealthy could afford them. There were no newspapers. The printing press allowed books and other texts to be produced quickly, accurately, less expensively, and in large numbers. It thus led to a revolution in communications.”

Computer science departments are the fastest growing departments in many universities and many of the details of how to use the new technologies are research intensive. In the ongoing attempts by various universities to change majors, the shift from purely disciplinary majors to bi-disciplinary majors in which computer science pairs with traditional disciplinary majors, plays an important role. The fast progress in the research achievements of these shifts could be likened to the fast shift that was forced on all of us with the emergence of Covid-19, when we had to quickly replace teaching and learning on campus with online activities.

The shift away from academic research is not yet global but it is quickly starting to have global impacts (from South China Morning Post):

“China’s top universities are aggressively recruiting Chinese undergraduates abroad to skip traditional academic pathways and enroll directly into PhD programs – as the US tightens funding for graduate studies and geopolitical tensions grow.

It is a move that analysts have said reflects Beijing’s push to lure young academics from the United States.”

Every American is now proud of the number of Americans that are winning Nobel prizes every year. The prizes are being viewed as the ultimate markers of American education excellence.

The disparity was not always there. Figure 1 shows the 20^th century shift in excellence from Europe to the US. The definition of the country’s contributions is not determined by the birth of the prize winners but by the frequency that the biography of the winners determines the institutions in which they were affiliated either as students or teachers. The excellence of the American research institutions were the attractive magnets.

Figure 1 (Source: National Bureau of Economic Research)

This sharp rise of the US in both research and Nobel Prizes can be quickly turned around and start to fall precipitously if we are not careful here.

Last week’s blog and its figures emphasized three main issues related to university research:

1. The US trails other countries in government funding for university research (The US ranks 28^th; the top 10 are all developed countries with GDPs much smaller than ours).
2. In terms of government subsidies for research, two agencies stand out: the NIH in terms of the resources it offers and the NSF in terms of its support for basic research. Recent changes in the government have impacted these agencies and are affecting basic research.
3. Support for research by the federal government is declining and there is increasing support for research from private businesses. The new government is bound to have major impacts on accelerating these trends.

The distinction between government support and business support needs some clarification. The figure in last week’s blog that shows this trend is titled “Funding sources for research and development in the US.” It is obvious that development plays a much more important role in business support than it does in government support. Another difference between government and business support is that government-supported research is more likely to be published on a platform that is open to anybody interested, whereas the results of business-supported research are more likely to be published either as patents or internal reports to safeguard from competitive eyes. In these two supporting modes, government-sponsored research is aimed at advancing public knowledge, while business-supported research is often targeted at enhancing corporate knowledge.

One important question often raised is why governments (and taxpayers) should pay for research. Trysh Travis from Time gives an opinion:

The new NIH guidance justified reducing the IDC [indirect costs] it would pay as a commonsense market reform: since private foundations pay a lower percentage of universities’ IDC, the federal rate must be padded. Meanwhile, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto for a second Trump administration, argued that IDC actually paid for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts” on university campuses.

But both claims ignore the real reasons the federal government embraced this complex method of funding scientific research during the Cold War and oblivious to how it has evolved. Paying for IDC was a way to build and maintain a free and uniquely American way of doing science—and it has proved deeply successful for three-quarters of a century.

Three weeks ago (February 11^th), my blog was focused on the administration’s anti-DEI  campaign in universities. Now the anti-DEI measures are extending to research, almost guaranteeing  that social study or interdisciplinary research, such as that focused on climate change, will be seriously discouraged:

Federally funded scientific research has become the latest target of the diversity antagonists now in control of Congress and the White House.

Earlier this month, Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas released a database of “questionable” university research projects—funded by the National Science Foundation to the tune of $2.04 billion—that he accused of pushing “a far-left ideology” by promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and advancing “neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to a news release from his office.

Cruz, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, called for “significant scrutiny” of the 3,400-plus projects listed in the database, which contain terminology he said are related to concepts of status, social justice, gender, race and environmental justice.

The cuts in research overhead that I discussed in last week’s blog are now forcing colleges to cut graduate programs; this will have a direct impact on the availability of professional manpower for related fields in the near future:

Several colleges and universities are pausing admissions to some graduate programs, reducing class sizes or rescinding offers to students in an effort to cut costs amid uncertainty in federal funding.

The disruption to graduate school admissions is the latest cost-cutting move for colleges. After the National Institutes of Health proposed cutting reimbursements for costs related to research, several colleges and universities said they would pause hiring and cut spending, Inside Higher Ed previously reported. (A federal judge has blocked the NIH plan from taking effect for now.)

These dynamics are bound to have a direct impact on US higher education’s global ranking:

This month, Global Citizen Solutions released its first-ever Global Education Report naming the top destinations for higher education. The 10 countries were ranked based on factors like university prestige, quality of life, visa options, and post-graduation opportunities.

The Global Citizen Solutions report shows that international higher education is growing, Laura Madrid, research lead in the Global Intelligence Unit at GCS, tells CNBC Make It. According to their findings, there should be 10 million students studying abroad by 2030.

“You have more instability and instability in general leads to the movement of families,” she says. “People look for places where they feel safer, and they can experience different contexts.”

The report evaluated over 72 countries, using five key sub-indexes:

1. Higher education systems

2. Quality of life

3. Higher education costs

4. Career prospects

5. Innovation and business friendliness

Some examples of these increases in the vulnerabilities of US higher education and the field of science are described in a recent Nature article:

After a month of repeated threats to US science funding, many early-career researchers such as Autrey are fearing for their careers. These scientists are especially vulnerable: graduate students, postdocs and scientists who are just starting their own laboratories are the researchers most likely to be living pay cheque to pay cheque, most reliant on federal grants for their income and least likely to have job security. Some are considering changing jobs, leaving the country or abandoning research altogether.

“Disruption and uncertainty are the enemy of science,” says Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. And when disruption and uncertainty strike, she adds, “the people who lose their jobs are students and postdocs”.

If that happens now, science in the United States could undergo its own generational shift, she says: “Early-career scientists are the future.”

Details of some of these issues in NIH, the largest grant-generating agency, are described in the two articles below:

NYT: Trump Cuts Target Next Generation of Scientists and Public Health Leaders

The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed.

At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service — the “disease detectives” who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.

President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Trump Wants to Cut Billions in Research Spending. Here’s How Much It Might Cost Your University.

A memo released late on Friday announced that the National Institutes of Health would limit indirect-cost funding to 15 percent, approximately half of the average rate it previously offered.

Twenty-two states sued the NIH over its new overhead-funding cap and requested a federal judge issue an injunction against the new policy, saying that “work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt” because of the move, which was set to take effect on Monday. A judge in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Monday night temporarily blocked implementation of the policy in those 22 states.

As mentioned before, the NSF is one of the main agencies providing grants for basic research. Such research is the foundation of any long-term research; it is also, by its nature, a lot riskier than more applied research. Such research is judged more by the questions posed in its proposals than the answers expected in the publication results. However, even for such research, instructions for merit review are summarized in the following way:

Reviewers evaluate the proposal using the two National Science Board-approved merit review criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts. These criteria cover both the quality of the research and the project’s potential impact on society. Program solicitations may also contain additional review criteria.

The potential impact on society is one of two criteria (in addition to extending the known science) that determine support for proposals.

The two articles below summarize what is now happening at the NSF:

NPR: National Science Foundation fires roughly 10% of its workforce

The National Science Foundation fired 168 employees on Tuesday. According to an NSF spokesperson, the firings are to ensure compliance with President Trump’s executive order aimed at reducing the federal workforce in the name of efficiency.

Prior to the firings, about 1,700 staff worked at NSF, managing their $9 billion federal budget that funds research on everything from astrophysics to civil engineering. Staff were called to an emergency meeting at 10 a.m. ET, held on Zoom and in person, where they were told by Micah Cheatham, NSF’s chief management officer, that they’d be terminated by the end of the day, without severance. According to sources who were present, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, who ordered the firings, did not attend the meeting.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation

For most of the past century, the United States has been the global leader in scientific discovery. In just the last five years, American scientists have won more Nobel Prizes than the rest of the world combined. But we weren’t always leaders in scientific advancement. It wasn’t until the 1950 establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest funding source for basic research in the country, that America became a powerhouse of modernization.

Under the Trump administration, the same system that boosted the United States to scientific dominance is being recklessly dismantled. In the past few weeks, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency has ordered the NSF to reduce its staff by 25-50 percent to meet strict new budget targets. They have already fired 168 workers. Even more alarming, the administration is considering slashing the NSF’s $9-billion budget to just $3-4 billion, jeopardizing funding for thousands of scientists and their research. Beyond budget cuts, political interference is reshaping the NSF’s priorities. A recent executive order from President Trump mandates a review of all funded projects for flagged terms associated with DEI initiatives such as “gender,” “ethnicity” and “systemic.” Any projects containing these words must be modified to comply with the order or risk losing funding. Not only does this policy effectively roll back critical diversity initiatives, it will make research into important topics like health care much more difficult to fund.

Because many scientists conduct their work at universities, these policies are a profound threat to higher education. Many of the technologies and medical breakthroughs we rely on today — from computers to Viagra — were first developed within university research labs. American universities’ renowned science programs attract the brightest minds from around the world. In fact, 43 percent of America’s STEM work force was born in other countries. This is due both to the quality of education in our university system and the groundbreaking scientific advancements made within these institutions — made possible in large part by the National Science Foundation.

​One immediate impact is an attempt to restrict research by non-tenured faculty. This is bound to have a destructive impact on the future of every research university:

The University will no longer allow non-tenure-track faculty to pay for personal research expenses using “professional development” funding, according to an Office of the University Provost memo obtained by the Maroon. The Office of the University Provost announced the change to the faculty College Council on February 25 and has already communicated the updated guidelines to instructional faculty in several divisions.

The next blog will focus on the impact of all these changes on the students.

A little more than a year ago, my wife and I retired from our university jobs (November 21, 2023). Our retirement took place in the middle of some critical transitions in higher education throughout the US. One element of these transitions is driven by declining enrollment, which is rooted in part in declining fertility (see the January 7, 2025 blog). The declining fertility is a global situation that already impacts almost all developed countries and is starting to penetrate developing countries.

A month ago, the Trump administration was inaugurated in the US. In a short time, the new administration added new concerns to educational institutions that seem to have a much more immediate impact than the fertility decline. Previous blogs have focused on the role of the advocated changes in the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies at various universities (February 11, 2025). The next three blogs will be focused on research in colleges and universities. This blog will focus on the broad aspects of funding for research. Next week’s blog will focus on the impacts of the new policies on some major funding organizations, while the third blog on the topic will focus on the importance of research in teaching higher education. Throughout the 13 years that I have been writing this blog, I have associated research with attempts to secure the future of the next generations. So, productive research means collective work to better the lives of the next generations. Very little has been written on the importance of research in academia in preparing our students for productive life after school. I hope to rectify this oversight in the third blog in this series.

Figure 1 shows that the US is lagging (compared to its wealth) in our government’s funding of university research.

Figure 1 – List of countries that spend the most on research universities (Source: Statista via World Economic Forum)

Figures 2 and 3 (from Wikipedia) show the distribution of agencies that fund federal support for research and the declining role that the federal government is playing in supporting research.

Figure 2

Figure 3

The expectation is that with the inauguration of the new administration, federal support for university research will further decrease at an accelerated rate but that it will not be applied uniformly. Here is what Nature wrote about the expected trend:

The incoming US president is expected to gut support for research on the environment and infectious diseases, but could buoy work in artificial intelligence, quantum research and space exploration.

What can universities do about it?

University researchers rely on billions of dollars of federal funding—from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—to develop the technological and medical advances that have built the United States’ reputation as a wellspring of innovation. Congress, which has the final say on spending, ultimately didn’t support those proposed cuts during Trump’s first term.

“The most important thing we are telling our member universities to do now is to educate the new members of Congress and new administration officials about just how important the work of research universities is for our country’s success,” Tobin Smith, senior vice president for government relations and public policy at the AAU, said in an email. “America’s research universities have been the world’s envy for decades. Why? Because the education we provide and the research we conduct on behalf of the federal government help make America stronger, safer, healthier and more prosperous.”

Most research universities require external support. The support comes largely from grants with competitive applications. Typical grant applications constitute direct and indirect requests for supporting funds. Direct support covers specific expenses that the proposed research entails. The nature of an indirect request for support is summarized by AI (through Google) below:

An indirect cost rate is a percentage that allocates an organization’s indirect costs to its programs. It’s a standardized way to charge programs for their share of general management costs.

“Indirect costs” in the context of NIH funding typically include expenses related to the operation and maintenance of research facilities, administrative support functions like accounting and personnel, utilities, equipment depreciation, and other overhead costs that are not directly tied to a specific research project but are necessary for conducting research, often referred to as “facilities and administration (F&A)” costs.

Usually, the indirect funding is negotiated between the funding institution and the university. Figure 4 shows a typical distribution of the ratio between indirect and direct funding.

Figure 4 (Source: Bar Harbor Story)

Below is a recent development on the research funding front:

The Office of the Director of the NIH announced Friday that the agency will reduce federal funding for “indirect costs,” in research, specifically calling out institutes of higher education (IHEs) — including Stanford — as those who will be impacted. On average, 26% of NIH spending goes towards these indirect costs. Now, the NIH will limit the funding of indirect costs to 15%.

The cap on the indirect cost of research proposals is not a single threat that is now being imposed on research activities. Below is a summary of the general mood that will most likely have a major impact in decreasing government support for academic research as shown in Figure 1:

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings such as grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.

The moves have generated extensive confusion and uncertainty at the nation’s largest research agency, which has become a target for Trump’s political allies. “The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating,” one senior NIH employee says.

Public universities rely much more on public support than do private universities. Meanwhile, not all colleges and universities engage in research. The Carnegie Classification splits university engagement in research into the following categories:

Research 1: Very High Spending and Doctorate Production

On average in a single year, these institutions spend at least $50 million on research & development and award at least 70 research doctorates.

Research 2: High Spending and Doctorate Production

On average in a single year, these institutions spend at least $5 million on research & development and award at least 20 research doctorates.

Research Colleges and Universities

On average in a single year, these institutions spend at least $2.5 million on research & development. Institutions that are in the R1 or R2 categories are not included.

As I said, my wife and I recently retired from working at CUNY, the largest urban university in the country. CUNY is a federated university that was described in earlier blogs. The general structure is given below:

The City University of New York (CUNY) has 25 campuses, including 11 senior colleges, 7 community colleges, and 7 professional schools. CUNY is the largest public university system in the United States.

My wife and I were members of both one senior college (Brooklyn College) and the Graduate Center of CUNY. The Graduate Center is classified by Carnegie as an R1 Research Institution, while 9 more CUNY colleges (including Brooklyn College) were designated as leading research institutions.

An extended list of colleges and hospitals that were directly hit by the new regulations is given by the NYT.