This week, 14,000 scientists from across the globe are gathering in California for their largest annual conference, the American Physical Society (APS) Global Summit. Despite widespread firings at US scientific funding agencies and proposed cuts to the federal science budget, they are pushing back on efforts to limit the science being done in the US 鈥� and the people who can do it.
鈥淥ur work is based on our values and our values have not changed,鈥� said of the APS at a town hall for conference attendees. APS president said that truth is under threat in the current political climate, which he described as an 鈥渦nprecedented attack on the American scientific enterprise鈥�, but that physicists need to stand by it, as 鈥渢ruth is our superpower.鈥�
These statements come in the wake of the US government freezing or cancelling billions of dollars of federal funding for scientific and medical research, and layoffs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. Both agencies fund the research of many of the physicists at the Global Summit. The Department of Energy, which provides financial support to several participants in the town hall, has also recently faced budget cuts.
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US President Donald Trump and his administration have specifically targeted research, as well as mentoring and hiring programmes related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) 鈥� as a result, many scientific institutions have terminated such programmes and removed information on related issues from their websites.
APS supports several programmes of this type. The APS Bridge Program aims to close the gap in the number of students from underrepresented groups that obtain a college degree in physics and the number that go on to attend graduate programmes; the STEP UP programme helps high school and college teachers engage young women in physics. APS also has a national mentoring programme and a series of conferences for women and gender minorities in physics.
Slakey says the APS is confident in the legality of these programmes and has no plans to change or discontinue them. 鈥淚 know institutions across the country are folding up their programme 鈥� APS is not,鈥� he said. 聽At the town hall, he highlighted the organisation鈥檚 official statement on diversity in physics, which says that the physics community should work to increase the number of members from underrepresented groups in physics. 鈥淣o executive order is changing a single word of that statement,鈥� he said.
During the public comment portion of the event, at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls shared that some high school and college physics teachers in her school district were already abandoning STEP UP lessons due to fear of being targeted for relying on 鈥渨oke鈥� teaching practices.
Another APS member spoke of uncertainty and inconvenience arising from the Trump administration鈥檚 efforts to control language used in research grants. 鈥淗ow can I measure the bias of my diode if I am not allowed to say bias?鈥� they said, referring to a common property measured in experiments that is also on a list of words that the Trump administration has ordered to be either removed from public-facing government websites or used to flag federal grant proposals and contracts for review. 鈥淭o my mind this is reprehensible,鈥� said at APS, referring to the efforts to censor words.
Several junior researchers expressed fears about being able to continue their careers in physics. One described seeing their peers鈥� admission offers for graduate programmes being revoked, while another simply said they are personally discouraged from making physics their life鈥檚 work. Bagger called this 鈥渁 serious, serious tragedy of the moment we were in鈥�.
Attendees also brought up concerns for their international colleagues鈥� ability to obtain visas and work authorisations for doing physics in the US or even travel to conferences like the APS Global Summit in the future. Restricting both ultimately serves to decrease the influence and prestige of American science, some argued.
at Stanford University in California also raised the question of whether international scholars will be able to fully participate in campus life, including exercising free speech at American universities where they are doing physics. The concern was spurred by the recent detainment of a former graduate student and a legal resident of the US at Columbia University in New York because of his past involvement with student protests.
While Slakey, Doyle and Bagger expressed alarm at all the issues brought forward and sympathy for the physicists in the room, they acknowledged that there are only so many avenues within which APS can advocate for the physics community. Going forward, the organisation is focusing on local, grassroots advocacy for protecting the federal science budget from cuts, which could be as steep as a 66 per cent decrease at the NSF. This means encouraging members to attend town halls held by local politicians and voice their concerns, as well as sharing with their representatives in Congress how their science contributes to the betterment of American society.
鈥淲e need Congress to hear this, we need the executive branch to hear this, we need the public to hear this,鈥� said Doyle. Federal funding is the backbone of science done by American physicists and losing it will only make all the other issues they face worse, he said.
