AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Eight-point-seven billion, 400 million, 175 million - these are just some examples of the money that the federal government has withheld or is threatening to withhold from various colleges and universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Harvard University. That $8.7 billion figure was announced yesterday by the Trump administration, which said that it's reviewing federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard because Harvard has not done enough to curb antisemitism. The figures are staggering, and this money helps fund a wide variety of work. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, says the administration's move to cut funding amounts to a war on higher education. Dr. Emanuel also served under the Obama administration. And we should note he also is the father of Gabrielle Emanuel, who's with NPR's science desk. By far, that is your most impressive credential. Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
EZEKIEL EMANUEL: Thank you very much. Yes, raising her was one of the great achievements of my life.
CHANG: I'm so happy to hear that. I want to start with some specific areas of work that these funding cuts could affect. Last night, in an email, Harvard's president, Alan Garber, said that the cuts would, quote, "halt lifesaving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation." I realize that you are not at Harvard, but I imagine you can explain what Garber means. What types of things does this funding support?
EMANUEL: Well, I can tell you the kinds of things that we've done at Penn. We're looking at vaccines to prevent cancers. That's being inhibited. We do transplantations. We do lots of cancer research to devise new treatments for defects that are in cancer cells to make them, instead of cancer cells, be more normal. All of these things are threatened. Let me put it in this context for you, Ailsa. Since 2000, which was the end of the Human Genome Project, there have been five major advances in biology, sort of platform advances. There's been CRISPR technology to change genes. There's been CAR T therapy for cancers. There's been gene therapy. There's mRNA vaccines, and now there's these GLP-1 anti-obesity, anti-diabetes drugs. All of them - all five of them - were really born in labs in universities and medical schools - one in part with Denmark - American universities. All of that kind of novel breakthroughs that...
CHANG: Right.
EMANUEL: ...Really help people...
CHANG: Right.
EMANUEL: ...Are threatened.
CHANG: And this movie - this money, it's not just for research. It's also for grants and loans to students. It also supports local economies, the community that lives around these universities. But let me ask you this, if I may push back a little. Harvard has the largest academic endowment in the world. Like, in 2024, it was valued at more than $53 billion. Columbia's was most recently valued at nearly 15 billion. I imagine there are a lot of people out there who might be wondering, why do schools like that need so much money from the federal government to begin with?
EMANUEL: So, look, we have an endowment - and first of all, it's not an endowment. It's multiple little endowments - an endowment for this professorship or that research. Most of that money is focused on very specific areas that the donor wanted. That's the first thing. The second thing is a large part of those endowments are used to support students whose families cannot afford to go to the university and are given full scholarships or partial scholarships. For example, every student at Penn whose family doesn't make $75,000 or more - right? - is given a full scholarship. That's worth $92,000. And that - part of the endowment goes to support that. Part of the endowment goes to support other research initiatives, whether we're looking at new historical research, new scientific research, new research in economics. That's a large part of what the endowments do. And we only - because they're forever, we can only use about 3- to 4% of the value that's accrued every year.
CHANG: Let me...
EMANUEL: So you might say, oh, it's $50 billion. But 3% of $50 billion is only $1.5 billion, and that's to support a very, very large organization at Harvard.
CHANG: Yeah. Well, the Trump administration says that it is yanking money from many of these universities, though not from all of them, because of what it sees as a failure to combat antisemitism on campuses. Why can't the federal government use funding as leverage to address antisemitism? What do you think?
EMANUEL: First of all, you're taking funding from cancer research because you claim that they're not combating antisemitism enough. That's not - if you're Jewish, that's not going to be a good look, and that's not going to be something that is going to be favorable. The second thing I would say is, they're not related. And they're not - your putting pressure on the university doesn't mean that they're not addressing antisemitism. The important thing is to hold them accountable for antisemitism by holding them accountable for antisemitism - what they're doing to combat that on campus. I agree not all of our universities did a great job on antisemitism. I think that's a...
CHANG: All right.
EMANUEL: ...Fig leaf. It's a fig leaf...
CHANG: All right.
EMANUEL: ...For what they're really trying to do, which is bring down universities.
CHANG: That is Dr. Zeke Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
EMANUEL: Thank you, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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