Jane Goodall, the British conservationist and primatologist renowned for her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, has died at age 91. Goodall revolutionised the study of humans’ nearest animal relatives and became a global advocate for wildlife and the planet.
Published On 2 Oct 20252 Oct 2025
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This week, the Trump administration announced that it was taking “bold action” to address the “epidemic” of autism spectrum disorder — starting with a new safety label on Tylenol and other acetaminophen products that suggests a link to autism. The scientific evidence for doing so is weak, researchers said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said federal officials “will be uncompromising and relentless in our search for answers” and that they soon would be “closely examining” the role of vaccines, whose alleged link to autism has been widely discredited.
Kennedy has long argued that rising diagnoses among U.S. children must mean more exposure to some outside influence: a drug, a chemical, a toxin, a vaccine.
“One of the things that I think that we need to move away from today is this ideology that … the autism prevalence increase, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria,” Kennedy said in April.
Kennedy is correct that autism spectrum disorder rates have risen steadily in the U.S. since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control began tracking them, from 1 in 150 8-year-olds in 2000, to 1 in 31 in 2022, the most recent year for which numbers are available.
But physicians, researchers and psychologists say it is impossible to interpret this increase without acknowledging two essential facts: The diagnostic definition of autism has greatly expanded to include a much broader range of human behaviors, and we look for it more often than we used to.
“People haven’t changed that much,” said Alan Gerber, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “but how we talk about them, how we describe them, how we categorize them has actually changed a lot over the years.”
The term “autism” first appeared in the scientific literature around World War II, when two psychiatrists in different countries independently chose that word to describe two different groups of children.
In 1938, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger used it to describe child patients at his Vienna clinic who were verbal, often fluently so, with unusual social behaviors and at-times obsessive focus on very specific subjects.
Five years later, U.S. psychiatrist Leo Kanner published a paper about a group of children at his clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who were socially withdrawn, rigid in their thinking and extremely sensitive to stimuli like bright lights or loud noises. Most also had limited verbal language ability.
Both Asperger and Kanner chose the same word to describe these overlapping behaviors: autism. (They borrowed the term from an earlier psychiatrist’s description of extreme social withdrawal in schizophrenic patients.)
This doesn’t mean children never acted this way before. It was just the first time doctors started using that word to describe a particular set of child behaviors.
For the next few decades, many children who exhibited what we understand today to be autistic traits were labeled as having conditions that have ceased to exist as formal diagnoses, like “mental retardation,” “childhood psychosis” or “schizophrenia, childhood type.”
Autism debuted as its own diagnosis in the 1980 third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Assn.’s diagnostic bible. It described an autistic child as one who, by the age of 2½, showed impaired communication, unusual responses to their environment and a lack of interest in other people.
As the decades went on, the DSM definition of autism broadened.
The fourth edition, published in 1994, named additional behaviors: impaired relationships, struggles with nonverbal communication and speech patterns different from those of non-autistic, or neurotypical, peers.
It also included a typo that would turn out to be a crucial driver of diagnoses, wrote cultural anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker in his book “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.”
The DSM’s printed definition of autism included any child who displayed impairments in social interaction, communication “or” behavior. It was supposed to say social interaction, communication “and” behavior.
The error went uncorrected for six years, and the impact appeared profound. In 1995 an estimated 1 in every 500 children was diagnosed with autism. By 2000, when the CDC formally began tracking diagnoses (and the text was corrected), it was 1 in every 150.
In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended for the first time that all children be screened for autism between the ages of 18 and 24 months as part of their regular checkups. Prior to that, autism was diagnosed somewhat haphazardly. Not all pediatricians were familiar with the earliest indicators or used the same criteria to determine whether a child should be further evaluated.
Then in 2013, the fifth edition of the DSM took what had previously been four separate conditions — autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder — and collapsed them all into a single diagnosis: autism spectrum disorder.
The diagnostic criteria for ASD included a broad range of social, communication and sensory interpretation differences that, crucially, could be identified at any time in a child’s life. The term was no longer limited only to children whose development lagged noticeably behind that of their peers.
Since that definition was adopted, U.S. schools have become more proactive about referring a greater range of children for neurodevelopmental evaluations. The new DSM language also helped educators and clinicians better understand what was keeping some kids in disadvantaged communities from thriving.
“In the past, [autism was] referred to as a ‘white child’s disability,’ because you found so few Black and brown children being identified,” said Shanter Alexander, an assistant professor of school psychology at Howard University. Children of color who struggled with things like behavioral disruptions, attention deficits or language delays, she said, were often diagnosed with intellectual disabilities or behavioral disorders.
In a sign that things have shifted, the most recent CDC survey for the first time found a higher prevalence of autism in kids of color than in white children: 3.66%, 3.82% and 3.30% for Black, Asian and Latino children, respectively, compared with 2.77% of white children.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, no, what does this mean? This is terrible.’ But it’s actually really positive. It means that we have been better at diagnosing Latino children [and] other groups too,” said Kristina Lopez, an associate professor at Arizona State University who studies autism in underserved communities.
An autism diagnosis today can apply to people who are able to graduate from college, hold professional positions and speak eloquently about their autism, as well as people who require 24-hour care and are not able to speak at all.
It includes people who were diagnosed when they were toddlers developing at a noticeably different pace from their peers, and people who embraced a diagnosis of autism in adulthood as the best description of how they relate to the world. Diagnoses for U.S. adults ages 26 to 34 alone increased by 450% between 2011 and 2022, according to one large study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Kennedy was not correct when he said in April that “most cases now are severe.”
A 2016 review of CDC data found that approximately 26.7% of 8-year-olds with autism had what some advocates refer to as “profound autism,” the end of the spectrum that often includes seriously disabling behaviors such as seizures, self-injurious behavior and intellectual disability.
The rate of children with profound autism has remained virtually unchanged since the CDC started tracking it, said Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health science and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Indeed, the highest rate of new diagnoses has been among children with mild limitations, she said.
For many researchers and advocates, the Trump administration’s focus on autism has provoked mixed emotions. Many have lobbied for years for more attention for this condition and the people whose lives it affects.
Now it has arrived, thanks to an administration that has played up false information while cutting support for science.
“They have attempted to panic the public with the notion of an autism epidemic as a threat to the nation, when no such epidemic actually exists — rather, more people are being diagnosed with autism today because we have broader diagnostic criteria and do a better job detecting it,” said Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It is high time that this administration stops spreading misinformation about autism, and starts enacting policies that would actually benefit our community.”
This article was reported with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship’s Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism.
NEW YORK — Scientists have identified the origins of the blue color in one of Jackson Pollock’s paintings with a little help from chemistry, confirming for the first time that the Abstract Expressionist used a vibrant, synthetic pigment known as manganese blue.
“Number 1A, 1948,” showcases Pollock’s classic style: paint has been dripped and splattered across the canvas, creating a vivid, multicolored work. Pollock even gave the piece a personal touch, adding his handprints near the top.
The painting, currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is almost 9 feet wide. Scientists had previously characterized the reds and yellows splattered across the canvas, but the source of the rich turquoise blue proved elusive.
In a new study, researchers took scrapings of the blue paint and used lasers to scatter light and measure how the paint’s molecules vibrated. That gave them a unique chemical fingerprint for the color, which they pinpointed as manganese blue.
The analysis, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first confirmed evidence of Pollock using this specific blue.
“It’s really interesting to understand where some striking color comes from on a molecular level,” said study co-author Edward Solomon with Stanford University.
The pigment manganese blue was once used by artists, as well as to color the cement for swimming pools. It was phased out by the 1990s because of environmental concerns.
Previous research had suggested that the turquoise from the painting could indeed be this color, but the new study confirms it using samples from the canvas, said Rutgers University’s Gene Hall, who has studied Pollock’s paintings and was not involved with the discovery.
“I’m pretty convinced that it could be manganese blue,” Hall said.
The researchers also went one step further, inspecting the pigment’s chemical structure to understand how it produces such a vibrant shade.
Scientists study the chemical makeup of art supplies to conserve old paintings and catch counterfeits. They can take more specific samples from Pollock’s paintings since he often poured directly onto the canvas instead of mixing paints on a palette beforehand.
To solve this artistic mystery, researchers explored the paint using various scientific tools — similarly to how Pollock would alternate his own methods, dripping paint using a stick or straight from the can.
While the artist’s work may seem chaotic, Pollock rejected that interpretation. He saw his work as methodical, said study co-author Abed Haddad, an assistant conservation scientist at the Museum of Modern Art.
“I actually see a lot of similarities between the way that we worked and the way that Jackson Pollock worked on the painting,” Haddad said.
Ramakrishnan writes for the Associated Press.
US President Trump confirms Elizabeth Tsurkov freed after being held by Iraqi group amid spy claims.
Published On 9 Sep 20259 Sep 2025
Israeli-Russian academic and Princeton University student Elizabeth Tsurkov has been freed in Iraq after spending more than two years in the custody of an Iraqi armed group, US President Donald Trump has announced.
“I am pleased to report that Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton Student, whose sister is an American Citizen, was just released by Kata’ib Hezbollah (MILITANT Hezbollah), and is now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq after being tortured for many months. I will always fight for JUSTICE, and never give up. HAMAS, RELEASE THE HOSTAGES, NOW!” Trump posted on TruthSocial on Tuesday, referring at the end to the captives held in Gaza, who were taken from Israel during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
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Kataib Hezbollah, which is a separate entity from the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, is part of Iraq’s security apparatus under the umbrella of the state-funded Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a Shia paramilitary dominated by Iran-backed armed groups.
Tsurkov, who was accused of being a spy, disappeared in Baghdad in March 2023, while conducting academic research. She was last seen in the Karrada district before reports surfaced that Kata’ib Hezbollah had abducted her. Her case remained secret for months until Israel’s prime minister’s office confirmed in July 2023 that she had been abducted. It said the Iraqi government was responsible for her safety.
The 37-year-old holds both Israeli and Russian passports and had entered Iraq on her Russian travel documents, according to Israeli authorities.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani confirmed that Tsurkov had been released and said, “We reaffirm, once again, that we will not tolerate any compromise in enforcing the law and upholding the authority of the state, nor will we allow anyone to undermine the reputation of Iraq and its people.”
In November 2023, Iraqi state television aired footage of Tsurkov in which she claimed to be working for both Mossad and the CIA, allegations her family rejected as coerced confessions.
The precise terms of her release remain unclear. Earlier this year, reports suggested that Washington and Baghdad were engaged in negotiations over her case.
There were reports of a possible deal for the release of Tsurkov in January.
After Trump’s announcement, her sister Emma Tsurkov, who has campaigned publicly for her freedom, expressed relief in a post on X.
“My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days. We are so thankful to President Trump and his Special Envoy, Adam Boehler. If Adam had not made my sister’s return his personal mission, I do not know where we would be,” she wrote.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also confirmed her release, crediting months of work led by Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for captives and missing people. “Through a team effort … after great efforts, we succeeded in bringing about her release,” Netanyahu said.
Put down the book, pick up the phone.
So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London.
From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience .
“This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting at least 80 years of continued decline in reading for pleasure,” the paper states.
Jill Sonke, one of the study’s authors, said in an interview Tuesday that the decline is concerning in part because “we know that reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior. It is associated with relaxation, well-being, mental health, quality of life.”
“We’re losing a low-hanging fruit in our health toolkit when we’re reading or participating in the arts less,” added Sonke, the director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the university’s EpiArts Lab.
The reading decline comes as most Americans have more access to books than ever before. Because of Libby and other e-book apps, people do not need to travel to libraries or bookstores. They can check out books from multiple libraries and read them on their tablets or phones.
But other forms of digital media are crowding out the free moments that people could devote to books. More time spent scrolling dank memes and reels on social media or bingeing the “King of the Hill” reboot on Hulu means less time for the latest pick from Oprah’s Book Club.
But researchers say there are factors besides digital distraction at play, including a national decline in leisure time overall and uneven access to books and libraries.
The study analyzed data from 236,270 Americans age 15 and older who completed the American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2003 and 2023. [The year 2020 was excluded because data collection was briefly paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.]
Participants were asked to provide granular detail of their activities beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. the day of the interview.
Researchers found that people who do read for pleasure are doing so for longer stretches of time — from 1 hour 23 minutes per day in 2003 to 1 hour 37 minutes per day in 2023.
But the percentage of Americans who leisure-read on a typical day has dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to a low of 16% in 2023.
Researchers said there was an especially concerning disparity between Black and white Americans.
The percentage of Black adults who read for pleasure peaked at about 20% in 2004 and fell to about 9% in 2023. The percentage of white adults who picked up a book for fun peaked at about 29% in 2004 and dropped to roughly 18% in 2023.
The study showed that women read for fun more than men. And that people who live in rural areas had a slightly steeper drop in pleasure reading than urban denizens over the last two decades.
In rural places, people have less access not only to bookstores and libraries, but also reliable internet connections, which can contribute to different reading habits, Kate Laughlin, executive director of the Seattle-based Assn. for Rural and Small Libraries, said in an interview Tuesday.
Although there have been concerted national efforts to focus on literacy in children, less attention is paid to adults, especially in small towns, Laughlin said.
“When you say ‘reading for pleasure,’ you make the assumption that reading is pleasurable,” Laughlin said. “If someone struggles with the act of actually reading and interpreting the words, that’s not leisure; that feels like work.”
As rural America shifts away from the extraction-based industries that once defined it — such as logging, coal mining and fishing — adults struggling with basic literacy are trying to play catch-up with the digital literacy needed in the modern workforce, Laughlin said.
Rural librarians, she said, often see adults in their late 20s and older coming in not to read but to learn how to use a keyboard and mouse and set up their first email address so they can apply for work online.
According to the study, the percentage of adults reading to children has not declined over the last two decades. But “rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day.”
Of the participants whose data the researchers analyzed, 21% had a child under 9 at home.
The low percentage of adults reading with kids “is concerning given that regular reading during childhood is a strong determinant of reading ability and engagement later in life,” the study read. “The low rates of reading with children may thus contribute to future declines in reading among adults.”
Researchers noted some limitations in their ability to interpret the data from the American Time Use Survey. Some pleasure reading might have been categorized, mistakenly, as digital activity, they wrote.
E-books were not included in the reading category until 2011, and audiobooks were not included until 2021.
From 2003 to 2006, reading the Bible and other religious texts was included in reading in personal interest — but was recategorized afterward and grouped with other participation in religious practice.
Further, reading on tablets, computers and smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether survey participants included it as leisure reading or technology use.
“This may mean that we underestimated rates of total engagement, although … we expect any such misclassifications to have minimal effects on our findings,” they wrote.
Their medical research focuses on potentially lifesaving breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and developing tools to more easily diagnose debilitating diseases. Their studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and secure.
But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA’s professors in these and many other fields has been imperiled by the Trump administration’s suspension of $584 million in grant funding, which University of California President James B. Milliken called a “death knell” to its transformative research.
The freeze came after a July 29 U.S. Department of Justice finding that the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism they faced after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
The fight over the funding stoppage intensified Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a $1-billion fine, among other concessions, to resolve the accusations — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue, calling the proposal “extortion.”
Amid heightened tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, have been frozen.
UCLA scholars described days of confusion as they struggle to understand how the loss of grants would affect their work and scramble to uncover new funding sources — or roles that would ensure their continued pay, or that of their colleagues. While professors still have jobs and paychecks to draw on, many others, including graduate students, rely on grant funding for their salaries, tuition and healthcare.
At least for the moment, though, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet be interrupted. So far, no layoffs have been announced.
Sydney Campbell, a UCLA cancer researcher whose grant funding has been cut, stands inside the Biomedical Sciences Research building at UCLA.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Sydney Campbell, a pancreatic cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said her work — which aims to understand how diet affects the disease — is continuing for now. She has an independent fellowship that “hopefully will protect the majority of my salary.” But others, she said, don’t have that luxury.
“It is absolutely going to affect people’s livelihoods. I already know of people … with families who are having to take pay cuts almost immediately,” said Campbell, who works for a lab that has lost two National Institutes of Health grants, including one that funds her research.
Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly of cancers, but Campbell’s work could lead to a better understanding of it, paving the way for more robust prophylactic programs — and treatment plans — that may ultimately help tame the scourge.
“Understanding how diet can impact cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,” she said. “Right now we can’t effectively do that because we don’t have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us actually be able to make recommendations based on science.”
Campbell’s work — and that of many others at UCLA — is potentially groundbreaking. But it could soon be put on hold.
“We have people who don’t know if they’re going to be able to purchase experimental materials for the rest of the month,” she said.
For some, the cuts have triggered something close to an existential crisis.
After professor Dino Di Carlo, chair of the UCLA Samueli Bioengineering Department, learned about 20 grants were suspended there — including four in his lab worth about $1 million — he felt a profound sadness. He said he doesn’t know why his grants were frozen, and there may not be money to pay his six researchers.
So Di Carlo, who is researching diagnostics for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, took to LinkedIn, where he penned a post invoking the Franz Kafka novel “The Trial.” The unsettling tale is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and finds himself under arrest and then on trial — with no understanding of the situation.
“Like Josef K., the people actually affected — the public, young scientists, patients waiting for better treatments and diagnostic tools — are left asking: What crime did we commit?” wrote Di Carlo. “They are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.”
The LinkedIn post quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other responses. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on paychecks that come from now-suspended grants, said he appreciated the support.
But, goodwill has its limits. “It doesn’t pay the rent for a student this month,” he said.
Di Carlo’s research is partly focused on developing an at-home test that would detect Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, which are on the rise. Because no such product is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he said, people who’ve experienced a tick bite have to wait for lab results to confirm their infection.
“This delay in diagnosis prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long-term health issues,” he said. “A rapid, point-of-care test would allow individuals to receive immediate results, enabling early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is most easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health outcomes.”
Di Carlo lamented what he called “a continual assault on the scientific community” by the Trump administration, which has canceled billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding for universities across the country.
It “just … hasn’t let up,” Di Carlo said.
Some professors who’ve lost grants have spent long hours scrambling to secure new sources of funding.
Di Carlo said he was in meetings all week to identity which researchers are affected by the cuts, and to try to figure out, “Can we support those students?” He has also sought to determine whether some could be moved to other projects that still have funding, or be given teaching assistant positions, among other options.
He’s not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao also has lost a grant worth about $750,000. But Tao said that he was more distressed by the freezing of a $25-million grant for UCLA’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The funding loss for the institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is “actually quite existential,” he said, because the grant is “needed to fund operations” there.
Tao, who is the James and Carol Collins chair in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. “The abruptness — and basically the lack of due process in general — just compounds the damage,” said Tao. “We got no notice.”
A luminary in his field, Tao conducts research that examines, in part, whether a group of numbers are random or structured. His work could lead to advances in cryptography that may eventually make online systems — such as those used for financial transactions — more secure.
“It is important to do this kind of research — if we don’t, it’s possible that an adversary, for example, could actually discover these weaknesses that we are not looking for at all,” Tao said. “So you do need this extra theoretical confirmation that things that you think are working actually do work as intended, [and you need to] also explore the negative space of what doesn’t work.”
Tao said he’s been heartened by donations that the mathematics institute has received from private donors in recent days — about $100,000 so far.
“We are scrambling for short-term funding because we need to just keep the lights on for the next few months,” said Tao.
Rafael Jaime, president of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers within the University of California — including about 8,000 at UCLA — said he was not aware of any workers who haven’t been paid so far, but that the issue could come to a head at the end of August.
He said that the UC system “should do everything that it can to ensure that workers aren’t left without pay.”
A major stressor for academics: the uncertainty.
Some researchers whose grants were suspended said they have not received much guidance from UCLA on a path forward. Some of that anxiety was vented on Zoom calls last week, including a UCLA-wide call attended by about 3,000 faculty members.
UCLA administrators said they are exploring stopgap options, including potential emergency “bridge” funding to grantees to pay researchers or keep up labs such as those that use rodents as subjects.
Some UCLA academics worried about a brain drain. Di Carlo said that undergraduate students he advises have begun asking for his advice on relocating to universities abroad for graduate school.
“This has been the first time that I’ve seen undergraduate students that have asked about foreign universities for their graduate studies,” he said. “I hear, ‘What about Switzerland? … What about University of Tokyo?’ This assault on science is making the students think that this is not the place for them.”
But arguably researchers’ most pressing concern is continuing their work.
Campbell explained that she has personally been affected by pancreatic cancer — she lost someone close to her to it. She and her peers do the research “for the families” who’ve also been touched by the disease.
“That the work that’s already in progress has the chance of being stopped in some way is really disappointing,” she said. “Not just for me, but for all those patients I could potentially help.”
Over the last several months, a deep sense of unease has settled over laboratories across the United States. Researchers at every stage — from graduate students to senior faculty — have been forced to shelve experiments, rework career plans, and quietly warn each other not to count on long-term funding. Some are even considering leaving the country altogether.
This growing anxiety stems from an abrupt shift in how research is funded — and who, if anyone, will receive support moving forward. As grants are being frozen or rescinded with little warning and layoffs begin to ripple through institutions, scientists have been left to confront a troubling question: Is it still possible to build a future in U.S. science?
On May 2, the White House released its Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, proposing a nearly $18-billion cut from the National Institutes of Health. This cut, which represents approximately 40% of the NIH’s 2025 budget, is set to take effect on Oct. 1 if adopted by Congress.
“This proposal will have long-term and short-term consequences,” said Stephen Jameson, president of the American Assn. of Immunologists. “Many ongoing research projects will have to stop, clinical trials will have to be halted, and there’ll be the knock-on effects on the trainees who are the next generation of leaders in biomedical research. So I think there’s going to be varied and potentially catastrophic effects, especially on the next generation of our researchers, which in turn will lead to a loss of the status of the U.S. as a leader in biomedical research.“
In the request, the administration justified the move as part of its broader commitment to “restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH.” It accused the NIH of engaging in “wasteful spending” and “risky research,” releasing “misleading information,” and promoting “dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”
National Institutes of Health.
(NIH.gov)
To track the scope of NIH funding cuts, a group of scientists and data analysts launched Grant Watch, an independent project that monitors grant cancellations at the NIH and the National Science Foundation. This database compiles information from public government records, official databases, and direct submissions from affected researchers, grant administrators, and program directors.
As of July 3, Grant Watch reports 4,473 affected NIH grants, totaling more than $10.1 billion in lost or at-risk funding. These include research and training grants, fellowships, infrastructure support, and career development awards — and affect large and small institutions across the country. Research grants were the most heavily affected, accounting for 2,834 of the listed grants, followed by fellowships (473), career development awards (374) and training grants (289).
The NIH plays a foundational role in U.S. research. Its grants support the work of more than 300,000 scientists, technicians and research personnel, across some 2,500 institutions and comprising the vast majority of the nation’s biomedical research workforce. As an example, one study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that funding from the NIH contributed to research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016.
Jameson emphasized that these kinds of breakthroughs are made possible only by long-term federal investment in fundamental research. “It’s not just scientists sitting in ivory towers,” he said. “There are enough occasions where [basic research] produces something new and actionable — drugs that will save lives.”
That investment pays off in other ways too. In a 2025 analysis, United for Medical Research, a nonprofit coalition of academic research institutions, patient groups and members of the life sciences industry, found that every dollar the NIH spends generates $2.56 in economic activity.
Support from the NIH underpins not only research, but also the training pipeline for scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs — the workforce that fuels U.S. leadership in medicine, biotechnology and global health innovation. But continued American preeminence is not a given. Other countries are rapidly expanding their investments in science and research-intensive industries.
If current trends continue, the U.S. risks undergoing a severe “brain drain.” In a March survey conducted by Nature, 75% of U.S. scientists said they were considering looking for jobs abroad, most commonly in Europe and Canada.
This exodus would shrink domestic lab rosters, and could erode the collaborative power and downstream innovation that typically follows discovery. “It’s wonderful that scientists share everything as new discoveries come out,” Jameson said. “But, you tend to work with the people who are nearby. So if there’s a major discovery in another country, they will work with their pharmaceutical companies to develop it, not ours.”
At UCLA, Dr. Antoni Ribas has already started to see the ripple effects. “One of my senior scientists was on the job market,” Ribas said. “She had a couple of offers before the election, and those offers were higher than anything that she’s seen since. What’s being offered to people looking to start their own laboratories and independent research careers is going down — fast.”
In addition, Ribas, who directs the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, says that academia and industry are now closing their door to young talent. “The cuts in academia will lead to less positions being offered,” Ribas explained. “Institutions are becoming more reluctant to attract new faculty and provide startup packages.” At the same time, he said, the biotech industry is also struggling. “Even companies that were doing well are facing difficulties raising enough money to keep going, so we’re losing even more potential positions for researchers that are finishing their training.”
This comes at a particularly bitter moment. Scientific capabilities are soaring, with new tools allowing researchers to examine single cells in precise detail, probe every gene in the genome, and even trace diseases at the molecular level. “It’s a pity,” Ribas said, “Because we have made demonstrable progress in treating cancer and other diseases. But now we’re seeing this artificial attack being imposed on the whole enterprise.”
Without federal support, he warns, the system begins to collapse. “It’s as if you have a football team, but then you don’t have a football field. We have the people and the ideas, but without the infrastructure — the labs, the funding, the institutional support — we can’t do the research.”
For graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in particular, funding uncertainty has placed them in a precarious position.
“I think everyone is in this constant state of uncertainty,” said Julia Falo, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and recording secretary of UAW 4811, the union for workers at the University of California. “We don’t know if our own grants are going to be funded, if our supervisor’s grants are going to be funded, or even if there will be faculty jobs in the next two years.”
She described colleagues who have had funding delayed or withdrawn without warning, sometimes for containing flagged words like “diverse” or “trans-” or even for having any international component.
The stakes are especially high for researchers on visas. As Falo points out for those researchers, “If the grant that is funding your work doesn’t exist anymore, you can be issued a layoff. Depending on your visa, you may have only a few months to find a new job — or leave the country.”
A graduate student at a California university, who requested anonymity due to the potential impact on their own position — which is funded by an NIH grant— echoed those concerns. “I think we’re all a little on edge. We’re all nervous,” they said. “We have to make sure that we’re planning only a year in advance, just so that we can be sure that we’re confident of where that funding is going to come from. In case it all of a sudden gets cut.”
The student said their decision to pursue research was rooted in a desire to study rare diseases often overlooked by industry. After transitioning from a more clinical setting, they were drawn to academia for its ability to fund smaller, higher-impact projects — the kind that might never turn a profit but could still change lives. They hope to one day become a principal investigator, or PI, and lead their own research lab.
Now, that path feels increasingly uncertain. “If things continue the way that they have been,” they said. “I’m concerned about getting or continuing to get NIH funding, especially as a new PI.”
Still, they are staying committed to academic research. “If we all shy off and back down, the people who want this defunded win.”
Already, researchers, universities and advocacy groups have been pushing back against the proposed budget cut.
On campuses across the country, students and researchers have organized rallies, marches and letter-writing campaigns to defend federal research funding. “Stand Up for Science” protests have occurred nationwide, and unions like UAW 4811 have mobilized across the UC system to pressure lawmakers and demand support for at-risk researchers. Their efforts have helped prevent additional state-level cuts in California: in June, the Legislature rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed $129.7-million reduction to the UC budget.
Earlier this year, a coalition of public health groups, researchers and unions — led by the American Public Health Assn. — sued the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services over the termination of more than a thousand grants. On June 16, U.S. District Judge William Young ruled in their favor, ordering the NIH to reinstate over 900 canceled grants and calling the terminations unlawful and discriminatory. Although the ruling applies only to grants named in the lawsuit, it marks the first major legal setback to the administration’s research funding rollback.
Though much of the current spotlight (including that lawsuit) has focused on biomedical science, the proposed NIH cuts threaten research far beyond immunology or cancer. Fields ranging from mental health to environmental science stand to lose crucial support. And although some grants may be in the process of reinstatement, the damage already done — paused projects, lost jobs and upended career paths — can’t simply be undone with next year’s budget.
And yet, amid the fear and frustration, there’s still resolve. “I’m floored by the fact that the trainees are still devoted,” Jameson said. “They still come in and work hard. They’re still hopeful about the future.”
A federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States.
Colleagues and academics testified on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer.
“It is excellent science,” Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova’s research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that “mapping embryonic development [can produce] novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging.”
West said that Petrova’s medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her “in a heartbeat.”
Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court.
“We are gratified that today’s hearing gave us the opportunity to present clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan International Airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her,” Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement. “At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention.”
Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.
As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport in February, Petrova was questioned about the samples. She told the Associated Press in an interview last month that she did not realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak anything into the country. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being canceled.
After being detained by immigration officials, she filed a petition in Vermont seeking her release. She was briefly detained in Vermont before she was brought to Louisiana.
Petrova was charged with smuggling earlier this month as U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington, Vt., set the hearing date on her petition. Reiss ruled Wednesday that the immigration officers’ actions were unlawful, that Petrova didn’t present a danger, and that the embryos were non-living, non-hazardous and “posed a threat to no one.”
Romanovsky had asked Reiss to issue an order to stop the possibility of ICE re-detaining Petrova if she is also released from detention in Massachusetts.
Reiss said she was reluctant “to enjoin an executive agency from undertaking future actions which are uncertain” and would rely on U.S. Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Hartman’s comments that the government has no intention at this time to rearrest Petrova.
Romanovsky had said Customs and Border Protection officials had no legal basis for canceling Petrova’s visa and detaining her.
The Department of Homeland Security had said in a statement on the social media platform X that Petrova was detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” They allege that messages on her phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”
Harvard had said in a statement that the university “continues to monitor the situation.”
McCormack writes for the Associated Press.
As the Trump administration cut billions of dollars in federal funding to scientific research, thousands of scientists in the U.S. lost their jobs or grants — and governments and universities around the world spotted an opportunity.
The Canada Leads program, launched in April, hopes to foster the next generation of innovators by bringing early-career biomedical researchers north of the border.
Aix-Marseille University in France started the Safe Place for Science program in March, pledging to welcome U.S.-based scientists who “may feel threatened or hindered in their research.”
Australia’s Global Talent Attraction Program, announced in April, promises competitive salaries and relocation packages.
“In response to what is happening in the U.S.,” said Anna-Maria Arabia, head of the Australian Academy of Science, “we see an unparalleled opportunity to attract some of the smartest minds here.”
Since World War II, the U.S. has invested huge amounts of money in scientific research conducted at independent universities and federal agencies. That funding helped the U.S. to become the world’s leading scientific power — and has led to the invention of cellphones and the internet as well as new ways to treat cancer, heart disease and strokes, noted Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the journal Science.
But today that system is being shaken.
Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has pointed to what it calls waste and inefficiency in federal science spending and made major cuts to staff levels and grant funding at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA and other agencies, while slashing research dollars that flow to some private universities.
The White House budget proposal for next year aims to cut the NIH budget by roughly 40% and the National Science Foundation budget by 55%.
“The Trump administration is spending its first few months reviewing the previous administration’s projects, identifying waste, and realigning our research spending to match the American people’s priorities and continue our innovative dominance,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
Already, several universities have announced hiring freezes, laid off staff or stopped admitting new graduate students. On Thursday, the Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, though a judge put that on hold.
Research institutions abroad are watching with concern for collaborations that depend on colleagues in the U.S. — but they also see opportunities to poach talent.
“There are threats to science … south of the border,” said Brad Wouters of University Health Network, Canada’s leading hospital and medical research center, which launched the Canada Leads recruitment drive. “There’s a whole pool of talent, a whole cohort that is being affected by this moment.”
Universities worldwide are always trying to recruit from one another, just as tech companies and businesses in other fields do. What’s unusual about the current moment is that many global recruiters are targeting researchers by promising something that seems newly threatened: academic freedom.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this month that the European Union intends “to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law.” She spoke at the launch of the bloc’s Choose Europe for Science initiative, which was in the works before the Trump administration cuts but has sought to capitalize on the moment.
Eric Berton, president of Aix-Marseille University, expressed a similar sentiment after launching the institution’s Safe Place for Science program.
“Our American research colleagues are not particularly interested by money,” he said of applicants. “What they want above all is to be able to continue their research and that their academic freedom be preserved.”
It’s too early to say how many scientists will choose to leave the U.S. It will take months for universities to review applications and dole out funding, and longer for researchers to uproot their lives.
Plus, the American lead in funding research and development is enormous — and even significant cuts may leave crucial programs standing. The U.S. has been the world’s leading funder of research and development — including government, university and private investment — for decades. In 2023, the country funded 29% of the world’s R&D, according to the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.
But some institutions abroad are reporting significant early interest from researchers in the U.S. Nearly half of the applications to Safe Place for Science — 139 out of 300 total — came from U.S.-based scientists, including AI researchers and astrophysicists.
U.S.-based applicants in this year’s recruitment round for France’s Institute of Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology roughly doubled over last year.
At the Max Planck Society in Germany, the Lise Meitner Excellence Program — aimed at young female researchers — drew triple the number of applications from U.S.-based scientists this year as last year.
Recruiters who work with companies and nonprofits say they see a similar trend.
Natalie Derry, a U.K.-based managing partner of the Global Emerging Sciences Practice at recruiter WittKieffer, said her team has seen a 25% to 35% increase in applicants from the U.S. cold-calling about open positions. When they reach out to scientists currently based in the U.S., “we are getting a much higher hit rate of people showing interest.”
Still, there are practical hurdles to overcome for would-be continent-hoppers, she said. That can include language hurdles, arranging child care or elder care, and significant differences in national pension or retirement programs.
Brandon Coventry never thought he would consider a scientific career outside the United States. But federal funding cuts and questions over whether new grants will materialize have left him unsure. While reluctant to leave his family and friends, he’s applied to faculty positions in Canada and France.
“I’ve never wanted to necessarily leave the United States, but this is a serious contender for me,” said Coventry, who is a postdoctoral fellow studying neural implants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But it’s not easy to pick up and move a scientific career — let alone a life.
Marianna Zhang was studying how children develop race and gender stereotypes as a postdoctoral fellow at New York University when her National Science Foundation grant was canceled. She said it felt like “America as a country was no longer interested in studying questions like mine.”
Still, she wasn’t sure of her next move. “It’s no easy solution, just fleeing and escaping to another country,” she said.
The recruitment programs range in ambition, from those trying to attract a dozen researchers to a single university to the continent-wide Choose Europe for Science initiative.
But it’s unclear whether the total amount of funding and new positions offered could match what’s being shed in the United States.
Even as universities and institutes think about recruiting talent from the U.S., there’s more apprehension than glee at the funding cuts.
“Science is a global endeavor,” said Patrick Cramer, head of the Max Planck Society, noting that datasets and discoveries are often shared among international collaborators.
One aim of recruitment drives is “to help prevent the loss of talent to the global scientific community,” he said.
Researchers worldwide will suffer if collaborations are shut down and databases taken offline, scientists say.
“The U.S. was always an example, in both science and education,” said Patrick Schultz, president of France’s Institute of Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology. So the cuts and policies were “very frightening also for us because it was an example for the whole world.”
Larson, Ramakrishnan and Keaten write for the Associated Press.
Kseniia Petrova, a Russian Harvard University Medical School researcher held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since February, was arrested and charged with smuggling biological material into the United States on Wednesday. File Photo by CJ Gunther/EPA-EFE
May 14 (UPI) — A Russian Harvard University Medical School researcher held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since February has been arrested and charged with smuggling biological material into the United States.
The one count of smuggling goods into the United States was announced by the Justice Department on Wednesday, marking a dramatic escalation in the case that has garnered attention from academics.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint — which was dated Monday but made public Wednesday — Kseniia Petrova had frog embryos and embryonic samples in her possession when entering the country that she did not declare to immigration authorities.
The document states she arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport from Paris on Feb. 16. A Customs and Border Protection canine alerted its handler to Petrova’s bag, which was removed and brought to an agricultural secondary inspection area for further screening where biological items were found.
When questioned about it, she allegedly denied carrying any biological material, but a search of a plastic bag she was carrying revealed additional biological material.
Under oath, she admitted that the items were biological material and said she was not sure if she was supposed to declare them on her arrival, the document states, adding that a search of her found text messages to the contrary.
“[I]f you bring samples or antibody back, make sure you get the permission,” one text message she received from an unidentified person said.
“What is your plan to pass the American … Customs with samples? This is the most delicate place of the trajectory,” another text message read.
A third message to Petrova’s phone had asked: “what is your plan for getting through customs with samples?”
“No plan yet,” Petrova allegedly replied, according to excerpts of the messages included in the court document. “I won’t be able to swallow them.”
If convicted, Petrova could face up to 20 years in prison, five years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
“The rule of law does not have a carve out for educated individuals with pedigree,” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a recorded statement.
The affidavit states her visa was canceled at the airport.
“The U.S. visa that Ms. Petrova was given — which was revoked by customs officials as a result of her conduct — is a privilege, not a right.”
Her lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, told The New York Times that Petrova’s J-1 visa was canceled and that deportation proceedings were initiated.
He said normally, a case like this would be treated as a minor infraction, and that filing the criminal charge three months after the alleged violation, “is clearly intended to make Kseniia look like a criminal to justify their efforts to deport her.”
Romanovsky also added that a Vermont hearing held earlier Wednesday had essentially established that his client was detained unlawfully and that the complaint had “blindsided” them, and Petrova’s transfer from immigration to criminal custody was “suspect” as it occurred right after a judge set a bail hearing, signaling she could be released.
During the Vermont hearing, U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss had questioned the government over the legality of its actions.
“Where does a Customs and Border Patrol officer have the authority on his or her own to revoke a visa?” Reiss asked, NBC News reported.
“You cannot be found inadmissible because of the customs violation.”
According to the affidavit, Petrova told customs that she is fearful of going back to Russia.
“She claimed she had protested the Russian Federation,” the affidavit states. “She provided no other details.”
In an opinion piece she wrote for The New York Times — and which was published Tuesday — Petrova states she had left Russia after being arrested for protesting its war in Ukraine.
The charge was filed as the Trump administration has been conducting a crackdown on immigration, including targeting foreign-born academics, particularly over their support for Palestine amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Some of those detained students have been released by judges who have ruled against the Trump administration’s use of immigration enforcement to seek to deport them.
Last week, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said they are “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which is the right to challenge the legality of a person’s detention by the government.
File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
May 14 (UPI) — U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of Indian national and Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri. He had been held by ICE for two months despite not having been charged with a crime.
Suri was in the United States on an academic visa. He was arrested March 17 by masked ICE agents and sent to a Texas detention immigration detention facility.
Judge Giles ordered Suri released without bond on condition that he maintain a residence in Virginia and attend hearings in his case in person. For Texas immigration hearings, Suri can attend virtually.
The judge said at Suri’s hearing his release is “in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech.”
Suri’s defense lawyers alleged he was singled out for revocation of his visa and deportation “based on his family connections and constitutionally protected speech.”
Suri has not been charged with a crime. He was taken by ICE for his social media posts supporting Palestinians.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin cited the posts as she claimed without including concrete evidence that Suri allegedly had connections to a senior adviser of Hamas.
Suri said in an April statement that he had “never even been to a protest.”
His release petition argued that he was likely targeted by the Trump administration due to his marriage to a U.S. citizen of Palestinian origin.
Also, Suri’s father-in-law Ahmed Yousef was an adviser to Hamas over a decade ago.
Giles ruled in March that Suri “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the court issues a contrary order.”
Suri’s release order follows court-ordered releases from ICE custody of fellow immigrant academics Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University Palestinian student, and Tufts University student Rumseya Ozturk.
Attorneys representing Suri said during his detention he was transferred to five different facilities across three states. They said he at one point slept in a room with no bed and a TV blaring almost all day for nearly two weeks.
In a letter to his lawyers, Suri wrote, “My only ‘crimes’ making me a ‘national security threat’ are my marriage to a United States citizen of Palestinian origin and my support for the Palestinian cause.”
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Sama Ebrahimi Bajgani and her fiance, Alireza Doroudi, had just spent an evening celebrating the Persian new year at the University of Alabama when seven armed immigration officers came to their apartment before dawn and arrested Doroudi.
In a moment, the young couple’s life was upended.
“I was living a normal life until that night. After that nothing is just normal,” Bajgani said.
Details about Doroudi’s detention spread through the small Iranian community in Tuscaloosa, where Bajgani and Doroudi are doctoral students. Other Iranian students say they have been informally advised by faculty to “lay low” and “be invisible” — instilling fear among a once vibrant cohort.
Doroudi is among students across the U.S. who have been detained in recent weeks as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Bajgani said the couple does not know why Doroudi — who has no criminal record or public political views — faces deportation, adding that Trump’s recent visit to the school made her feel like the university was “ignorant of our crisis.”
One Iranian civil engineering student and close friend to Doroudi said he has lost more than 10 pounds due to stress and depression in the six weeks since Doroudi was detained.
“It’s like all of us are waiting for our turn. It could be every knock, every email could be deportation,” said the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about losing his legal status.
He now avoids unnecessary trips outside. When he was in a car crash last month, he begged the other driver not to call the police, even though he wasn’t at fault, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
Bajgani said Doroudi, 32, is an ambitious mechanical engineering student from Shiraz, Iran.
He entered the United States legally in January 2023 on a student visa. Bajgani said he often worked 60-hour weeks while still making time to run errands for loved ones.
“If someone like him doesn’t get to the place he deserves, there is nothing called the American dream,” she said.
Doroudi’s visa was revoked in June 2023, but the embassy didn’t provide a reason and ignored his inquiries, Bajgani said. The university told him he could stay as long as he remained a student but that he would not be allowed to reenter the U.S. if he left, she said.
He was operating under that guidance when immigration officers came to the couple’s door in March.
The University of Alabama didn’t comment on Doroudi’s case, but said it offers resources to help immigrants on campus comply with federal law. It also offers guidance to students whose visas are revoked.
“Our international students are valued members of our campus community,” university spokesperson Monica Watts said in a statement.
Doroudi told Bajgani he spent three days in a county jail, sleeping on a tile floor and feeling panicked.
He is now in a Louisiana immigration detention facility more than 300 miles from Tuscaloosa while he awaits a deportation hearing scheduled for next week. At least one other high-profile international student is there.
“I didn’t deserve this. If they had just sent me a letter asking me to appear in court, I would’ve come, because I didn’t do anything illegal. I stayed with their permission,” Doroudi said in a letter he dictated to Bajgani over the phone to provide his perspective to others. “What was the reason for throwing me in jail?”
More than 1,000 international students across the U.S. have had their visas or legal status revoked since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. They included some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since reversed those revocations, including those of four University of Alabama students.
“University staff closely monitors changes that could affect them and has communicated updates related to new protocols and procedures,” Watts said.
A Louisiana judge who denied Doroudi bond in mid-April said he didn’t sufficiently prove that he wasn’t a national security threat, Doroudi’s lawyer, David Rozas said. Rozas said he was “flabbergasted” because the government hasn’t presented evidence that Doroudi is a threat, though that is what the Department of Homeland Security has alleged.
International students make up more than 13% of the statewide University of Alabama graduate program, according to the school’s website. More than 100 Iranian students attend the university, according to an estimate from the Iranian Student Assn.
Every year, many gather for a picnic to celebrate Sizdah Bedar, the 13th day of the Persian new year, which begins with spring.
This year, the typically festive holiday “felt like a funeral service,” one Iranian doctoral student said. At one point, silence fell over the group as a police car passed.
“It’s becoming too hard to be living here, to be yourself and thrive,” said the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears retaliation.
She has criticized the Iranian regime since arriving in the United States more than five years ago, so she suspects she is no longer safe in her home country. Now, she has those same doubts in Alabama.
“All of a sudden it feels like we’re returning back to Iran again,” she said.
Riddle writes for the Associated Press.