Will Mair, who studies aging, lost almost all his research funds when the White House cracked down on Harvard. He was wholly unprepared for the upheaval that followed….
In October, he traveled to Malta to lead a long-planned conference on aging — after nearly canceling the trip because he lacked the funds for airfare. Flying back home, grateful for the days immersed in dialogue with other scientists, he took comfort in knowing he would re-enter the county with the protection of his new U.S. passport.
Then, at Logan Airport, an officer pulled him aside at the passport control checkpoint and started asking questions: What kind of research did he do? Who were his collaborators? What countries did his postdocs come from?
His hands shook as he answered politely, hiding his disbelief and mounting anger. After about half an hour, they let him go.
The story illustrates a structural shift in how American science has been funded since World War II. For about eighty years the dominant model was simple. The federal government funds basic research. Universities perform the research. Private industry later commercializes the discoveries. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Defense Department became the primary patrons. Universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and UCSF built enormous research systems around that assumption.
The Mair episode shows what happens when that assumption breaks.
After World War II the United States created a system sometimes called the “Bush model,” after Vannevar Bush. The idea was that government should fund open-ended basic science because the private sector cannot tolerate the uncertainty.
Companies want projects that might produce a drug or product in five years. Basic biology often takes thirty years and fails most of the time.
That is why the scientist in the article tells the audience that companies cannot tolerate “all the weird, random science.” He is basically describing the economic logic behind NIH funding.
Ozempic is actually a good example. The drug ultimately emerged from decades of obscure metabolic research that no pharmaceutical company would have funded in its early stages.
Public health schools rely heavily on federal grants. The Harvard T.H. Chan School gets roughly 40 percent of its revenue from Washington. Engineering schools have more corporate funding and business schools rely on tuition and alumni donations.
So when the federal government cuts grants, public health labs feel it first.
That is why Mair’s lab suddenly had to operate like a startup. Instead of simply applying for NIH grants he is now pitching donors on Nantucket golf courses and consulting for a private longevity company.
The conflict in the story is not just Trump versus Harvard. It reflects a broader political shift. For decades the American science system assumed three things:
• Federal funding would grow every year.
• Universities would remain politically neutral in the eyes of government.
• International talent would flow freely into U.S. labs.
All three assumptions are now unstable. The federal government is increasingly willing to use funding as leverage over universities. Universities are deeply embedded in political conflicts. Immigration scrutiny now affects scientists and students.
When those conditions change, the whole ecosystem changes.
Most likely the funding model will diversify. More philanthropy from billionaires interested in specific fields like aging or AI. More university spin-offs and venture partnerships. Smaller labs with fewer permanent staff. More researchers moving between academia and private industry. You can already see that happening in fields like longevity research, where figures like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Altos Labs have poured billions into private research institutes.
Mair consulting for a longevity investment company is a sign of that shift.
The irony is that American science became dominant precisely because it was insulated from this kind of short-term funding pressure.
The NIH system let scientists pursue strange ideas for decades without needing immediate commercial payoff.
If that insulation weakens, the U.S. may become more like other countries where research is fragmented between government, corporate, and philanthropic patrons.
Some people think that will make science more efficient. Others think it will kill the kind of long-term discoveries that produced things like mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, and modern cancer therapies.
