March 7 protests across the US and Europe will protest cuts to research, staffing and funding, and push for continued federal focus on diversity, equity and inclusion
Thousands of scientists from dozens of countries around the world are uniting in solidarity to oppose the Trump administration's attempts to implement what they see as anti-science measures that threaten public health and the environment worldwide, Inside reports. Climate News.
The first global united resistance demonstration is planned for March 7, with marches and demonstrations by Stand Up For Science Planned in Washington, D.C. and at least 32 other cities across the United States, as well as several other cities around the world.
“There has never been a more important time to stand with science,” said climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking at a rally to be held on March 7 in Washington.
On Tuesday Islands Donald Trump has threatened to cut off federal funding for schools and universities that allow what he called illegal protests, and has threatened to arrest "instigators."
“It’s a classic fascist tactic, labeling anything you don’t like as ‘illegal,’” Mann said in an email. Anti-science and authoritarianism have a dark history as two sides of the same fascist coin. Think of Hitler and the abolition of ‘Jewish science’ or Stalin and Soviet ‘Lysenkoism.’ History will look back on Trump and his partner Musk in exactly the same way.”
Recognizing the growing threat, a group of international scientists last week held the first in a planned series of online workshops aimed at developing ways to protect science from what they called a rising tide of authoritarianism, including through new, secure communication networks and safe repositories for data and research.
The Trump administration did not respond to questions about the science protest or its science policy goals. Other administration officials said that layoffs, department and budget cuts, a focus on diversity and other major changes to government agencies were designed to align them with the administration’s overarching goals and cut budgets.
At least one major science agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was specifically targeted for dismantling by Project 2025, a policy agenda prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump disavowed the document during his campaign, but his administration is already implementing many of its recommendations.
The coming weeks could be “the greatest test the American scientific community has ever faced,” Holden Thorpe, editor-in-chief of the journal Science, wrote in a Feb. 24 editorial in the journal Science. “The chaos, conflicting information, dismissals, and offensive rhetoric of the Trump administration’s approach to science over the past month are causing anxiety, grief, and concern for the scientific community.”
Thorpe urged those in the scientific community who enjoy the protections for academic and other freedoms afforded by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “do and say more,” a message that rang true with Emma Courtney and J.P. Flores, the organizers of the demonstrations and marches on March 7.
Flores, a fourth-year doctoral student in bioinformatics and computational biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he was devastated by the Trump administration's initial attempts. Cut federal science programs and fundingAlthough some of the actions have already been blocked in court and others also appear to be illegal, he said the attack is debilitating.
“I’m someone who’s very interested in rare diseases, genetics and genomics, and also diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” he says. “I almost felt overwhelmed and paralyzed about the social significance, but also, what does this say about my science?”
Instead of letting the numbness set in, he remembered the huge turnout. At the Science Parade in 2017, as tens of thousands of people around the world marched to protest similar threats early in Trump's first term.
"I went on social media and thought to myself, 'Where are these people now?'" he said. "I didn't really see any noise. I just saw people posting questions and saying, 'Why do we need this so badly now?'"
In an online meeting in early February, Jonathan Berman, one of the organizers of the original March for Science, gave Flores a list of things he wished he had done differently, and things he thought he was doing right. At the end of the conversation, Flores took a deep breath and decided to start organizing a large-scale protest.
He contacted Colette Delvalle, a master's student in clinical psychology at Emory University, and they were soon joined by Courtney, a doctoral student At the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Within weeks, events began to be announced across the country and brought together under the banner Stand Up For Science, and quickly gained more than 48,000 followers on Bluesky along the way.
Evil agenda
Attacks on science in the United States could spread around the world, said Austrian environmental historian Verena Weinwerter, dean of the faculty for interdisciplinary studies at Alpen-Adria University in Klagenfurt, Austria.
“Science is a global mission,” she said, speaking as a member of the organization Scientists for the Future. “Think about Antarctica. The research is international, and the results benefit the global community, not any one country.”
Ice cores from glaciers are a good example, she said. The ice is dated in one lab, another lab measures traces of oxygen to reconstruct the climate signal, another lab tracks pollutants or pollen or micrometeorites.
"Only if you put all of this together do you get the full picture of the past," she said.
She said global engagement also helps ensure scientific integrity, as reviewers of national grants in one country are always reviewed by peer experts in another.
She said that in all team efforts, "everyone suffers if one country suddenly drops out."
The current attacks on scientists, funding, research and institutions can be seen as part of a growing problem of misinformation in the rapidly evolving media landscape, and Winiwerter said there is a sinister agenda behind the attacks.
“Autocratic oligarchs and large corporations aimed at maximizing profits have long sown seeds of doubt,” she said, “like the tobacco industry or the chemical industry.”
She said this leaves the average citizen unsure which of the voices shouting at them to trust, especially on social media platforms. “Right-wing populists want to control the agenda on their issues, so facts are not in their interest,” she said. “Reality and scientists are decent mediators of facts and enemies of populists on the far left and right.”
She warned that some of the disillusionment is real, because alongside science’s contributions to progress and prosperity, it is also part of a pattern of growing inequality that is the underlying fuel for many modern social ills. Addressing such disparities could be a way to increase trust in science, she said.
“Working against inequality would be my best guess at getting people to believe more in science,” she said. “The fruits of science must be accessible, whether it’s healthcare, clean environments or any other part of life.”
According to organizers, the March 7 protests have clear policy goals: ending censorship and political interference in science, securing and expanding scientific funding, and defending diversity, equality, inclusion, and accessibility in science.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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By the way, when they are against diversity, they also harm the disabled.
Diversity, equality, and inclusion is not pro-science, it's anti-science.