Thank you Sherie.

To the point about organizing people at our institutions and communities to contact members of Congress, I also want to encourage this listserv to feel personally empowered to contact their representatives. Yesterday I called a Senator’s office after grant terminations from the Department of Education began arriving at our University, and the staffer I spoke with promised he would “share my concerns” with the Senator but also gave me the email address of the Education staffer in their office. Yes, my job is giving me additional insight into what’s happening, but I’m sharing my concerns not as a representative of our University, but as a mom of two young kids in public school who would have benefitted from the objectives of these programs.

I find the more calls I make, the more I know what to say and ask. Will it make any difference in my very Republican state? I don’t know, but I will continue to approach it from the perspective that this has nothing to do with political affiliation and is instead an issue of Congress standing up to protect their separate but equal, Constitutionally established, legislative power. There is an app called “5 calls” that is very helpful in this regard.

Lauren Angelo Duck
Assistant Director

803-777-4857
xxxxxx@mailbox.sc.edu
Sponsored Awards Management
University of South Carolina

1600 Hampton St. Suite 805

Columbia, SC 29208

From: Sherie L Donahue - sherie.donahue at ucr.edu (via resadm-l list) <xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2025 9:19 PM
To: 'xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org' <xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org>
Subject: [RESADM-L] Through the Looking Glass

I don’t consider myself political (I am an independent) and have spent my entire career in academia because I love science and the exchange of different ideas and points of views. I believe in the rule of law (thank you to whoever posted the ABA article earlier!) and will therefore accept changes (even ones I don’t like) as long as they are enacted through that process. I am guessing that many of us in research administration think the same way.

Never in my wildest dreams (or rather nightmares) would I have believed these current events could have happened. I am deeply grateful to the attorneys, non-profits, and others that are obtaining the TROs to keep some of the actions from taking affect in the short term. But how can we personally help the general public (or those in our personal circles) understand the real-world effects of the administration’s actions? Sticking to the 'issues-related-to-research’ lane, below is my humble list of ideas to kick start the conversation:

Share how these actions are affecting real people and gently point out the non-intended consequences.
Explain rationally how the federal granting process works and why this is not ‘fraud and abuse.’
Stand up for the rule of law, give the rationale behind your reasoning, but leave the hyperbole and rhetoric out of it.
Remind everyone that we are all Americans, it is ok to think differently, and including one group does not have to come at the exclusion of another.
Help organize people in your institutions or communities to contact your members of Congress

Sherie Donahue, MS, CRA, CPIA

Research Integrity Analyst/Proposal Development Officer

Research & Economic Development |University of California, Riverside

900 University Avenue | UOB, Suite 113 | Riverside, CA 92521

951.827.4814 | xxxxxx@ucr.edu

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