US research funding

has nothing to do with me? Wrong.

This morning there are several emails from people I am working with to say their research funding is under threat from the unelected Elon Musk's efficiency drive. 

In my attempts to "retire" I am not taking on any more supervision of doctoral students. I am not doing any more formal tutoring of university students. I am not marking any more essays. 

All this means that I should no longer be involved but of course I am. People send requests for help. I get invited to meetings (thankfully mostly on line). Students get in touch for "a bit of help". 

I have also been helping with those all important research proposals. These are the research proposals which should be what universities should be about. These are the research proposals which should, in my area, be about improving the quality of life for people with disabilities through improved communication skills or improving the communication skills of aid workers in complex humanitarian emergencies. The two areas are not that different in many ways.  

Getting any sort of research funding in these areas has always been difficult. Now it is almost impossible and it seems what little there is may no longer be available. I have been sent forms to fill out in order to try and help justify two pieces of research. Why? Because I was on the committee which wrote the grant proposal. 

I could say "no". I could refuse to fill out the forms intended to justify my unpaid existence but that will make it even more likely the funding will be cut. 

"We already rely too much on the unpaid and the overworked," someone tells me. 

And all this is going on while someone gets almost a million dollars for "anti-racist" dentistry that has nothing to do with actual dentistry but is apparently something to do with "race relations". I reckon my good friend M... could have gone in along with a couple of other good friends and given two or three lectures and taught the students just as much about being "aboriginal", "Muslim" and "Jewish". 

I will dutifully fill the forms out and return them but it makes me angry. It makes me not want to be involved anymore. I want to not care but I do care. What in the h... is going on in this world that someone's right to communicate their fear, their pain, their anxiety and so much more is less important than the bright white smile of one researcher?