Science Badly Needs Defending Right Now. It Doesn’t Need Your Belief.

Science requires public money to succeed at scale and is undertaken primarily for the public good. Sure, private companies also do scientific research, but not at the scale that the federal government funds it, and if a private company does something important for society—as Moderna did when it developed Covid vaccines—it’s federal government subsidies that make it possible. This system assumes rightly that science benefits all of us. Anyone could need a cure for cancer someday, desire to live in a thriving natural environment, or feel curious about what’s going on in outer space. That sense of the public interest is anathema to this White House, which sees little value in the public sector. Trump’s worldview is like Margaret Thatcher’s—the U.K. prime minister famously said, “There is no such thing as society”—but his individualism is more extreme because there is no subject more interesting to him, no interest group more pressing, than himself. What good is science to Trump personally?

The right also hates science because it requires cooperation across borders. To most effectively advance knowledge and research, individuals from different countries must put their heads together, co-author studies, accept each other’s postdoctoral students, visit, immigrate, speak. This sort of exchange makes no sense to MAGA. The assumption of the Trump White House is that people from other countries have nothing to offer us and are, in fact, dangerous to our national security.

There’s a third, more complicated ideological pillar to Trump’s attack on science, and this is anti-elitism. Some science—though hardly the majority—takes place at Ivy League institutions like Harvard. This White House hates such places, not, as it claims, because of “antisemitism”—MAGA doesn’t mind antisemitism and bigotry in other contexts—but because the anti-elitism of attacking the Ivy League always plays well. Selective admissions breed resentment, since most people can’t get in. Worse, the Ivies are overwhelmingly dominated by the rich, as extensive studies by The New York Times, Thomas Piketty, and others have found. While the research done by Ivy League scholars is a critical public good, it is also a scandal that institutions more exclusive than most country clubs are allowed to enjoy tax-exempt status and government funding. Those of us to the left of Trump need to welcome a more honest conversation about these institutions. Should they even enjoy nonprofit status? To keep their public funding and tax exemptions, should they have to do more public service? Serve more low-income students, turn their real estate holdings into affordable housing, institute open admissions? Or should they simply be nationalized and run as public institutions?

But as usual, the Ivy League is a distraction. Most universities aren’t highly selective, many are already public, and most bring substantial economic benefits to their communities. Scientific research is essential to the prosperity of many American cities and towns, where the university is the main employer. College-centered towns are some of the fastest-growing in the United States, and in many places higher education has replaced manufacturing as the industry that brings jobs, money, and vitality. You might say that before this year, science was making America great again.