AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The federal government-imposed stop work orders for several labs at Harvard University on Tuesday, halting billions of dollars in federally funded research. It is one of the immediate impacts of the fight between the Trump administration and Harvard. And one person who received a stop work order is Dr. Don Ingber. He's the founding director of the Wyss Institute at Harvard, which focuses on developing medical technologies. Welcome.
DON INGBER: Hi. Thank you.
CHANG: Hi. OK, so I understand that the Wyss Institute had three contracts impacted by this stop work order, totaling roughly - let me make sure I'm getting this right - $20 million in research. What were your teams working on?
INGBER: My group is using a technology that we developed here called Human Organs-on-Chips, that are small devices the size of a computer memory stick that have hollow channels that are literally lined by living human cells, that we position to recreate the structures of living organs. And they actually replicate the functions and responses of living organs.
CHANG: Wow.
INGBER: And so they have funded us to study how the human lung, intestine, bone marrow and lymph node respond to radiation - and we've been really successful at doing that - and then, also, to develop - to identify drugs that can mitigate the effects of radiation.
CHANG: For example, for astronauts during space travel.
INGBER: Well, you're never going to get to Mars, even if Elon Musk thinks is the most important thing in the world, unless you figure out how protect astronauts against radiation toxicity. But it also would be there to protect against nuclear reactor disasters. And again, we're at a time where the government wants to build nuclear plants all over the country...
CHANG: Right.
INGBER: ...Because of the AI energy needs. And also, cancer patients, you know, receive radiotherapy.
CHANG: Absolutely, yeah.
INGBER: And there are side effects that these types of drugs can mitigate.
CHANG: So how did you personally feel when you got this stop work order? What went through your mind?
INGBER: I was a bit surprised because this work is totally unrelated to anything that you can imagine related to wokeness or antisemitism. I also - the Wyss Institute is a separate 501(c)(3), although it's part of Harvard. All of our direct costs and indirect costs go 100% to research and technology development. So I honestly don't understand why they targeted us.
CHANG: And can you just explain for people what are the immediate effects in your labs for this screeching halt in work? Like, what happens to the employees, to the experiments?
INGBER: Well, the experiments have to stop. And obviously, if there are experiments that are, you know, partway through, I have to come up and find alternative sources of funding to keep these people. These are all young people who are passionate, working day and night on these things. And so we have to protect them. That's my first priority. And then we want to save any experiments that are critical, which took months to do, and we lose data. But otherwise, we are - you know, we basically have to bring it to a halt unless we can find other funding. And that's what - you know, we're in the damage assessment phase.
CHANG: Well, Alan Garber, Harvard's president, was pretty firm in his response. He was quoted in a post on X from the Harvard account saying, quote, "no government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue." What's your feeling about that statement, given what you have at stake here with all these projects?
INGBER: I'm proud to be a Harvard faculty member because you have to speak truth to power. And, you know, can you imagine that every administration comes in, we have to change what we teach in terms of ideology? That's not the United States I grew up in. We have to have academic freedom. America is the magnet for the world's best and brightest all around the world, every nation, even China. They all want to come here. That is what built our scientific powerhouse, which has led to the incredible technologies that, you know - optical fibers, computer microchips, CRISPR technology - you name it. That's what's driven the economy. That is our economic competitiveness that the government talks about. They are now strangling that pipeline every which way. You know, and so we're killing the gem that we have created through a partnership between government and academia for the past 70 years. And it makes - there's no reason for it, right? It goes against everything they say they want to do.
CHANG: That is Dr. Don Ingber of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
INGBER: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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