The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) have made a statement urging the federal government to reject the Trump administration’s attempt to interfere in Australian research.
As an extension of Trump’s domestic policies, the Trump administration is attempting to police research conducted by students enrolled at Australian universities that have funding ties to American federal agencies.
In the last couple of days, researchers from various major Australian universities received a 36-point questionnaire checking their research’s compliance with the far-right rhetoric of Trump’s party.
The questionnaire included inquiries into the research’s compliance with Trump administration’s two sexes executive order, questioned the organisation’s funding ties with the People’s Republic of China, and queried the researchers’ opinions about cultural issues that Trump has heavily championed. These include terrorism, border control, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace.
The questionnaire also asked whether the university has a policy prohibiting any collaboration or support for entities that advocate for policies “contrary to US government interests, national security and sovereignty”. This has serious implications on Australian sovereignty.
Rosalind Dixon, a law professor from UNSW spoke to the Australian Financial Review stating “From a constitutional perspective, [universities] have an arguable case that these surveys are not legal. But politically, it’s a sign of just how far the Trump administration is willing to go to try and use every tool in the toolbox to bend US policy to its own will.”
The NTEU has also strongly urged the federal government to guarantee Australian researchers protection from foreign influence. Dr Alison Barnes, the NTEU national president, states “A foreign government seeking to destroy public education globally must have zero influence on what Australian researchers and their international colleagues work on. Donald Trump’s hateful agenda is racist, transphobic and misogynistic. The idea of research funding being tied to any of those values is sickening.”
The Group of 8 (GO8), which comprise the largest and most prestigious Australian universities, whose members make up a sizable portion of Australia’s research output, also voiced repeated concerns.
To both the federal government and American Senators, they stated “we are extremely concerned about the broader and chilling implications of the Trump administration’s policy, not only for the future of health and medical research, but especially regarding defence collaboration, including AUKUS.”
This marks a concerning shift in the conduct of the American government. This marks another in a series of increasingly bold steps that the Trump administration is taking to override sovereign processes of another state.
Republicans in the USA have already launched an all-out war against academia, heavily cutting funding and pausing all on-going funding grants in Trump’s quest to eliminate unnecessary spending on things he has labelled as “woke”. This attempt to interfere into Australian researchers’ work is simply an extension of this attack on the academic and scientific community.