Sabotaging the NSF fellowship is a blunder

Over the last year, the Trump administration has sent one discouraging message after another to young people aspiring to a scientific career in the United States. The corrosive rhetoric that mocks scientific expertise and the proposed—and realized—cuts to funding are driving students away from scientific careers that may no longer exist by the time they graduate. Making matters even worse, cutbacks in visas awarded to foreign students are eroding the opportunities for young American scientists to work with the most talented people in the world. There is perhaps no stronger evidence of the administration’s objectives to reduce the quality of the US scientific workforce than its treatment of the National Science Foundation’s flagship Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).