Hundreds joined researchers, professors and other community members in Washington Square Park to protest President Donald Trump’s recent cuts to scientific research funding on Friday afternoon. 

NYU professors, students and researchers rallied in support as medical professionals spoke about the need for community advocacy amid Trump’s slash to billions of dollars in medical research and mass federal worker layoffs. Protesters held signs reading “TRUST YOUR NERDS,” “SCIENCE SAVES LIVES” and “AMERICA: BUILT ON SCIENCE” at the demonstration, which was one of over 30 Stand Up for Science rallies organized across the United States and Europe on Friday.  

In a speech, Tandon professor Yann LeCun, who serves as Meta’s chief artificial intelligence scientist, said that federal funding is vital to long-term scientific and technological discoveries at universities. Other speakers included researchers from Columbia University — which lost $400 million in grants on Friday — and New York state Assemblymember Harvey Epstein. 

Speaker Claire Pomeroy, CEO of the Lasker Foundation for medical research, told the crowd that federal cuts to research funding can minimize the value of scientists to the public eye, which could further increase research job losses and create uncertainty at universities. 

“We need to make sure that NIH funding continues — we need to make sure that everybody who wants to be a scientist has the opportunity to be one,” Pomeroy said in an interview with WSN. “We need the public to trust science and all the wonders that it can create.”

The demonstration came in response to Trump’s crackdown on research since taking office in an effort to reduce government spending, including a pause to all federal aid — which cost NYU at least two grants — and an attack on thousands of research grants covering race, gender and other “woke” subject matters. On the day of the rally, Trump cut millions from Columbia’s research funding after his task force determined that Columbia failed to combat antisemitism on campus. The task force will also visit NYU as part of an investigation into 10 U.S. universities with reportedly antisemitic incidents on campus. 

“The ideas that will make a difference in five years from now are being hatched right now — here at NYU, at Cornell, at Stony Brook — so defunding these academic research institutions is a dumb and short sighted idea,” Lucas Parra, a biomedical engineering professor at the City University of New York, said in a speech. “Academic institutions and their students are the engine of prosperity, so let’s stand up for science. Let’s stand up for knowledge. Don’t let ignorance win.”

Contact Amelia Hernandez Gioia at [email protected].