Trump casts shadow over Nobel as prize-awarding body warns academic freedom at risk

STOCKHOLM – As scientists ready for next week’s Nobel Prize announcements, one awarding body is warning academic freedom is under threat in the US and elsewhere, with political interference risking long-lasting negative effects.

US President Donald Trump has introduced or proposed a swathe of measures in his second term that critics argue will hamper education and scientific research.

Dr Ylva Engstrom, vice-president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prizes for chemistry, physics and economics, said the Trump administration’s changes were reckless.

“I think in both the short and long term, it can have devastating effects,” she said. “Academic freedom is one of the pillars of the democratic system.”

The Trump administration denies stifling academic freedom, saying its measures will cut waste and promote US scientific innovation.

Dr Engstrom, who is also a board member of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, is not herself on any of the three committees that will award the prizes for chemistry, physics or economics.

The Nobel prizes, regarded by many as the most prestigious science awards in the world, are set to be announced from next week, starting with the award for medicine or physiology on Oct 6 and ending with the unveiling of the winners in economics one week later.

The awards were created by Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and are also handed out for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, literature and peace. They come with a prize amount of 11 million Swedish crowns (S$1.5 million).

Mr Trump has said several times that he

deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

, although experts say his chances are very slim.

Prioritising ‘patriotic education’

Mr Trump has proposed slashing the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, and wants to dismantle the Department of Education, in a bid to shrink the federal government’s role in education in favour of more control by the states.

His administration has also said it would prioritise giving grant money to programmes that focus on “patriotic education” and demanded that schools cap international undergraduate enrolment at 15 per cent.

“For research, it’s going to be a big dip in what the American scientists can do and what they are allowed to do, what they can publish, what they can get money for. So this is going to have big effects,” said Dr Engstrom, who is chairwoman of the research policy committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The White House said in an e-mailed response that the US was the largest funder of scientific research in the world.

“The administration’s targeted cuts to waste, fraud and abuse in both research grant funding and visa programmes are going to strengthen Americans’ innovative and scientific dominance,” it said.

Drag on economic growth

Mr Trump has also been wrangling with several prestigious universities – some of whose faculty may be among the Nobel prize winners in the coming days – threatening to withhold federal funds over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, campus diversity and transgender policies.

British-born American economist Simon Johnson, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024 for his studies of how institutions affect prosperity, said that while he thought it was too early to tell how Mr Trump’s actions would affect academic freedom, they would certainly hamper economic growth.

“These policies are absolutely, unambiguously very negative and particularly for job creation,” said Professor Johnson, who teaches at MIT Sloan School of Management.

“All engineering and science-type activities, I think, are going to be affected,” he said. “Life sciences is a particularly dynamic sector at the moment and NIH is, for whatever reason, being targeted with truly massive cuts.”

The Nobel Foundation, which oversees Nobel’s will and legacy, said there were challenges to academic freedom, as there have been previously in the foundation’s 124 years, and that it was “keeping a watchful eye”.

“We protect knowledge,” said Ms Hanna Stjarne, chairwoman of the foundation. “We protect freedom, the opportunity for researchers to work freely, for writers to be able to write exactly as they want, and for peace initiatives to be taken in all kinds of conflicts that exist all over the world.” REUTERS