Gabriel Filippelli’s research was thrown for a loop when IU’s Office of Research Administration told him to stop his work Jan. 27 after President Donald Trump’s order to freeze federal grants.
Trump’s budget office rescinded the order Jan. 29 after a federal judge blocked it Jan. 28, but not before causing confusion and stress for researchers whose projects were funded by federal grants.
Filippelli is a professor at IU Indianapolis’s School of Science and serves as the executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute in Bloomington. His research covers topics including the environment, human health and climate change.
The State Department awarded him a grant in October of last year to conduct research in Pakistan in conjunction with the embassies there to provide communities with air quality monitors.
On Jan. 27, Filippelli and all his international partners received a stop work order from IU, reflecting what the State Department had told them.
“The language of the wording of it made me assume that it was not going to be allowable in the future,” Filippelli said. “Basically, that it was canceled.”
Filippelli said the letter claimed the grant he received no longer effectuated the priorities of the State Department, which made him believe it was a done deal.
On Jan. 31, the State Department reached back out.
“I woke up to an email saying, ‘Well, actually, we reviewed your award, and it does not violate any of the executive orders,’” Filippelli said. “’Other than, we want you to revise a section on that we included on inclusivity and gender diversity’.”
Filippelli said while he was passionate about inclusivity, the section about diversity, equity, and inclusion was not a dominant aspect of his grant proposal — the environmental issues were. However, until he revises the section and the funding is restored, he won’t be able to continue his work.
After his inauguration Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order terminating DEI programs in the federal government.
Filippelli said his partners in Pakistan had not been told by the State Department if the proposal could move forward again.
“Until a stop work order is officially removed, the only work we can work on is the award itself,” Filippelli said. “There’s so many moving parts still, and there’s so much unknown.”
He said he fully expected the State Department to lift the suspension and that the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was working to try and reinstate the award.
“They’re just trying to do the right thing and do their job, but they also can’t violate a presidential order,” Filippelli said. “I think that like the confusion of the freeze and then the White House withdrawing the freeze is just par for the course of what’s going on.”
Workshops and visits for the research that he had planned to take place in a couple of months had to be canceled, Filippelli said, but now they’re back on. He said he and his partners were regrouping and working on the proposal amendment to align with the priorities of the State Department.
“Many of these current grants have diversity, you know, objectives in them,” Filippelli said. “So, I’m wondering if the federal government is now going to go through program by program and examine all of their funded awards and then ask for revision to awards.”
Filippelli’s award wasn’t the only one to be suspended. The ORA said in an announcement on Jan. 28 that IU had “received notifications to cease grant activities on a small number of awards related to executive order freezing foreign financial assistance and funded Department of State and USAID.”
It also said agencies had until Feb. 10 to see if grant proposals were complying with the new executive orders.
On Jan. 29, the ORA issued an update on the freezing of federal grants after Trump’s memo was rescinded.
“Federal agencies will still be reviewing existing grants for compliance with other EOs,” the announcement read. “This rescission also does not change any existing stop work orders received on specific awards.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct a source's name on some references.
The Indiana Daily Student is looking into the Trump Administration’s impact on IU researchers. Have a tip? Reach out to news@idsnews.com.
