US to strip colleges of health research funding over support for BDS

If boycott activity is detected, the National Institutes of Health will demand its money back.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Monday that it was modifying its terms and conditions for all its research grants to include a ban on participating in discriminatory boycotts, specifically mentioning Israel in this context.

From now on, the NIH said, by accepting a grant from the foremost public funder of medical and biological research in the world, the recipients “are certifying that they do not engage in and will not during the term of this award engage in a discriminatory prohibited boycott.”

If any institution is found to be operating any program that violates this condition, “NIH reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds” that it had already contributed. The terms also apply to the renewal of existing grants.

The NIH has a budget of $47 billion to fund over 60,000 grants per year.

As reported by Forbes, the US business magazine, in February, according to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, nine of the top ten American recipients of NIH grants last year were universities, which account for almost all the agency’s funding, along with health institutions.

The list included Columbia University ($640 million), the University of Michigan (nearly $734 million) and Yale University ($645.8 million), which are all under federal investigation for the anti-Israel and antisemitic activity on their campuses ever since the Israel-Hamas war was sparked on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists massacred 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and injured thousands.

No top American university officially boycotts Israel, however, and campus protestors’ demands for the schools to divest from all Israeli-linked companies have been rejected by almost all the administrations’ boards.

The NIH notice seemingly took this into account, broadening its boycott ban to include “refusing to engage, severing commercial relations, or restricting commercial relationships specifically with Israeli companies or with companies conducting business in Israel or with Israel, or those authorized, licensed, or incorporated under Israeli law.”

Refusing to collaborate with Israeli universities, or employing professors and having professional associations that support BDS may also fall under the definition of exhibiting prohibited anti-Israel policies.

Harvard University, which has had billions of dollars in funding frozen by the Trump administration, including $488 million in NIH grants, over its failure to properly address campus antisemitism, has now filed a lawsuit against the government’s actions.