Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025 | 2 a.m.
UNR says it received an order to stop work on three projects meant for developing global partnerships and scientific research because around $30 million in federal funding used in those initiatives could dry up in President Donald Trump’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Trump wants to scrap the bulk of initiatives performed by USAID, the agency tasked with assisting countries in need of support for disasters, poverty or democratic reforms, and move any remaining ones into Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s purview. Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs what is billed as a cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, asserts the agency is rife with fraudulent spending of taxpayer dollars with “next-to-no oversight.”
That’s not sitting well at UNR.
Take Sudeep Chandra, a biology professor and director of the school’s Global Water Center, who says a highlight of co-leading the USAID-funded “Wonders of the Mekong” project is its diplomacy.
“People really get to understand us, the way that we might approach things in the U.S.,” Chandra said. “The positive ways that we might address pollution issues, to solve problems, and some of my favorite parts have been the idea that we’re creating a whole new generation of people, both American and Cambodian, for example, that respect each other, that also help each other.”
The “Wonders of the Mekong” project supports conservation, policy development and scientific collaboration for continued education on the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia — home to over 20,000 plant species and 850 plant species. The Mekong River Commission estimates that 80% of the nearly 65 million people living in the Mekong’s lower basin depend on the river and its natural resources for their livelihoods.
“What’s great about doing it from Reno is that people think that we’re in the desert and, ‘Oh, why would you be doing these big global projects?’ ” Chandra said. “It’s because we understand water in the desert. We understand how limiting it can be, how we need to protect the resource and the approaches for doing so.”
Chandra said UNR had opened two new laboratories in Cambodia for the project, one to test water quality and another supporting fisheries. UNR students studying there can utilize the labs for service projects. The labs also are used to host international students.
He added one of the project’s accomplishments was helping to prevent development of a main stem dam in the heart of the Mekong in Cambodia to ensure local communities maintained access to food sources.
The university said the impact of the stop work order will include delays in policies on sustainable development, forfeiting influence in Southeast Asia to other nations investing in Mekong development, a disruption to research partnerships and overall limiting of international opportunities for American universities.
Chandra also spoke on the withdrawal of American influence in the region, saying that in the past few weeks, there has been an interest in Chinese-led developments coming into Cambodia.
“That, to me, I think, is the biggest stress that I’ve seen,” Chandra said. “Is that all of a sudden, our values that we’ve tried to share abroad are just removed overnight.”
He said it’s common in this field of work to have scarce security of resources, so he often approaches projects with an understanding that they are short term. The change to the Mekong project, however, is something vastly different from that.
“The repercussions of that to the students, to the early-career people that are trying to build their careers, is shocking,” Chandra said. “Like, where are they going to be salaried from? Where? Where are they going to try to finish their schooling from? And I think that is so genuinely un-American, it’s strange to me.”
Other UNR projects affected included a media and digital literacy exchange program, which is a two-week educational exchange effort designed to combat misinformation and promote “ethical digital engagement.”
The university, in a statement, said this is another instance of restricting U.S. influence abroad and added that the decision affects faculty research and student engagement through funding cuts to UNR and U.S. school districts.
UNR also received the stop work order for its Aconcagua High-Altitude Weather Station Project, which aimed to improve weather forecasting, climate research and water resource management through high-altitude weather stations installed on the tallest peak in the Western Hemisphere.
The stoppage, UNR said, will delay climate and water research, damage diplomatic relations with Argentina, limit U.S. contributions to global climate research and affect aviation safety and weather prediction models because of the reduced access to the high-altitude data.
“(UNR) leadership continues to monitor the presidential executive actions closely. The situation is still fluid, and it is not quite readily apparent what the long-term implications will be,” UNR wrote in its statement.
Beyond USAID programs
The impact of Trump’s presidency isn’t limited at UNR to programs funded through USAID.
Just a month ago, for example, interested parties could use the International Visitor Leadership Program on the school’s website to learn about opportunities for a professional exchange funded through the State Department.
Today, the site simply reads: “The page you were looking for cannot be found.”
Carina Black, the executive director of UNR’s Northern Nevada International Center, said her team pulled the webpage down because “we don’t want to make any mishaps when it comes to talking about what programs we might be having.”
She estimates that between 60% and 70% of the visitor leadership program’s projects have been slashed, and as of now, it’s unclear what will be allowed to continue or be picked up again.
Black said board members have been provided a lot of emotional support. They have spoken to her staff, she said, and noted, “This is not the first time that a crisis has affected either resettlement or exchanges, that this is a normal part of life, and ups and downs, and we have to just navigate them as best as we can.”
Black estimates she spends a good portion of her day meeting with staffers who are worried they may be out of a job if Trump’s administration continues to slash federal spending.
The center has already seen halts to programs like those for professional exchanges and refugee resettlement, the latter of which helped about 100 people relocate to the Reno area in December and January, she said.
“That was extremely challenging — to know that there’s people that we had made a commitment to, to bring them here and help them,” Black said. “And so it’s been unprecedented in terms of, how do we manage every day to pivot to a new reality? And managing all these different executive orders.”
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