Researchers lament global impact as USAID cancels U of A projects

Researchers say the University of Arizona will lose more than $8.5 million in unspent federal funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development after four of the agency's UA projects were canceled this week.

They also emphasize they believe ending the contracts will have cascading effects on people's lives and livelihoods in nations across the globe.

"It’s extremely saddening for me personally," said Timothy Finan, a UA professor emeritus of anthropology who is involved closely in two of UA's foreign aid projects, his voice sounding dejected.

Researchers were informed Wednesday afternoon in an email from UA Director of Postaward Services Marcel Billalobos that USAID was terminating the four projects at the UA.

That night, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts granted the Trump administration's request to put on hold a lower court order that required it to pay an estimated $2 billion in foreign assistance funds for State Department and USAID projects by the end of Wednesday.

UA researchers cited information from Devex CheckUp, an online newsletter that says it provides "front-line and behind-the-scenes reporting on global health," that approximately 10,000 USAID and State Department grants have been terminated so far by the Trump administration.

ABC News reported that 4,080 USAID workers globally were placed on leave Monday and an additional 1,600 workers were let go for a “reduction in force.” Employees were given 15-minute windows to enter the building and clear out their belongings.

“These are people who’ve worked in that building for 5, 10, 15 years,” said Greg Collins, UA associate vice president of resilience and international development, who previously worked for USAID. “There’s no handover, there’s no input into some broader process. It’s, ‘Come, get your things and leave.’ I mean, they’ve already removed the logo and everything from that building, so it’s just the abruptness of it.”

Collins said there would be a way to streamline foreign assistance and critically look at the effectiveness of those programs, but that this action was nothing like that. “This is just blind and I would say, ignorantly implemented policy by people who have no idea what foreign assistance is and what it does in the world,” he said.

Foreign aid research has undergone massive change since President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20, ordering a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance and saying foreign aid was often antithetical to American values, and since Trump's "special government employee" Elon Musk has targeted USAID for elimination through his "government efficiency" initiative.

On Feb. 11, organizations contracting with USAID filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, stating the executive order was “an unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power," as the spending was approved by Congress. That led to the competing orders by a lower federal court and the chief U.S. justice.

UA researchers said communication with people at the federalagency, whom they work closely with on foreign aid projects, has been very difficult during the change. They cited legal orders to not give out information, a lack of understanding about just what's going to happen, and the layoffs at USAID.

Of UA's total of six foreign aid projects funded by USAID, four were terminated: Enhancing the Evidence for Humanitarian Action; Climate Adaptation Research Program; Humanitarian Assistance Technical Support; and Niger Resilience and Agribusiness Master’s Program.

UA spokesperson Mitch Zak confirmed the UA, like other universities, received the termination order.

“We are assessing the impact on the university and will work with our researchers as they navigate these changes,” Zak told the Arizona Daily Star Thursday. “We are proud of the scholars, staff, and students whose work drives innovation and discovery, and we will continue to champion their work to help address global challenges.”

The Climate Adaptation Research Program, known as CARP, was awarded $7 million, out of which $5.4 million is left unspent. The Humanitarian Assistance Technical Support project, referred to as HATS, was awarded $7.8 million, out of which $1.6 million is still unspent.

HATS focuses on managing and responding to humanitarian disasters. CARP creates networking and training opportunities for young and early career scholars in higher education in countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific and the Pacific Islands.

Finan, who closely worked with both CARP and HATS, stated about $20 million will be wasted collectively on all four projects, when factoring in money spent on research over the last few years which won't be finished now.

This was "localized, problem-solving research,” said Finan. “These projects were seen as being very effective and consistent with the goals of USAID under the previous administration.”

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On his two projects, Finan said two PhD-level, early-career research managers, who were hired as technical staff, will be dismissed and will lose their funding. The projects will also cancel plans to hire a third person to their management team.

The projects also funded a team of graduate and undergraduate students who were given hourly pay for conducting research work and gaining experience, he said.

“The researchers who were carrying out this research focused on things like response to flooding, response to drought and recovery from disasters, including public health disasters,” Finan told the Star Thursday. “These people are true victims, and if you extend it down, the people who would have benefited from the creation of this community. Our goal in CARP and HATS was to create what we called a community of researchers, practitioners, people that actually do work in these countries to mitigate the impacts of disasters and policy makers. So, this community, we will have to dissolve in a sense.”

The Niger Resilience and Agribusiness Master’s Program, referred to as N-RAMP, was recently started and spent over $750,000 out of the $7 million allocated for the whole project, said Mamadou Baro, chair of the UA’s Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology who leads N-RAMP.

Baro emphasized that N-RAMP, a joint effort to help young people get a degree and be productive in advanced agribusiness in a country facing significant environmental challenges, was a project which won funding through a federal-level competition where research proposals competed.

Two people who were part of N-RAMP, one of them a business manager and another a graduate student, will be affected by the termination, said Baro. Two other graduate students who were looking forward to being a part of this program, doing meaningful research and traveling to Niger in the summer are also affected, he said.

“And on the other side in Africa, we had top researchers in there, like six researchers and close to 15 students who are going to be affected,” said Baro.

It’s also affecting faculty members at the UA, including Baro and two co-investigators on the project, who will face salary cuts after the closure of the program. Baro, a tenure-track professor, said 80% of his time was devoted to N-RAMP but he will now go back to teaching.

Baro asked whether UA leadership and lawyers will take a proactive approach and do anything to try to appeal the termination, especially since there were signed documents and contracts involved.

The Enhancing the Evidence for Humanitarian Action project, known as EEHA, develops ways to monitor effects of USAID's “emergency programming,” part of its broader humanitarian assistance portfolio. The project, in its final year of research, has spent nearly $750,000 so far; it will lose the rest, roughly $250,000.

“One of the main arguments being made by the Trump administration and the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is to reduce waste and increase efficiency,” said Jeffrey Michler, an associate professor in UA agriculture and resource economics who co-investigates the EEHA project. “The project I was working on for USAID — the stated purpose was to increase efficiency.”

Michler said that while canceling the project will save the government about $250,000, it will also mean it spent nearly $750,000 and got zero return on it because the project wasn't complete. “We’re never going to be able to deliver on what they spent the money on. I can’t think of a more inefficient and wasteful process than what is currently going on,” he said.

Zackry Guido, director of the Arizona Institute for Resilience’s International Resilience Lab who leads EEHA, pointed to early career faculty and graduate students on the project, saying part of their training and career development was very much tied to their performance on the projects.

However, nobody working on EEHA is losing their jobs, said Guido. Co-investigators including Michler, who are tenure-track professors and supported by the university, will lose funding and summer salaries but not their jobs. And while Guido said he has some support through the Arizona Institute for Resilience and won't lose his job either, 70% of his salary has to come from external grants.

As someone who works in the international community, Michler said the most heartbreaking effects will be on the children who used to receive formula through foreign aid from the American people but no longer will.

“It breaks my heart that these decisions will leave children hungry, will leave people without life-saving medication. All of those things came with a stamp on them that said, ‘Aid from the American people.' And now we’re telling all of these people, ‘You’ll have to go hungry, you’ll have to get sick, you may die because the American people have chosen to not give you this assistance anymore.’ And that will have incredibly destructive impacts on people’s lives.”

Finan said he could guarantee American foreign aid and research provided positive change in the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, including through health care for AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), the focus on disaster response, and emphasis on improving people's chance to produce their own food and so forth.

“All of this has had a significant and tremendous impact and it’s garnered a great deal of goodwill for America,” he said. “…I just don’t see how, in the long run, this will benefit the interests of the American people. This will not 'make America great again'.”