Jeffrey Nadel | Penn’s on welfare

Why does one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education on the face of the Earth assume the form of a panhandler in the realm of research?

With the fanfare of sequestration dominating the news cycle, many have complained that Penn stands to lose up to $80 million in research funding from the federal government, according to an estimate by Senior Vice Provost for Research Steven Fluharty.

My response: Suck it up.

Cue the shouting chorus of enraged grad students (see Kurt Mitman’s column today). Penn is a research university, after all.

And a research university Penn should be. But let’s care enough about our research that we’re willing to pay for it ourselves. Let’s have the courage to say, “If this research is truly important, we will find a way to pay for it.”

During the course of the record-breaking Making History fundraising campaign, Penn raised over $4.3 billion from 326,952 donors, representing an average of $1.25 million raised every single day of the seven-year campaign.

And yet we are up in arms about the prospect of losing $80 million in research funding — less than 1.9 percent of the total raised during the Making History campaign.

Because Penn is such an amazing institution, we have the ability to raise massive amounts of money from people who want to see Penn’s programs grow, witness our initiatives succeed and watch as research done at Penn opens new frontiers. In an era of unprecedented government debt, if anyone should be begging the federal government to take some people’s money by way of taxation in the name of research, surely it should not be us.

Relying on the federal government to fund research is essentially an admission that the value of the research is not sufficient to justify the investment to private donors, alumni, investors or nonprofits.

As I’ve shared these thoughts with friends who are involved in research at Penn, I’ve often heard the retort that the mounds of money raised during the Making History campaign are irrelevant to the question of research because a sufficient amount is not earmarked for that purpose.

I direct them to the campaign’s final report, which shows that over $2.02 billion was raised for what it categorizes as “Programs and Research.” $1.36 billion was raised for the Perelman School of Medicine alone. The campaign exceeded its original $3.5 billion goal by $800 million — yes, that’s ten times the projected sequestration-caused shortfall. The funding is there — that could not be more plainly apparent. The motivation appears to be there. The only question that remains is whether the commitment exists at the level of the University administration.

I, for one, have no doubt that it does. But if you feel that the administration is not, from privately-raised money, allocating adequate funding to research or that it will not do so in the absence of federal assistance, then your grievance ought to be with the University. Your ire should not be directed at the empty-pocketed taxpayer or the bone-dry federal coffers that have turned off the spigot of largesse that fuels research that we are unwilling to justify to private funders.

In fact, Sigrid Fry-Revere, the president of the Center for Ethical Solutions, a bioethics think tank, accurately points out that “the false hope that the government is taking care of stem cell [and other medical] research will only inhibit private donors and investors from stepping up to the plate.”

The crux of my argument is not that irrevocable cuts in federal research funding absolutely must happen right now.

My point is simple: If we lose federal research funding, we are in no position to complain. And if we truly care about research, let’s ask those who support us to invest in the brilliant, innovative, intriguing and often life-saving research sure to emerge from Penn for years to come.

It is unbecoming for an institution of Penn’s stature to arrive woebegone at Congress’ door and rattle the beggar’s tin cup until legislators acquiesce to opening the taxpayers’ purse strings, heaping ever more debt upon the public, to satisfy a research wish list.

Jeffrey Nadel is a College sophomore from Boca Raton, Fla. His email address is jnadel@gmail.com. Follow him @theseends. “Give Me Liberty” appears every other Friday.

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