Two Massachusetts-based university researchers have joined a coalition of scientific societies and advocacy groups to sue the National Science Foundation and block the dismantling of funding for social sciences, a field of study derided as woke by the Trump administration, according to a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Boston.
The lawsuit centers on the foundation’s social funding division, known as the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, whose studies range from statistics, to psychology, to political science, and neuroscience. It is slated to close next year.
“The harms to these scientists and their scientific research, and to science itself, will be irreparable,” the 37-page complaint said.
The directorate provides nearly two-thirds of federal funding for basic and academic research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences in the United States, the suit said.
“NSF cannot shut down the government’s largest source of funding for an entire scientific sector without” consulting the proper channels, namely the National Science Board, the complaint said. “And it certainly cannot do so with no explanation.”
News of the lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.
Mike England, an NSF spokesperson, told the newspaper that, while the social sciences directorate “has not been shut down,” the agency has been “actively engaging in prudent planning and taking steps to implement the president’s agenda.” He added that the agency “regularly evaluates its portfolio of funding opportunities to ensure alignment with agency priorities.”
The foundation announced in April that it was eliminating the directorate in fiscal year 2027, court records show.
“NSF’s decision to close the SBE Directorate will devastate social, behavioral, and economic sciences in the United States,” the complaint said.
Gregg Sparkman, assistant professor in the psychology department at Boston College, and Jenna Croteau, a lecturer in the department of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, joined the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society in filing the complaint. They are represented by Democracy Forward.
Neither Sparkman nor Croteau could be reached for comment Monday night.
The directorate, one of eight divisions overseen by the foundation, came into political crosshairs after President Trump and Vice President Vance took office in January 2025, and began politicizing funding for the sciences, the suit alleged.
Social sciences, in particular, were “derided as woke” fields of study, and more than $1 billion in scientific grants were canceled, affecting 320 grants funding an estimated $91 million in research for the directorate. Visiting scientists have been released, and permanent staff have been reassigned, the complaint said.
Scientists, researchers, and academics who signed onto the lawsuit say SBE funding is essential to the studies of some of society’s most pressing challenges, including the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence.
Jon Freeman, professor of psychology at Columbia University and a board member with the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, said dismantling SBE is “scientific self-sabotage.”
“And the American public will ultimately pay the price in the discoveries never made and lives never changed for the better,” Freeman said in a statement.
Jennifer Kubota, president of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, said elimination of SBE funding “threatens decades of scientific progress and the next generation of scientists.”
“Research opportunities lost today cannot simply be recovered tomorrow,” Kubota said in the statement. “We risk losing not only critical discoveries, but also the talented researchers who will make them.”
In the same statement, Steven J. Stroessner, executive officer of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, said, “Scientific discoveries do not happen on command, and we cannot always predict which lines of research will produce the breakthroughs that transform our lives.”
“For decades, federal support for basic research in social psychology has helped us understand how people think, make decisions, and relate to one another,” Stroessner said.
“The resulting discoveries have strengthened our nation by improving education, informing public policy, fostering cooperation, and helping us address some of society’s most persistent challenges,” he said. “Dismantling that support threatens not only the research being conducted today, but the discoveries we have yet to imagine.”
Juliane Baron, executive director of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, said the proposal to eliminate SBE “is a disservice to the American public and a crushing blow to the behavioral and brain sciences.”
“When I think about the biggest challenges facing people across our country — advancing health and well-being, providing economic and physical security for our loved ones — these are all inherently human questions,” Baron said in the statement. “We can’t solve pressing societal challenges without understanding humans.”
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.