NIH Fellows Union Endorses Bethesda Declaration Criticizing Agency Leadership
“So far, the director has been unwilling or unable to deliver on his promises.”
Last week, the National Institutes of Health fellows union voted to endorse a “declaration” decrying the state of the agency and demanding significant changes.
Earlier this month, hundreds of NIH workers, current and fired, sent Director Jay Bhattacharya and members of Congress the so-called Bethesda Declaration. Upon release, the document had 342 signers with 92 using their names and 250 signing anonymously. Today, the total stands at over 500 with 213 using their names, according to a count by the nonprofit Stand Up for Science, which helped organize and promote the declaration.
The document lambasted Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as a medical contrarian amplified by right-wing media and dark money groups. It sharply criticized changes occurring at NIH on his watch, including the termination of both agency personnel and research as well as new, arbitrary rules related to speech.
The document charged that the new NIH director had been selectively applying academic freedom “based on political ideology,” noting that research terminations had been made “without input from NIH scientific staff or Congress.” It highlighted specific topics—health disparities, COVID-19, gender identity, and more—that have been targeted. It also noted that certain preferred projects appeared to be circumventing traditional review processes.
The declaration was published on June 9 along with a letter of support from Stand Up for Science. It represented an effort by agency workers to make their voices heard by leadership they said had been ignoring them. Important Context had previously covered growing frustration with Bhattacharya inside NIH. The declaration came mere weeks after the new director faced a walkout and heckling at his first agency town hall event.
That demonstration had been organized by the fellows union, NIH Fellows United-UAW 2750, which boasts that it is the largest union of federal employees to form in more than a decade and the first union of fellows ever at a federal research facility. The union had tried several times and failed to secure a meeting with Bhattacharya to discuss its members’ concerns about the agency.
In his response to the Bethesda Declaration, a thread posted on X, the right-wing NIH director suggested the workers behind the document had misunderstood what was happening at the NIH.
“We all want @NIH to succeed and I believe that dissent in science is productive. However, the Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions NIH has taken in recent months,” Bhattacharya wrote, arguing that the agency had not canceled any “legitimate” research, but was instead removing ideological influence from science.
The director also reportedly arranged a roundtable with some of the declaration’s signers. Notably, however, one of its key organizers, Jenna Norton, PhD, MPH, a program officer with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, posted on BlueSky that she had not been invited to participate.
On Thursday, the NIH fellows union weighed in, voting to formally endorse the Bethesda Declaration. The vote took place after a brief discussion and was unanimous. Union members told Important Context that they felt compelled to step in.
“I think the endorsement happened because many members of our union realize that the issues outlined in the Bethesda declaration impact not only our work at the NIH but the future of biomedical science in the U.S. in general,” postdoctoral fellow and union member Kaitlyn Hajdarovic, PhD, told Important Context. “I have been particularly concerned about attacks on research that’s been labeled by this administration as ‘DEI.’ I am a researcher who has focused on women’s health, specifically women’s aging, and I am deeply concerned about how that type of research will be funded going forward.”
Hajdarovic said that the fellows in the union realized they needed to be able to work free from “harmful political interference” if they wanted to serve the American public.
Another NIH a postdoctoral fellow and union member, Ian Morgan, PhD, who signed the Bethesda Declaration, said that the union endorsement of the document was yet another effort to get through to leadership that has been seemingly uninterested in listening.
“So far, the director has been unwilling or unable to deliver on his promises,” Morgan said. “We share the Director's stated belief in transparency and open communication. Thats why we've made repeated attempts to meet with him and share these and other concerns, but, so far, we've been stonewalled. I hope that the Bethesda Declaration and this endorsement will help us work towards a better future for early career researchers, the scientific community, and global public health.”
Morgan noted that under Bhattacharya’s leadership, “we've seen early career researchers at the NIH and their colleagues lose their jobs, we've seen nearly $10 billion in grants and fellowships continue to be slowed and terminated across the country, causing graduate and medical schools to rescind admissions for early career researchers, and we've seen an additional $2.6 billion in cuts to NIH contracts, a portion of which go to support essential training, equipment, and workers that early career researchers rely on.”
NIH Fellows United president Emilya Ventriglia, MS, told Important Context that the union’s endorsement of the declaration came as “life-saving research “carried out by Fellows at the NIH and by our union siblings at universities across the nation is under attack.”
“As a union, we endorsed the Bethesda Declaration because it raises urgent concerns about political interference that directly undermines public health and wastes billions in public funds,” Ventriglia said. “We’re being told to halt critical research not because it lacks merit but because of political agendas. This means taxpayer dollars are being wasted, patients are being left behind, and cures are being delayed.”
”For us, this isn’t just about our working conditions, it’s about protecting the public’s investment in public science that saves lives,” she added.
Asked about Bhattacharya’s response to the declaration, Ventriglia said she had not been impressed, noting “It’s not a misconception that research is being halted and congressionally appropriated funds are going unspent.”
”This year, the NIH has held back roughly a quarter of its research funding which is shutting down clinical trials, delaying treatments, and stalling progress on cancer, chronic illness, and more,” she said. “That said, we share the directors’ belief in better communication towards a successful NIH and we’re ready to engage in open, constructive dialogue.”
Haley Chatelaine, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow and vice president of the fellows union, was more blunt. “As long as we have coworkers and friends getting RIF’d, members unsure where they’ll find funding, politicization of science (especially for sexual and gender minority research), and no invitation from Dr. Bhattacharya to speak with union representatives, I’m going to be unsatisfied with his response,” she said.
Chatelaine explained that because of the Trump administration, “now is a scary time to be an early career scientist in the federal government,” but noted that she and the other fellows had had success coming together.
“We won our union and our contract against steep odds because we came together,” she said. “We know we can face tough fights. So our union endorsed the Bethesda Declaration because it’s an opportunity for us to keep coming together.”
Chatelaine said the fellows hoped to use the declaration as a “springboard to even more action and even stronger collective power,” adding “our fight is far from finished.”