National Science Board Member Resigns, Warns Of Authoritarianism

Alondra Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey, has announced her resignation from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.

In an op-ed for Time Magazine, Nelson detailed the hostile environment at the Library of Congress since January 2025, the month President Trump commenced his second term.

“We’ve also seen civil servants fired and accused of not making the mark, vendors’s contracts ignored, and grants and fellowships cancelled,” she wrote, detailing rising political interference and a breakdown in the integrity of US knowledge institutions.

Normalization of Authoritarianism

Nelson, appointed to the National Science Board in 2024, says its role has been fundamentally weakened. She points to the growing influence of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by Trump to cut federal spending, that she says has inserted itself into the NSF’s grant-making process.

She called a recent board meeting overseen by DOGE staffer Zachary Terrell, who “showed more interest in his water bottle and his cuticles than in the discussion.” She also criticized the board for issuing official statements “without the participation or notice of all members of the Board.”

Nelson believes the wider issue is “the creeping normalization of authoritarian approaches to knowledge management and academic freedom.”

Political targeting

Nelson’s resignation also comes in response to recent upheaval at the Library of Congress. Last week, the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, was fired via email after the Trump Administration claimed that she was dismissed for “things she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” 

“The ouster of Hayden is part of a broader pattern of political targeting of women and Black public servants across the federal government,” Nelson wrote. “Dr. Carla Hayden was a leader in the digitization of libraries and a steadfast advocate for their public mission. Her dismissal signals more than a routine personnel shift—it reflects a deeper contest over who controls the curation and dissemination of knowledge in the digital age.”

Hayden’s removal was followed by the firing of Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights, just days after her office released a report on generative AI that did not align with the administration’s stance.

A Resignation of Principle

Nelson is regarded as one of the country’s foremost thinkers in the fields of science, technology, social inequality, and race. She holds the Harold F. Linder Chair and leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, serving on the faculty since 2019.

She was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2021 to 2023. Nelson previously served as a professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she established the Division of Social Science, serving as its first Dean.

Nelson frames her resignation from the NSF and Library of Congress Scholars Council as a refusal to lend legitimacy to a system that suppresses dissent and undermines academic freedom.

Image: Northwestern