Trump’s victory will accelerate the end of America’s post-war contract between science, technology, higher education and the state. 

What to watch for?

It is clear that humanities will be targeted as being economically irrelevant as will social-science research that is deemed too critical of government policy or of social trends (police or gun violence, or toxic poverty will suffer as being driven by ‘liberal bias’.

Commercialization of universities, already under way, will accelerate. Science will depend on endowments.  Public schools like the University of Washington and Berkeley will  survive only if they can effectively privatize, that is, find support from local wealthy.

• Scientists  will be legally and personally harassed by the GOP in the form of endless hearings, frivolous subpoenas, and not-so-veiled threats.
• We will see a resurgence in “Biblical science,” from K thru 12, which will go way past creationism: anything that measures environmental damage will be downplayed and anything that helps polluters will be promoted under religious guise.
• Long term research will be unfundable. Short-term projects promise short-term pay-off and it is simpler to understand benefits.
• Religion will become a test for appointments to the NSF and NIH. Cabinet secretaries and heads of other public organizations with purview over science policy will be held by industry-friendly lobbyists, religious fanatics, and personal, laughingly unqualified cronies of Donald Trump.
• Social sciences, including anthropology and poverty studies will not be fundable.
• Reproductive science and developmental biology will be pressured to produce conclusions consistent with alt-right propaganda.
• Efforts to make research papers free to the public will end.
• Faculty will be chosen for compliance with religious beliefs.
• Republican majorities will pass “right to Try Laws.”  These bills would drastically reduce the authority of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Disease Control.