Busting the budget
Sequestration is upon us, in the form of blunt, across-the-board spending cuts to government agencies that will limit many programs and services unless President Barack Obama and Congress reach a budget deal to keep them running. Gazette staff writer Colleen Walsh spoke with Harvard analysts in a question-and-answer format about how sequestration is likely to play out politically and fiscally, including for research universities that rely on government funding. Here are their thoughts. William W. Chin is the executive dean for research at Harvard Medical School and Bertarelli Professor of Translational Medical Science. GAZETTE: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget will undergo substantial cuts if the sequester goes through. What will that mean for America’s research universities? CHIN: There are just a lot of things we still don’t understand. We don’t understand what causes disease, and how one disease shows up in different manifestations. A lot of the funding [we receive] is...