This is an opinion column.

I appreciate silence, often crave it even.

It is sometimes far easier to hear, assess and discern in silence.

The antidote to the incessant cacophony of noises that threaten to distract, diminish or deter us rests in silence.

Silence can even be the best response, the most judicious and effective response.

It is always an option.

Except when it shouldn’t be. Except when silence is not acceptable.

Like when the people you care for are under attack and fearful. Like when the entity or institution in your care is under siege. When it is threatened at its very core.

Like right now.

When silence is just not acceptable.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, like many universities and colleges throughout the nation, is losing millions upon millions, thanks to the anti-anything-not-white-or-straight-male Trump administration. And the threat of losing more is causing the institution to capitulate, cower and genuflect — to abandon core principles, practices and programs.

All while Dr. Ray Watts, a neurologist who’s been UAB’s president since 2013, is silent. At least publicly.

Oh, we’ve heard from some UAB lieutenants and there’ve been university statements lamenting the impact of these and potential future cuts.

Watts? Silence.

Trump and his ilk have convinced themselves that “DEI” is the antithesis of what it actually is. They believe to their core that diversity doesn’t encompass them, equity is designed to hurt them, that inclusion doesn’t, well, include them.

So, they’re trying to eviscerate it from wherever it exists and threatening to destroy any institution or corporation that dares remain committed to the true tenets of DEI. Tenets that helped UAB earn the “Diversity Champion” designation from Insight into Academia for six consecutive years between 2018 and 2023.

Three years ago, Watts said he was “proud” of the recognition and acknowledged it as “a testament to the outstanding efforts of our Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” Which is, of course, now R.I.P. (though reincarnated as the Office of Access and Engagement; shhhh, don’t tell anyone.)

Lay that at the equally DEI-lusional hearts of Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama’s Republican lawmakers and their 2023 anti-whatever-they-think-DEI-is state law.

Now, the Trump administration is taking up the mantle and gutting America of America (forgetting, of course, that their ancestors were the first “illegals”).

And it’s costing UAB. A lot. Already, the institution has lost $24.5 million in grant funds that had been approved by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Among them:

• $7.9 million for faculty recruitment at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Tuskegee University.
• $1.2 million to recruit and support underrepresented groups for membership in the Society for the Advancement in Biology Education Research, a leading international society with a primary focus on undergraduate biology research.
• $1.4 million to increase diversity in undergraduate biomedical research
• $1 million for a summer program to train students at partnering HBCUs in genomic medicine and research.

Last week, UAB was among the several Birmingham institutions stunned by the cancellation of a groundbreaking $44 million federal biotechnology grant that would allowed them to use artificial intelligence to shorten drug development and provide affordable drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.

The impacted institutions, including the City of Birmingham, issued a joint statement under no one’s name. Only U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell refused to be silent

The cancellation was “preposterous,” she said. “This investment was the result of years of planning and advocacy.”

Why the cuts? Well, rather than determine whether the grants were producing good work, meaningful work, necessary work, the Trump administration shoved them through a sifter flagging words and phrases like these:

• diverse or diversity
• historically
• marginalize/marginalized
• underserved
• minority
• orientation
• racial
• trans
• underrepresented
• female/women
• gender
• sex
• identity
• prejudice

Speaking on the biotechnology grant, Sewell added: “Somehow providing resources to make sure that clinical trials are diverse would be something not worthy of not getting funding. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

Where in the world is Watts on all this? How is he countering the assault and how may the cuts impact UAB’s future? Its status as a premier research institution? As a respected physician, how how will they impact peoples’ lives?

I want to ask him those questions, and more. I want to hear from UAB’s longest-serving president who leads the region’s acclaimed medical and research facilities and the state’s largest employer.

“Pass,” I was told.

I don’t lament being turned down for an interview — happens all the time. It’s just that Watts hasn’t been publicly vocal about the impact of the losses on the university. That’s just not leadership.

After my colleague John Archibald reported that UAB killed scholarships for Black medical students and returned money to donors because it feared stirring Trump’s wrath, Watts was silent.

When AL.com‘s Sarah Whites-Koditschek revealed that faculty had penned a letter to the school’s leadership declaring that legal wonks and fearful staff at UAB were tweaking grant proposals to “dilute, obscure, or diminish the scientific or medical objective” (translation: purge color and gender), a university spokesperson said, “UAB is committed to understanding and improving the human experience, enriching society and improving health and well-being for all.”

Watts? Crickets.

Responding to my request, the very kind spokesperson said, “We continue to monitor, assess and address the developments regarding recent federal activity, and our government affairs professionals are actively engaged on the matter.”

Cool.

She also shared video of Barry Sleckman, the director of UAB’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, testifying last month at a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington, D.C.

I was told, too, that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (among the portfolio of Trump’s woefully unqualified appointees; wait, isn’t that what they claim “DEI” espouses?) and Alabama Sen. Katie Britt “have talked about UAB in other recent hearings.” (See for yourself.)

Cool. What about Watts?

Silence.

Heck, I’d even like to know if Watts cares enough about the football team he killed then revived to give it the resources to survive in the NIL era. But that’s another column.

Last week, Tufts University’s commencement speaker was Alabama native Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In three decades at the institute’s helm, he helped UMBD become among the nation’s top-ranked schools in innovation and science, technology, engineering and math.

Born in Birmingham in 1950, he shared that in his youth the governor of Alabama told him he could not go to the University of Alabama because he was Black. (He named no names, but it had to be either George Wallace or wife Lurleen). Additionally, Hrabowski was a youth activist in the era and featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls, on the 1963 KKK bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

He doled the requisite inspirational aphorisms about what graduates must do to be leaders in their generation. Then there was this sprinkle: “Speak your truth.”

It’s what leaders do.

Dr. Watts, silence may be golden, but right now, UAB needs you to lead. Loudly. Those who work for, attend and care about the institution need you to speak at least a nugget of its dire and desperate truth.

Like right now.

I’d appreciate it. I’m not alone.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.