Two weeks after President Trump took office, the University of Washington announced that Robert J. Jones will be the university’s next president.
In the weeks since, the actions of the Trump administration have provided a chaotic preview of what Jones will face as UW’s new leader. He anticipates continued challenges around federal funding.
“Some of these things you can’t just turn the switch off and turn it back on later and expect things to operate smoothly,” Jones said in an interview with KNKX.
He said federal student aid and funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation are uncertain.
In recent years, UW has consistently been in the top 20 universities that receive the most funding from the National Institutes of Health. In 2024, NIH awarded the university more than $570 million. Much of the funding went to the university’s world-renowned schools of nursing and public health. However, Jones warned that other programs may also be impacted.
“Sometimes we forget to talk about the research money that comes from the federal side to support the humanities and some of the social science programs as well,” Jones said. “So, the way that this is being framed, the directives cut across almost every aspect of our university.”
The Trump administration's new NIH funding policy is temporarily blocked by a federal judge, but that may change any day. Hundreds gathered on the UW campus on Feb. 19 to protest the push to cut federal funding for research institutions.
“Different sections of the university are not hived off,” said Eva Cherniavsky, a UW English professor who attended the rally. “It’s kind of life or death for the University of Washington right now.”
It's at this chaotic crossroads that Jones prepares to come to Washington after an eight-year tenure as the chancellor of the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus. Before that, he served as the president of the State University of New York at Albany.
He will be the first Black president to lead the institution in its 164 year history.
Jones began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Fort Valley State University in Georgia where he studied agronomy, a branch of agriculture that deals with field crop production and soil management.
He went on to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in crop physiology before settling into a faculty position at the University of Minnesota.
Jones will begin his new role in August. He takes over from current UW president, Ana Mari Cauce, who has led the institution since 2015.
KNKX Murrow Fellow Nate Sanford contributed reporting.
