'What keeps people alive': Community holds Stand Up For Science rally in Raleigh

On March 7, hundreds of community members gathered in Halifax Mall in Raleigh for the Stand Up For Science protest.

The event was part of a nationwide movement centered in Washington D.C., in which 32 cities rally against President Donald Trump’s recent federal funding cuts and scrapping of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. 

Stand Up For Science 2025  policy goals include ending censorship and political interference in science, securing and expanding scientific funding, and defending DEIA in science. 

The event's co-leader Enya Dewars, who is a third year Duke PhD candidate researching cardiovascular disease, said that she first wanted to go to the D.C. protest, but decided to help organize the Raleigh rally when she saw that help was needed in North Carolina. 

“There’s a lot of power in having a diverse community in so many aspects of just like how we think about science,” Dewars said. “But also how we then communicate science, and also who we’re inspiring to be scientists.”

The Halifax Mall crowd was made up of UNC, Duke and N.C. State students, as well as librarians, teachers and scientists. Some community members held signs that read “science saves lives," “science not silence," and “science matters."  

Johnna Frierson, the Associate Dean for DEI at Duke University School of Medicine, spoke to the crowd at the event. She said that as a Black woman from Rock Hill, South Carolina, she was the first person in her family to earn a PhD in microbiology and immunology.

“If someone wants to call me a ‘DEI hire,' make sure the DEI stands for ‘definitely earned it,'" she said to the crowd. 

Fierson said that some of the Trump administration's proposed policies and executive orders jeopardize the future of the scientific workforce. She said this year, the National Science Foundation is reducing internship training and the National Institutes of Health is not holding their summer internship program. These changes fail to provide an investment in the next generation of STEM students, Fierson said.

Rally attendee Katherine Sivek said she was diagnosed with ALS last year. The progressive neurodegenerative disease has a life expectancy of approximately two to five years.

“I am here to show that science and funding is what keeps people alive,” Sivek said. “The people in the ALS community are really scared right now with NIH funding going down or planning to be cut as hard as it is.”

She said that NIH funding to universities helps research for other rare diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. Sivek said she believes that NIH funding provides millions of dollars for her ALS clinic at Duke alone. 

Katherine's husband Ethan Sivek is a data analyst who focuses on fraud, waste and abuse.

“So [fraud, waste, and abuse is] something that [the Department of Government Efficiency] is claiming to do now, that we know that they’re not doing,” Ethan Sivek said. “And I’ve been working in it for years at this point, and it’s really hard to communicate that to people who are supportive of this kind of stuff.” 

Sivek said he may become unemployed due to DOGE’s impact. He also said that Trump’s executive order on the “biological reality” of sex, which only recognizes biological men and women, completely ignores intersex conditions.

“And if we're ordered to follow that in like, our line of work, we may have to consider treatment for intersex conditions as wrong — which is wrong," he said. 

Mark Peifer, a cell biologist at UNC who teaches in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, said to the crowd that they should take action by calling their local representatives. 

"So what can we do?" he said. "First, we can talk to our communities, to our neighbors and to our friends. That is the best thing to do."

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