Comment on FR Doc # 2026-12725 from Marie Rongone
AnonymousOpposeIndividual
Summary: An individual commenter opposes the NSF proposal, arguing that it imposes excessive regulatory control over higher education institutions and infringes upon academic freedom and speech. The commenter characterizes the action as a gross overreach of authority and an attempt to bypass standard OMB regulatory processes.
NSF's proposal aims to align its grantmaking rules with OMBs Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, conforming to requirements like all grants needing approval by political appointees, bans on international collaborations, and restricting communications and publishing.
The NSF proposal creates additional institutional requirements, imposes significant economic impacts on grantees, and implements sweeping regulatory control over institutes of higher education via information collection. This attempt to regulate speech and academic freedom at independent universities is a gross overreach of NSF's authority. It is an attempted end run around the OMBs regulatory process. I strongly object.