BOSTON — As National Institutes of Health funding cuts loom over research institutions and the overarching outlook for the system of higher education falters under Trump administration actions, industry leaders are attempting to raise alarm and steady the sector’s footing.

Marty Meehan, president of the University of Massachusetts system, is on the ground trying to explain to all who will listen — from Massachusetts Democrats, to out-of-state university leaders, to congressional Republicans — how he believes cuts to federal higher ed funding jeopardize health research, the economy and education access.

The UMass network of more than 70,000 students serves as the state’s third-largest employer and includes the flagship UMass Amherst campus, which is the largest public research university in New England.

A former congressman, Meehan spent 14 years representing Massachusetts’s Fifth Congressional District as a Democrat before he left to become chancellor of his alma mater, UMass Lowell. In 2015, Meehan became the first former graduate of a UMass school to take over as president of the system.

In a recent conversation, Meehan discussed what’s at stake for higher education during a historically uncertain time for the sector, how he’s approaching conversations with Democrats and Republicans about those threats, and how politics have shifted since he served in Congress.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

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Q: The UMass system’s reputation has evolved over time in large part due to an emphasis on research. Some of your campuses have had to implement different tactics to address federal funding cuts impacting that research. How threatened do you feel the UMass system is by Trump administration actions? Is it to the same extent private universities have been targeted?

A: It is a very uncertain time for all of higher education, whether you’re private or public. Just take in February, when the NIH announced that they would cap indirect costs — which, honestly, they shouldn’t be called indirect costs, I call them facilities and administrative costs. But they were capped at 15% regardless of the previously-negotiated rates. And there are many instances, I’ll give you an example. At UMass [Chan] Medical School, we built a $350 million research building that we borrowed $350 million to build, and it relies on facilities costs associated with the research. This change alone would result in a loss of more than $60 million to UMass, and not to mention the inability to sustain life-saving research that’s taking place on all of our campuses, but specifically in this case, the medical school. UMass as an institution, we get nearly a billion dollars in federal funding. [Over $500] million of that is in research, but there’s also another $425 million in federal student financial aid.

Q: UMass is set to start an initiative in the fall giving free tuition for in-staters whose families make $75,000 or less. Does the federal landscape have the potential to impact that?

A: It certainly would. Since I’ve become president, I have guided a more than 79% increase in financial aid, so that we’re putting $422 million into financial aid. [An increase in the] MASSGrant Plus expansion program allowed us to do that. But it also assumes that the federal government would maintain what they do in Pell grants and what they do in student loans. And I can’t believe that any Democrat, Republican, or anything else would not think student financial aid was critically important. I can’t imagine that they would cut that. But the reason I have all this data out is because that’s what I’m saying to members of Congress. That’s what I’m saying to other university presidents. I look at the number of students at UMass that are eligible for Pell Grants — at UMass Boston, nearly 50% of the students are Pell-eligible. At UMass Dartmouth, it’s nearly 40%. UMass Lowell is 32%, and a quarter of the students at UMass Amherst are Pell-eligible. Students need this federal financial aid, they need the institutional aid that we’ve increased at UMass, and they need the state aid. We need to make sure that UMass is accessible for everyone in Massachusetts, and [that’s] jeopardized right now. We’re working hard at it, but it’s a distressing, difficult time.

Q: How are you approaching these conversations with your chancellors, with students whose financial aid is at risk? What’s your strategy?

A: We’re communicating with the other chancellors on a daily basis. In addition to that, we had a meeting with all of our chancellors [and] with the Massachusetts congressional delegation. I’m part of something called the National Association for Public & Land Grant Universities, and we’ve been in meetings with other university presidents from around the country. I have met and talked with many of the private institution leaders. We had a meeting with the governor a few weeks ago — the president of MIT was there, Tufts, Boston University, all of the major hospitals. We’re looking to assess what the damage is going to be and how this is going to play out.

We’ve seen a significant slowdown in grant awards from NIH and other federal agencies. This is something that is happening in real time — today, yesterday. They’re canceling grants so there are millions of dollars in lost revenue because of these grants. We get almost a billion dollars in aid from the federal government. And $64 million is from the National Science Foundation. We also get about $200 million from places like Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, NASA, Department of Defense, USDA. We’re talking to other university presidents. I’ve been talking to folks that I know in Washington, both Democrat and Republican and we’re trying to get our voices heard in terms of talking to leaders in Washington to try to get them to look at the impact, and to ask, what does this do to the competitiveness of the United States? What does this do to our role in research? When I was in Washington, the research dollars that universities across the country got generally had bipartisan support. I’m hoping that we will eventually be heard and that the United States will take the position it has always taken, which is that research and inquiry is essential to the quality of health care, the quality of our economy. I’m in constant contact with the congressional delegation. I talked to Senator Markey the other night — at 7:30 at night, I was still talking to him.

Q: You left Congress in 2007. How have politics changed since you served?

A: [They’ve] changed a lot, and I haven’t been out of Congress that long. I think it’s more partisan than it’s ever been. I can tell you my own experience. When I got to Washington, I met most of the major Republicans in Washington at Ted Kennedy’s house, at receptions. Senator Kennedy would have people like Bob Dole at his house, he’d have people like Orrin Hatch, John McCain — there was a lot more dialogue across the aisle when I served in the Congress. When you are dialoguing, it requires compromise. The job of being a member of Congress, whether it’s the House or the Senate, is almost by definition compromising, because to get a consensus, it requires compromise. I think we’ve entered into an era where people seem unwilling to compromise, and I believe the job is by definition compromising, otherwise you could never get a bill passed and get it to the president’s desk.

Q: Some Massachusetts Democrats have been calling on the state’s congressional delegation to speak up more. The congressional delegation says they’re doing everything they can. Having been in their shoes, what do you see as the path forward for the party? What do you think about the way congressional Democrats have been responding to GOP threats?

A: I’ve talked to most members of the Massachusetts delegation, and they are fighting. I talked to Senator Markey about his discussions with other Republican senators, and this is something that I think the delegation is working hard on. I mean, just last week — the disruption of higher education is so significant that Moody’s issued an advisory downgrading the outlook of the entire sector from stable to negative. That outlook is applicable to universities in red states as well as in blue states. It could impact the bond ratings, not just to the University of Massachusetts, but to every university in the country, and that affects the bottom line in a dramatic way.

Q: How do you get that point across to GOP leaders?

A: As has been the customary way, I think it’s important for universities, no matter where they’re located, to talk to their congressional delegations about the importance of a research university, whether it’s private or public, to the economy. I look at this loss of federal funding that we’re talking about at UMass — it doesn’t just threaten the University of Massachusetts, it threatens to weaken Massachusetts’s global leadership in scientific research and discovery. It’s not just jobs in higher education and health care that are at stake. It’s jobs in many industries, the defense industry, climate tech. And I can tell you, from a UMass perspective, we’re the state’s public research university, and a big part of our mission is to support the state’s economy, to support its businesses. UMass is a $4.3 billion operation. It’s the third-largest employer in the commonwealth with over 26,000 employees. There are 10,000 [UMass] employees whose salaries are at least partially supported by federal funding. So all of this is important to UMass, important to other universities in the state, and the state’s economy generally. The key here is for universities across the country to get the message out.

Q: Do you think Massachusetts itself has the kind of Republican contacts it needs in Washington to influence policy the GOP might move forward on this front?

A: I’ve been talking to Republican members of the Congress, and I’m going to be going to Washington in a couple of weeks and continue to talk to folks. I talked to a former Republican member of Congress yesterday about strategies for dealing with how higher education is impacted. And as I said, in addition to Massachusetts, these cuts across the board, these are cuts that would impact every state. That’s why it’s important for those of us who are leaders of colleges and universities of Massachusetts to reach out to our colleagues who come from states that have Republican senators and congressmen and make sure that they’re speaking up, just the way that we are.

Q: Are those university leaders in red states speaking up to the extent necessary?

A: I would say they’re doing it in a quiet kind of way, and hoping that getting the data and getting the information will result in ultimately making sure some of these policies don’t go into effect. It’s difficult to say. It’s not like this is a set-in-stone strategy, it seems to me to be kind of a willy-nilly, every day there’s something else happening. As always, constituents need to speak up. And in this kind of situation, those universities in red states play an important role in talking to their federal delegations about the importance of a research university in their home state. And I’ve got to tell you, in my time in Congress, Senator Kennedy was wonderful at it. He would coordinate Republicans who represented places like the University of Kentucky, some of the great public research universities we have across the country. We need to do that here, and I know that members of our delegation are working to try to make that happen.

Q: Campaign finance was a major issue for you when you were in Congress. What do you think of the landscape today regarding money in politics?

A: It’s interesting to me. When I was in Washington, I worked closely with John McCain and Russ Feingold and Chris Shays, and it took us seven years to pass meaningful bipartisan campaign finance reform. And in fact, the bill that we passed was challenged, and we went to the United States Supreme Court, and we won. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the McCain-Feingold bill that we passed was constitutional. A key vote in that decision was a former Republican maverick from Arizona, member of the court, Sandra Day O’Connor. She was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan and she was a great justice. Her husband ended up getting ill, and she left the court early to take care of her husband, and by the time Citizens United [v. FEC] came before the court, the composition of the court had changed with Sandra Day O’Connor leaving, and we lost the Citizens United case, which has resulted in more and more money put into politics. From my perspective, it has a pervasive, corrupting influence. But I mean, as you know, Wisconsin just showed that people can beat these forces when they’re organized and focused. But if you’re talking about my own view, I think our campaign finance system is totally out of control and we’re a long ways away from fixing it.

Q: How can you maintain that organization and focus — whether that’s between university leadership, between congressional leaders, or within a party to win elections — when the system itself is a state of chaos?

A: From my perspective, the biggest thing that we can do is focus on educating people as to the importance of research. We need to prepare for every scenario, no matter how unlikely that scenario would be. We’re working with the national associations that we have as research universities, we’re trying to be nimble and react quickly, because that’s what’s required today. And to be honest with you, not getting too down about it, either, is important. Every day, all of us who work at UMass have to get up and fight the fight, and do everything we can to do best by our students, to do best by our research. We have clinical trials going on right now at the medical school for curing [ALS] and all kinds of diseases and cancer — those things are really important. And at the end of the day, I think they’re important to the American people, too. There isn’t a family that hasn’t been impacted by Alzheimer’s, for example, or cancer. All of our families are affected, and the research to try to cure these diseases is critically important to this generation and future generations.