The Closing of USAID: A Conversation about Impacts and Implications
Speaker: Dr. Peter Goldsmith
Director and Principal Investigator, USAID’s Soybean Innovation Lab
Date: April 17, 2025
Time: 3:00pm
Location: Coble Hall, Room 306, University of Illinois
We are pleased to invite you to a lecture by Dr. Peter Goldsmith, Emeritus Research Professor at the University of Illinois and Director of USAID’s Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL), as he discusses the recent closure of USAID’s research labs and its far-reaching implications for global development and university research.
On January 27, 2025, I received two executive orders directing me to pause all operation related to my two USAID funded research labs, pending a review within 90 days. On February 27, 2025, I received two termination notices based on the administration’s internal review. On April 15, 2025, the Soybean innovation Lab (SIL) will cease operations and close. SIL was one of 16 research labs located at land grant universities around the country, all shuttered, and all focused on development in emerging markets. All 30 of the SIL employees now need to seek employment elsewhere. More broadly the shuttering of USAID removes the largest, by far development agency from the landscape. Simultaneously the new administration sees the university research enterprise differently, especially the federal government’s role, which creates significant uncertainty among faculty and students. Responding becomes complicated for those of us in the university community, especially administrators, research leaders, and faculty, as many issues are at stake. Media interest has been keen focusing its attention on the implication for US interests such as agribusiness and farmers and well as research and science.
https://www.marketplace.org/2025/03/03/soybean-innovation-lab-usaid-funding-uiuc-soy-agriculture-farming-trump/ .
Dr. Goldsmith graduated in 1995 from the Ohio State University with a PhD in Agricultural Economics. From 1995-1999 he worked as an Assistant Professor, McGill University in Montreal and retired in 2024 as a Professor of Agribusiness Management in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois. He is currently an Emeritus Research Professor at the University of Illinois. In addition to his PhD, Dr. Goldsmith has received an MBA in Finance, and undergraduate degrees in Dairy Science and Political Science. He is a leading scholar within the field of Agribusiness Management and is a Fellow of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association. Dr. Goldsmith, having worked extensively in Mato Grosso, Brazil and Argentina, is one of the world’s leading soybean economists with unique expertise in tropical soybean production and agro-industrial development. Dr. Goldsmith currently serves as the Director and Principal Investigator of USAID’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Soybean Value Chain Research, a $30m research enterprise that operates in 31 countries. In 2019, Dr. Goldsmith received the Faculty Award for Global Impact from the College of ACES at the University of Illinois and recently, the University of Illinois presented Dr. Goldsmith with the Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement. In 2021, Dr. Goldsmith received a $6m award to build the Innovation to Impact (i2i) Platform to assist USAID researchers achieve greater development impacts from their innovations. Before embarking on a career in academia, Dr. Goldsmith worked in the dairy industry as the assistant general manager of a cooperative and as a herdsman, and as a large animal specialist in the United States Peace Corps in South America.
This event is open to all and will be followed by a Q&A session.
We hope to see you there!