Comment by somenameforme
9 days ago
Definitely. The previous administration used executive power to direct various government organizations to factor DEI into all government funding, and this is also reflected in the last line of the proposal's abstract (extremely odd place for an administrative comment but that's where it is): "This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria."
If there is a point scheme being used behind the scenes, as seems reasonably probable, then selecting all grants to be eliminated was probably not much more than a single SQL query.
> The previous administration used executive power to direct various government organizations to factor DEI into all government funding,
Not the NSF. Provisions in NSF's organic statute to create programs that "expand STEM opportunities" were introduced by the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, and were retained through the CHIPS Act.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1862s-5
> If there is a point scheme being used behind the scenes, as seems reasonably probable, then selecting all grants to be eliminated was probably not much more than a single SQL query.
No. The NSF review process does not use numeric ratings. Panels of peer reviewers get a tranche of proposals, provide comments individually, and then collectively sort them into competitiveness categories. There is no "DEI score" or "DEI component".
https://www.researchdevelopment.socsci.uci.edu/files/documen...
https://sociobiology.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/exactly-how-an...
The NSF falls under Federal executive authority which is exactly why Trump is able to do what he's doing. Biden did the equal but opposite thing with his very first executive order. It effectively required all branches of the Federal government to institute DEI policies and policies aimed at furthering DEI ends. [1] In fact his executive order specifically worked to undo a previous Trump executive order [2] which forbade Federal agencies from discriminating against/for individuals/groups based on their race or sex.
To put a number to this, by the metric this report (from this topic) was using to measure DEI funding, 0.29% of NSF grants were for DEI stuff in 2021. By 2024, it was up to 27%! [3] Apologies for the excess citations here, but I think it's important on such a charged topic.
[1] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/25/2021-01...
[2] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/28/2020-21...
[3] - https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092... (page 2)
Then Trump's meddling with the NSF is executive authority without oversight – he cannot undo Biden-era legislative acts, which affect the NSF regardless of what Biden ordered elsewhere. Trump does not have complete authority over what Federal agencies do, despite legislation, as a matter of constitutional law – or, rather, JD Vance would like to argue that's the case within the doctrine of unitary executive theory, as well as the Heritage Foundation... we shall see, and the barrage of executive orders here is likely to give us a test case in the Supreme Court
And, of course, we've argued elsewhere that the report's methdology and results are... not a good assumption to begin this conversation on.
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