I held the same National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for about 30 years, renewing it under a competitive process every three years. It was onerous (I took six months to write each renewal application), but at least you could be sure that the proposals were judged on merit. Sure, you had to check a box with your “race” (the NIH considers that a social construct), but that was for record-keeping purposes only and, during the times I sat in on evaluation committees, ethnicity and identity were never even discussed when ranking proposals.
That has now changed, not only with the National Institutes of Health, but with all the major funding agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). All of these agencies, though legally forbidden to take into account the ethnicity of those who apply for grants, or to boost those of minority status, have found ways around that restriction, adhering to today’s DEI Zeitgeist. This of course devalues scientific merit in proposals—a dangerous strategy if the aim of science funding is to promote the understanding of nature (with health benefits to humans in the case of the NIH). Giving grants based on minority status rather than merit also reduces the public’s trust in science. The situation has become so fraught that I am positively elated that I no longer have to write grants, as I’m not sure how to write a diversity statement, and am opposed to them in general.
A new paper in SSRN (“Social Science Research Network”) calls attention to the pervasive attempts to circumvent race-based funding in the federal government, and outlines the problems that such attempts produce. You can go to the paper’s website by clicking on the screenshot below, or you can download the pdf here (go to “download without registration” at the upper right).
You’ll probably recognize a couple of names among the authors:
If you want a short take, you see below a summary and preview by Krylov and Tanzman from Heterodox STEM (click headline to read). But I’ll be citing excerpts from the long paper itself. It has not escaped my notice that the government’s attempt to circumvent restrictions on race-based funding parallel those now used by universities after the Supreme Court ruled out race-based admissions.
I’ll summarize the paper’s main points, indenting quotes and putting the main points under headers of my devising. All bolding is mine.
What is DEI?
While no reasonable person can oppose the morality of trying to to give every American equal opportunity to become a scientist (and that starts with birth), the mandates that condition federal funding call not for equal opportunity, but for equity—“equal outcomes” so that minoritized groups—not just races, but LGBTQ+, the disabled, women, and anybody said to be disadvantaged because of oppression—are represented in proportion to their occurrence in the general population. Here’s the authors’ construal of DEI as it is actually implemented by the government:
Actual DEI policies do not promote viewpoint diversity, equitable treatment of individuals based on their accomplishments, or equal opportunity for individuals regardless of their identity (e.g., race, sex, ethnicity). It can scarcely be questioned (Krylov and Tanzman, 2024) that DEI programs today are driven by an ideology, an offshoot of Critical Social Justice1 (CSJ) (Pluckrose, 2021; Deichmann 2023). DEI programs elevate the collective above the individual. They group people into categories defined by immutable characteristics (race, sex, etc.) and classify each group as either “privileged” or “victimized,” as “oppressor” or “oppressed.” The goals of DEI programs are to have each group participate in proportion to their fraction of thepopulation in every endeavor of society and to obtain proportionate outcomes from those endeavors. Disproportionate outcomes (with respect to science, such outcomes as publications, funding, citations, salaries, and awards), or disparities, are axiomatically ascribed to systemic factors, such as systemic racism and sexism, without consideration of alternative explanations (Sowell, 2019, 2023). Claims, such as “The presence of disparities is proof of systemic racism” and “Meritocracy is a myth” are propagated widely despite the vagueness of the claims and their lack of support by concrete data. Similarly, tenets that are central to DEI ideology—such as diversity is excellence, diverse teams outperform homogenous teams, and the advancement of women is impeded by biases—lack a robust evidence base, particularly when applied to science (Abbot et al., 2023; Krylov and Tanzman, 2023; Ceci et al., 2021, 2023).
Note that several important claims, including the assertion that underrepresentation of minoritized groups is due to ongoing systemic racism (which would be illegal) and that diverse scientific teams consistently outperform more homogeneous ones. Neither claim is supported by evidence.
My own opinion (and that of the authors; see below) is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to do science, and choose for advancement those who do the best work. That might not result in equity, but it does allow equal opportunity. I recognize, of course, that we’re a long way from giving different groups equal opportunity, which must begin at or even before birth. But equal opportunity is the only permanent way to solve the problem of disproportional representation in science (or any endeavor). Effecting that will be hard, and requires immense effort, money, and empirical tests of educational systems, but once it’s in place, unequal representation would reflect other things, like behavioral differences or differential preferences among groups.
How do funding agencies employ DEI? This takes place through the use of required statements and plans to enhance diversity that must accompany grant proposals. Here are two examples; the first is from an HIH program:
Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity (NOT-OD-20-031):
The applicant must provide a recruitment plan to enhance diversity. Include outreach strategies and activities designed to recruit prospective participants from diverse backgrounds, e.g., those from groups described in the Notice of NIH’s Interest in Diversity. Describe the specific efforts to be undertaken by the program and how the proposed plan reflects past experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups.
New applications must include a description of plans to enhance recruitment, including the strategies that will be used to enhance the recruitment of trainees from nationally underrepresented backgrounds and may wish to include data in support of past accomplishments.
Renewal applications must include a detailed account of experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups during the previous funding period, including successful and unsuccessful recruitment strategies. Information should be included on how the proposed plan reflects the program’s past experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups.
For those individuals who participated in the research education program, the report should include information about the duration of education and aggregate information on the number of individuals who finished the program in good standing. Additional information on the required Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity is available at Frequently Asked Questions: Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity (Diversity FAQs).
Applications lacking a diversity recruitment plan will not be reviewed. [Emphasis ours.]
And one from NASA:
The assessment of the Inclusion Plan will be based on […] the extent to which the Inclusion Plan demonstrated awareness of systemic barriers to creating inclusive working environments that are specific to the proposal team. [Emphasis ours.]
But to those of us in science, there are no systemic (codified) barriers to advancement, although of course there is still some racism. But those who make the claim of systemic barriers have to ignore the ways universities are falling all over each other to recruit qualified women and members of minority groups.
Why are these requirements bad for science? Besides taking up an enormous amount of time confecting such statements, which are surely often deliberately misleading, they are palpably illegal, violating civil rights laws:
These requirements to incorporate DEI into each research proposal are alarming. They constitute compelled speech, they undermine the academic freedom of researchers, they dilute merit-based criteria for funding, they incentivize illegal discriminatory hiring practices, they erode public trust in science, and they contribute to administrative overload. “Diversity,” which is sometimes described as “diverse backgrounds” or “diverse views,” actually refers to select underrepresented identity groups (Honeycutt, 2020; Brint and Frey, 2023; Brint, 2023).
. . .The demand to provide an inclusion plan without evidence that there is a need for one is compelled speech and an intrusion of ideology into the conduct of science. Forcing scientists to “acknowledge” and “show awareness of” systemic racism and “barriers to participation” in their institutions and teams (Nahm and Watkins, 2023), even if none can be documented, misrepresents reality, is an offense to scientists who have worked hard to establish fair and transparent hiring practices in their institutions, and is inconsistent with scientific professional ethics and, indeed, the very vocation of the scientist.
The paragraphs below identify what’s illegal. I’m fairly convinced that these DEI requirements do indeed violate civil-rights laws, and that the only reason they persist—just as DEI requirements for job applications in academia persist—is that nobody has challenged them in the courts. To do so, you need “standing”, that is, you must demonstrate that you have been injured by these requirements. And anybody doing that would be forever demonized in academia, not to mention tied up in legal battles that would last years.
The interaction of DEI with the legal system is troubling. First, the demands that PIs “acknowledge” systemic racism and “barriers to participation” in their institutions (Nahm and Watkins, 2023), and insert land acknowledgements in their scientific publications (NSF, n.d.(b)) raise grave legal concerns. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States strictly forbids compelling people to say things they do not believe are true. The circumstances under which government may condition grants or benefits on attesting that one holds a certain belief (e.g., “acknowledges” the truth to be this or that with respect to a contested matter), though somewhat obscure, are certainly limited (Supreme Court, 2013). At a minimum, government’s engaging in such conditioning on contested questions raises significant civil liberties concerns and is in tension with core First Amendment values.
Second, there are strict laws against discrimination on the basis of race and gender, both at federal and state levels. Thus, invoking DEI explicitly attempts to circumvent existing laws. Any actual “barriers” or “systemic discrimination” can be prosecuted under existing anti-discrimination statutes, following due process.
Third, even more worrying is that successful applications require principal investigators and their home institutions to engage in practices that are likely illegal. For example, DEI “equity”-based plans for equal gender or racial participation can, in practice, only be implemented by gender- and race-preferential hiring. This is strictly illegal under civil rights employment law (Title VI; Title IX; EEOC, n.d.).
How do funding agencies get around the illegality of this process?
Funding agencies attempt to circumvent the laws prohibiting them from basing funding decisions on race or ethnicity by cloaking DEI requirements in nebulous language (NIH, 2019; Renoe, 2023) and by disguising racial preferences and even quotas as “diversity of backgrounds” and unequal treatment as “broadening participation of underrepresented groups.” The determination of which groups to treat as underrepresented and worthy of special treatment is highly subjective, as Americans hold many identities and can be split up in a multitude of ways. In practice, implementing equity-focused DEI programs means preferring members of some groups over others (Kendi, 2019). To paraphrase Orwell, all groups are equal, but some groups are more equal than others (Orwell, 1945).
The evaluations of submitted DEI plans are not open to public scrutiny. Agencies run diversity-focused programs but refuse to give guidance on how to determine eligibility for them; they are careful to state that compliance with all applicable employment laws is the responsibility of the host institution. However, DEI metrics, which must be reported annually to the funding agency, are criteria for renewal (NIH, 2023b). It remains unclear how a principal investigator is supposed to be nondiscriminatory in hiring and at the same time fulfill de facto DEI quotas for renewal. In this way, programs are developed that are de jure “open to everyone,” but de facto allocated according to identity metrics, reminiscent of the pre-civil rights era in the U.S.
Why is this happening? The proximate reason for DEI requirements is government regulations (see below), but the ultimate reason is the “racial reckoning” taking place in America, a reckoning speeded up by the death of George Floyd and extending now to many minority groups save those who have done well, like Jews and Asians. The paper doesn’t mention ultimate causes, but does show several federal requirements that gave rise to DEI mandates:
In fact, the mandate that funding agencies implement DEI comes directly from the White House. Executive Order 13985, titled “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” directed all federal agencies to allocate resources to DEI and to incorporate “equity” into their decision making as a principle (EO 13985).
. . .If “consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals” means equality of opportunity and equitable treatment of people’s accomplishments based on their merit, we’re all for it. However, the Order goes on to make clear that the goal is not to achieve equal opportunity and equitable treatment, but to achieve equal outcomes for identity groups. The Order conflates racism in the past with disparities in the present and equitable treatment with equal outcomes. It attributes unequal participation in the present to alleged discrimination in the present. It charges the Domestic Policy Council with the task “[of] remov[ing] systemic barriers,” thus implicitly asserting the existence of such barriers in the present. It calls for “redress[ing] inequities,” “affirmatively advancing equity,” and “allocating Federal resources in a manner that increases investment in underserved communities, as well as individuals from those communities.” Whatever is to be said about such goals in relation to, say, social welfare programs, we question their value and appropriateness for science funding.
The authors note that in this executive order “merit,” “excellence” and “achievement” are not mentioned at all.
There is one more federal order:
The goal of promoting “equity” in science is reinforced in Executive Order 14091 (EO 14091). Titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” it explains how equity is to be implemented in various domains, and specifically calls for the “promot[ion] [of] equity in science.” It lays out specific DEI requirements for federal agencies, including NASA and NSF, such as the following:
The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Director of the National Science Foundation […] (agency heads) shall, within 30 days of the date of this order, ensure that they have in place an Agency Equity Team within their respective agencies to coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives and ensure that their respective agencies are delivering equitable outcomes for the American people.
Both of these are orders are enforced by the government’s Office of Management and Budget, which monitors agencies to ensure that they meet DEI concerns.
What is to be done? The purpose of scientific research is not to be a lever for creating social justice. That’s the job of the government, but the government cannot violate the law to effect the change we need. In lieu of creating new law, they have to effect desired change within existing legal boundaries. My own view, which is echoed by the authors, is to hold scientific merit as the overweening criterion for funding research.
At the same time, it would be churlish to ignore the palpable inequality in American society, an inequality that deprives some groups of simple access to doing science, often because their backgrounds and the existence of past racism or bigotry. This leads to the need for equal opportunity, something that Americans apparently lack the stomach for. Equity has become a quick fix, a way to tell us that we’re good people, but it’s neither a permanent fix nor, in science, a way to best advance the field. So ditch the DEI requirements mandating equity and do this:
Systemic disparities in opportunity, especially those related to socio-economic status, are real and well documented. Solid family structure, access to healthcare, good nutrition, an environment free from violence and drugs, high-quality preschool and K–12 education are necessary to nurture the next generation of scientists, but they are not equally available to all Americans. Rather than attempt to institute “equity” by mandating proportional participation through the manipulation of grant funding, we believe that increased efforts should be made to promote equality of opportunity as early in people’s lives as possible so that young people who aspire to standing in any field, including scientific fields, can succeed on merit (Abbot et al., 2023; Abbot et al., 2024; Loury, 2024).
It is sad that to write something like that, or the paper itself, is an act of courage in today’s political climate. But if you’re committed to advancing science, with equality of opportunity as a moral ancillary, then one must judge science on merit alone while working politically to eliminate differences in opportunity.
In the end, DEI statements should be no more than this: “This project will not discriminate against anybody on the grounds of race, religion, disability status, gender, or sexual identity or orientation.” End of story.
[ Orson Welles applause scene in Citizen Kane ]
During the Cultural Revolution, despite the widespread famine, farmers would take photos of wheat fields so bountiful and thick that the wheat could support the weight of people standing atop it. This was, of course, just a show. The party relished the propaganda because it made their policies appear successful, and the farmers went along with it so they wouldn’t get in trouble and to demonstrate what good Communists they were. But it was all rot and millions starved before the system changed. Much like Communism (and other isms that rely on puritanical obedient faith (Trumpism, I’m looking at you)), DEI demands groupthink despite any evidence of failure. And, like the great famine under Communism, I imagine that the progressives of the future will pretend that any damage to science, institutions, or whatever due to DEI actually never happened.
Yes. I sat on several NSF grant proposal evaluation committees in the Engineering Directorate in the 90’s and never saw or heard race or ethnicity brought up or discussed. There were two criteria: technical and something like social impact- the second of these simply asking for a plan to disseminate results beyond academe and into the community or K-12. I think criterion 2 was created by an NSF director sometime in the 90’s. In any case, in practice, committee discussions were virtually 99% on criterion 1 and maybe 1% on criterion 2 for information. As a matter of fact, when I served on a couple of NSF Visiting Committees, we found in looking over the awards over the past 5 or so years, that technical carried the day as a rule. All awards went to technical proposals rated outstanding. I think an outstanding social impact could not overcome a less than outstanding technical rating. And I think that I recall one award that did not even address criterion 2. It was twenty years ago and I do not remember details. But I was glad that criterion 2 was there to push leading researchers to think a bit and even maybe put in place some communication of state of the art research with the public and K12 teachers for science curriculum updating. But never race or ethnicity that I recall from those days.
And at NASA, never race or ethnicity in general technical grant proposals. There WERE at NASA, if I recall correctly, set asides for HBCU’s to compete among themselves which I always thought of at the time and still do as reasonable reparations though that word was not used at the time. There were also non-technical minority contract set asides at the installation/lab level.
Alas, the Broader Impact requirement was bait&switch. They introduced it as something rather innocent, along the line you described, but soon it become a cudgel to trash otherwise meritorious proposals and a tool to implement social engineering. Moreover, a big part of Broader Impact now is “increasing participation” — which is essentially DEI.
Yikes. Thanks anna. Certainly not the intent when first implemented or how it was implemented in those years…as I point out. But I can see, given my career working with both federal and state bureaucracies, how this mission drift could happen.
I assume that mission drift — such as at NASA — was just the easier route for well-meaning people who were not aware of the downstream implications for science. But “bait & switch” as a tactic suggests an active conspiracy. (I have not yet read the paper, nor all of Jerry’s summary & excerpts, so forgive me if this aspect is discussed.)
Great paper, Anna.
Keep up the fight.
Your biggest fan in NYC!
D.A.
If arguments that these requirements are race-based and therefore illegal, that they are bad for science, that they violate First Amendment protections against compelled speech, and that they potentially force PI’s to commit crimes (by hiring personnel based on race) aren’t enough to bring about their abolition, then the courts will need to do it.
I’m reminded of how the courts eventually determined that the teaching of creationism in the public schools was actually a veiled effort to establish religion and was therefore unconstitutional. It seems to me that this effort to force “equity” is a veiled attempt to circumvent the restriction against race as the basis for hiring and is similarly unconstitutional. The former took many years to fix (and more fixing may be needed), and the latter may take many years to fix as well.
This movement is on steroids within the federal government because of executive orders issued from the White House. President Biden issued EO 13985 on his first day in office. This suggests that there are solutions other than the courts.
on the other hand, this decision may support the whining about compelled speech,
https://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/agency-international-development-case-new-supreme-court-decision-free-speech-and-government-fun/
Whining? Sorry, Roolz violation.
Since Kamala Harris champions equal-outcomes equity, likely the only solution is to elect Voldermort and have him rescind the executive orders, and replace them with executive orders requiring MLK-style equal treatment.
Is that really so these days? The whole K-12 education system has been trying hard to narrow attainment gaps for decades now, throwing endless money at the problem.
I don’t think throwing money at the problem of schools is the right way to approach it. On the other hand, I don’t know what is. But there’s simply an intolerable level of inequality in our society, and other societies don’t have that.
In general, social equality is greater in smaller, homogeneous countries. The conditions that promote social equality in Scandinavian countries, for example, can not easily be replicated in larger, more diverse populations.
And not many people immigrate into Sweden (except Somalis recently which is threatening social cohesion) despite its being a haven of egalitarianism. America attracts people by the millions even though most must know they won’t get fabulously rich and the safety net is niggardly compared to Sweden. Maybe innovation and inequality really do go hand in hand. The risk and cost of failure are so high that the rewards of success have to be astonishingly high to compensate.
Policies such as this help MAGA Republicans win. Progressives are turning off centrist voters, which in the end does more harm than good to achieving DEI goals.
Biden signing that on his first day in office is quite something. I don’t know what he was thinking. Likely truly believed it was the right thing.
I disagree slightly with the tone of your comment, please try to take this in a positive light. The implication is that MAGA Republicans are “bad” and we should be fearful of this. However, let’s look at that group as being populist, in a charitable reading of populism.
If one party (MAGA Republicans) adopts a platform that matches what many think are ideas that are in line with what many others believe, and is popular as a result, then what is the issue? For example, I see MAGA as being anti-DEI, anti-open borders, anti-early indoctrination into the LGBTQ+etc. gender morass, and pro-Israel, lukewarm on labor unions, anti-crime (pro-enforcement), pro-protectionism (dumb), generally originalist on constitution issues (yes, with some obvious hypocrisy on 10 commandment issues). Those views are fairly popular, even among us older blue voters (former in my case). I’m not a fan of their leader, but the ideas behind it are in line with a lot of my values. I see a lot of older Democrat talking points in Trump’s speeches and platform. Therefore, I’d make an argument that if he wins, it won’t be bad, and in fact might be the change we need.
Yes, I know there’s a lot of fear about him taking away your democracy, but I don’t see a mechanism for this to occur.
Meanwhile, rank and file Democrats keep saying, “I don’t like the way the party’s going but I have to keep voting for it because if I don’t the other guys will win and that’s worse, at least that’s what the party keeps telling me”. Maybe it’s time the Democrats in this country receive the same election shock that the Tories just did across the pond to shake them out of their bubble.
“I know there’s a lot of fear about him [Trump] taking away your democracy, but I don’t see a mechanism for this to occur.”
Sorry, but it already almost happened in the last election, when the mechanisms of democracy just barely worked. However, the capture of the Supreme Court is a continuation of the attempted coup — a “Plan B” (or Plan C) if you will — and it is making it even easier to dilute and dispense with democracy in our country, as clearly shown by its recent rulings.
And that’s before the implementation of Project 2025, which is the actual platform of a Trump presidency, never mind his obviously lame attempts to distance himself.
Trump must be defeated. There is no “charitable” way to describe his “populism,” nor of the anti-democratic scribes behind him that are using his narcissistic ego to advance their ideological goals. The kind of charitable “populism” that you describe can be achieved only with a victory for Democrats, followed by a reasonable retreat from their current hyper-woke stance. The alternative is certainly a steep slide toward a comprehensive dictatorship.
Story time:
At the start of the Great Reckoning, I applied to renew my grant from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (our NSF equivalent). The training plan requirements were newly DEI-heavy. In the proposal I said I’d treat my grad students fairly and kindly, and that all my previous grad students had come from equity-seeking groups (female, indigenous, gay). I got $0 because the grant committee said I failed to show how I would *increase* diversity among trainees.
So the next year I got advice about how to meet the DEI requirements (say that I would add bullshit like get sensitivity training for my lab group etc.). I sent a draft proposal to a DEI administrator at my university. About the same time she met with the grad students in my department to talk about all things DEI. And the day after that I got an anonymous note from a grad student in my department imploring me not to put DEI nonsense in my grant proposal. The admin had leaked my grant to the students!
The anon said he was a person of colour, thought all grants and scholarships should depend on merit only, and criticized sensitivity training (a specific detail of my proposal) and other DEI efforts as wrong-headed.
I complained to the admin and to the grad student leadership. The admin denied giving the students my grant proposal, but couldn’t remember quite what she had said to them at their meeting. The grad students apologized to me for the stress they thought I must have experienced from the anon’s views, and called them “alt-right”. Pretty funny because of course I agreed with the anon that the DEI stuff is all nonsense.
Kicker: one of the grad student leaders — a white guy — decided that the anon couldn’t possibly be a person of colour because a POC would not have conservative views of DEI.
Makes you wonder who the racists are.
I just want to point out:
1. The highlighted statement is most likely untrue:
“during the times I sat in on evaluation committees, ethnicity and identity were never even discussed when ranking proposals. ***That has now changed, not only with the National Institutes of Health, but with all the major funding agencies***:”.
Based on my first-hand experience, NIH study sections for scientific proposals still do NOT discuss ethnicity or identity of the investigators.
2. Diversity statement has never been required for NIH scientific proposals in my experience. It is likely that the article is conflating NIH research grants with specific training grants that promote diversity.
3. The cited “Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity (NOT-OD-20-031)” is non-existent. The actual notice associated with that number is titled “Notice of NIH’s Interest in Diversity” and can be found here: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-20-031.html
When I said “discussed”, I mean “considered”. And yes, they do consider diversity now but not then. I suggest you read about NIH DEI-statement requirements in the paper. Do you think that NOBODY reads those?
I think it is important to be clear about which NIH programs require DEI statements, especially if one is concerned about how much promoting diversity may erode public trust in science. I assume that the grant you held for 30 years was through the R01 mechanism, which remains the most popular research project grant type. As far as I know, it still does not require a diversity statement and the diversity status of the applicant is not provided to reviewers. Same as you, I think this is the right way to evaluate a *scientific* proposal. I am aware that NIH has other funding mechanisms, including training grants, diversity supplements, etc., that do require diversity statements. I worry that by conflating all funding mechanisms in the diversity-related discussions, one risks eroding public trust in science more than warranted.
Look, I didn’t write the paper and I have no idea whether RO!s now require diversity statements. Neither do you, apparently. I suggest writing Anna and asking her.
BTW, if only 50% of NIH grants required DEI statements, would that NOT erode public trust in science?
I have nothing more to day and you’ve said your piece.
All of the above statements are documented by references, mostly public-facing documents from the funding agencies, including presentations explaining to the PIs how to craft a winning diversity statement. Abstracts of the proposals funded under NIH FIRST show unambiguously how the recipients of the grants implement DEI plans — by race/gender-preference in hiring. If you want more evidence — read series of exposes by John Sailer in WSJ — the most recent one which appeared too late to be included in our paper is: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-dei-becomes-discrimination-academia-higher-education-research-race-1e411be4
I am not sure which recruitment plan is non-existent. Here is a link to one of such DEI plans for recruitment of personnel from NIH:
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/grants-and-training/diversity/recruitment-retention-plan-for-diversity
I voted for President Biden so unwittingly voted for DEI policies throughout the federal government and federal funding agencies. If I keep voting for people who implement or maintain these policies, and they win, I lose on this issue. What to do, what to do? Oh wait, I’m an independent and can make a new choice, including a write-in candidate. And while my vote doesn’t matter, yes, tamping down discrimination and supporting actual accomplishment is that important to our civic culture.
You might want to consider the broader effects of your write-in vote, if it is a protest against the Democrats for whom you would have otherwise voted, in that it will help Trump get elected. What do you think that the Republicans will do to the funding of scientific research and education?
Good points all Phil, especially in a winner takes all election. Since my state will vote for Vice President Harris in the electoral college, my protest vote, if I cast it, won’t help Trump at all. Which is fine with me. 😉
What did the Republicans do to the funding of scientific research and education when they previously held the White House? I seem to remember a fairly significant vaccine being developed at that time.
Or for that matter, I don’t see any R congress people campaigning to cut science and education research (maybe one or two, but not a movement).
I have served on many NSF panel review committees. Typically, a committee is asked to review about 20 proposals and 2 or 3 get funded. Proposals that score very low in “intellectual merit” are “triaged” (not discussed) even if they have strong “broader impacts” sections. Oftentimes, 5-6 proposals rise to the top in terms of intellectual merit, and then the broader impacts sections are used to tip the balance in favor of some proposals over others.
The bottom line is that the broader impacts sections are very important, but only for proposals strong in intellectual merit.
I do think this is all true to an extent. On the other hand it isn’t uniform. I just served on NSF panel a month ago. The outreach parts of all proposals were not really taken seriously. Some of them didn’t even mention diversity. No one was downgraded or upgraded based on them. Only science was considered. Final recommendations made based just on proposals. No discussion of diversity came up over the 2 days. I think a lot depends on program and grant managers.
Another thing-it isn’t really true that back in the past it was all merit. There was a lot of buddy politics and big shots often got grants based on reputation even when they half-assed it. That at least has decreased in some programs. Overall I’d say things are worse for the reasons discussed here but my feeling is that is more in junior awards where the dei stuff is rampant than in core programs (where it is still problematic).
One of the worst aspects of this is that almost all underrepresented scientists I talk to don’t want this and do not want to be tolkenized in this manner. So it is really a lose lose proposition.
I agree that each committee has a different dynamic.
I think it is also worth mentioning that NSF broader impacts is not explicitly a DEI proxy, although many scientists view it as one.
The DOE PIER plan, however, is DEI all the way down.
I recall a paper coming out about 5 years ago, maybe more that found that profs at top research universities are 25 times (yes times not percent) more likely than the average American to have come from an academic family. Of course this is never addressed, so even the racially diverse hires often have elite backgrounds. This meshes with my grad school experience at such a university. They also came in with multiple papers, grants. It’s impossible to catch up, and eventually I dropped out.
The paper is now published in the Frontiers of Research Metrics and Analytics:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/research-metrics-and-analytics/articles/10.3389/frma.2024.1418065/full