National Science Foundation wasting tax dollars on DEI
October 21, 2024
DEI is invading the hard sciences. Diversity, Inclusion and Equity – with or without the newly fashionable Accessibility to make DEIA – is now one of the ways the National Science Foundation spends its vast budget. And it’s simply nonsense. It is using NSF funds to pay for the woke and progressive ends of academia – nonsense that is.
The report comes from the minority members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and shows how over $2 billion of NSF funds are awarded on those DEI grounds.
As Front Page reports, this includes over $1 million for ” story work for racial equity.” Remember, equity does not mean fairness; it means equality of outcome. Or nearly $600,000 for “sex/gender narratives in undergraduate biology and their impacts on transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students.”
This is not science, and it is not what the money put aside for subsidies to science should be spent on. But this is what the woke and progressive part of academia wants to spend money on—as if there’s any other part—. We get taxed so they can do this.
NSF itself is quite clear about what it is doing: “Advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering is essential” and “At NSF, we are dedicated to cultivating an engaged, diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment”.
It has a whole department spending grant money on DEI in fact. Worse, to get NSF money – to remind you, these are grants to advance science – you must proclaim your DEI goals: “The National Science Foundation requires a statement to be included in proposals for grants under the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program that addresses institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts”. So, unless you declare your woke commitment, you will not get a science grant.
As that Senate report says: “The report details how more than one-quarter of all NSF spending now flows to support left-wing ideological crusades masked as “academic research.”
This is wholly and entirely deliberate:
Strengthening scientific integrity is not possible without elevating issues of DEIA as an integral component of the entire scientific process. ..(…)…These issues further align with the Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce, which affirms that “advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.”
The NSF has handed over the science budget to the woke and progressive because they believe it is the right thing to do. Rather than doing science, they’re writing reports to each other about diversity. This isn’t good science or a good use of our money.
But this is what is happening in our country and our government. Perhaps we should tell them to stop?