My understanding is that in at least one case, some of the grant money was going to be used for a workshop to try to get people from traditionally under represented demographics interested in the topic.
Reading the actual Ted Cruz report he does cite a lot of examples that do seem like they could be reasonably classified as DEI (which is different from saying they are bad, of course).
Several NSF grant recipient programs cited in Cruzâs report:
*Reimagining Educator Pathways Through Storywork For Racial Equity in STEM
*Black Girls As Creators: An Intersectional Learning Ecosystem Toward Gendered Racial Equity In Artificial Intelligence Education
*Social Justice Training in Graduate Engineering Education Through Critical Civic Engagement
The rest that were called out in his report also had names that did seem to be legitimately in the DEI sphere, which again, is not saying that they are bad. Nor that they are deserving of the labels such as âMarxistâ and âradicalâ and âextremeâ that Cruz lobs at them.
Cruz claims to have identified 3,483 such grants. From my phone Iâm having a hard time reading the database, but I attempted to copy & paste a few more as typing the names out is getting tedious.
*WORKSHOP FOR WRITING GRANTS FOR EARLY CAREER SCHOLARS IN STEM AND LEARNING SCIENCES FOCUSED ON RACIAL EQUITY
*MATHEMATICS LEADERS EXPLORING RACIAL EQUITY
*SUSTAINING URGE (UNLEARNING RACISM IN GEOSCIENCES)
*MCA: PARTNERING LAND AND COMMUNITIES FOR EQUITABLE AND INCLUSIVE STEM LEARNING
*COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: MAPPING PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF WOMEN AND GENDER AND SEXUAL MINORITIES IN PHYSICS
(Note that due to oddities of copying & pasting from my phone this list is heavily skewed towards grant recipient programs with short names. I did not intentionally skip over any short-named programs.)
They do seem to be DEI focused. Whether thatâs a good use of federal money and/or an appropriate use of NSF money are different issues.
Iâm strongly in the camp of helping underrepresented groups get more involved in STEM careers so this Cruz activity is anathema to me. However the contributors to the charities I work with make their contributions with the knowledge of how their donations will be used.
Yeah, it could very well be that many of these programs are worthwhile but not really under the mandate of the National Science Foundation. Thus funding them is not a waste but funding should come via a different source.
Possibly⌠Iâm not saying thatâs the right conclusion. Just a possibility.
Yeah, Iâm sure at least a good number of them are probably worthwhile. And probably a few Iâd classify as a waste of money, which is par for the course for a government organization.
But the implication that the programs identified by Cruz are not DEI seems misleading. I couldnât really read the titles in the database without copying and pasting each one into something I could read but in my random selection every single one did seem DEI-related.
The blanket opposition to anything remotely related to DEI is a bit sickening, but there is also truth to the opposite position of thinking all DEI is worthy or good. There is a sensible outcome where these types of programs are still funded, but more centrally organized and coordinated with well defined acceptance criteria. I would imagine the reasons why group X are underrepresented in field Y have a lot of commonality in that having dozens of similarly worded conclusions are not helpful.
I donât know anyone who thinks that all DEI programs are good. There are a number of types of programs that people have moved away from and a slow move towards programs that are more effective.
I will not discuss the merits of DEI programs with an administration that has Stephen Miller, etal. as high ranking officials. When white nationalists that are proponents of eugenic solutions to their perceived problems attack something the default assumption is that thing they attacked is good.
I cut and pasted that âAward Descriptionsâ column into a different Excel spreadsheet. The descriptions are long. Iâm quite sure that nobody on Cruzâs staff read or understood them all. Hereâs one:
CAREER: MANUFACTURING OF CONTINUOUS NETWORK GRAPHENE-COPPER COMPOSITES FOR ULTRAHIGH ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY -THIS FACULTY EARLY CAREER DEVELOPMENT (CAREER) GRANT SUPPORTS RESEARCH TO ESTABLISH THE BASIS OF A NEW MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUE FOR THE FABRICATION OF ULTRAHIGH ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY MATERIALS. THE RESEARCH EXPLOITS THE EXCELLENT ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY OF GRAPHENE, AN EMERGING TWO-DIMENSIONAL (2D) CARBON NANOMATERIAL, WITHIN A PURE COPPER MATRIX. FUNDAMENTAL MULTISCALE AND MULTI-PHYSICS STUDIES WILL BE PERFORMED IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE FABRICATION AND PROPERTIES OF GRAPHENE-COPPER COMPOSITES CRITICAL TO THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS IN HIGH CONDUCTIVITY MATERIALS. THE AVAILABILITY OF ULTRAHIGH CONDUCTIVITY MATERIALS MEETS THE EVER-INCREASING DEMAND FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE ELECTRICAL CONDUCTORS IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES, PORTABLE DEVICES, AND POWER GRIDS, WHICH IMPACTS VARIOUS INDUSTRIES AND, HENCE, THE U.S. ECONOMY. NEW EXPERIMENTAL METHODS WILL BE DEVELOPED FOR CONTROLLING THE CONTINUITY OF GRAPHENE NETWORKS WITHIN A COPPER MATRIX TO ACHIEVE ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITIES SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN THAT OF PURE COPPER. THE MANUFACTURING APPROACH IS GENERALIZABLE TO OTHER CARBON-METAL COMPOSITES CONSISTING OF LOW DIMENSIONAL CONSTITUENTS WITHIN METAL MATRICES FOR IMPROVED ELECTRICAL AND STRUCTURAL APPLICATIONS. THIS PROJECT PROVIDES INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS, ENSURING PARTICIPATION FROM WOMEN AND UNDER-REPRESENTED MINORITY GROUPS. EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH INTEGRATION ACTIVITIES INCLUDE DEVELOPING MODULAR DEMONSTRATIONS AND LABORATORY TOURS FOR INTERACTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING EXPERIENCES AND OFFERING NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES AND RESEARCH PROGRAMS. CARBON NANOMATERIALS, SUCH AS CARBON NANOTUBE AND GRAPHENE, HAVE EXCELLENT ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES FAR EXCEEDING THOSE OF PURE METAL CONDUCTORS SUCH AS COPPER. TO EXPLOIT THESE ATTRACTIVE PROPERTIES, CARBON NANOMATERIALS ARE OFTEN DISPERSED IN A COPPER MATRIX TO FABRICATE CARBON-COPPER COMPOSITE CONDUCTORS. HOWEVER, THESE CONDUCTORS SUFFER FROM LOW ELECTRICAL PERFORMANCE DUE TO THE DISCONTINUOUS INTERFACES BETWEEN THE DISPERSED NANOCARBON MATERIALS AND THE COPPER MATRIX. THIS RESEARCH PROJECT SEEKS TO ADDRESS THESE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES BY DEVELOPING AN INNOVATIVE MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUE INVOLVING CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION (CVD) AND GROWTH OF CONTINUOUS GRAPHENE FILMS IN A PRE-COMPACTED COPPER FOAM FOLLOWED BY A ?GENTLE? COMPRESSION STEP. THE ?GENTLE? COMPRESSION ENSURES THAT THE FINAL DENSIFICATION OF THE GRAPHENE-COATED COPPER FOAM OCCURS WITHOUT DAMAGING THE CONTINUOUS GRAPHENE FILMS. THIS RESEARCH AIMS TO RESOLVE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ABOUT (1) THE UNDERLYING MECHANISMS FOR THE ENHANCED ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF GRAPHENE-COPPER COMPOSITES; (2) THE ROLE OF THE CONTINUITY OF GRAPHENE NETWORKS IN THE COMPOSITE ON THEIR OVERALL MATERIAL PROPERTIES; AND (3) SIZE-DEPENDENT MATERIAL BEHAVIOR OF THE COMPOSITE BESIDES THE DIRECT EFFECT OF DIFFERENT GRAPHENE-TO-COPPER VOLUME RATIOS. OVERCOMING THESE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES IS ESSENTIAL FOR DESIGNING AND MANUFACTURING GRAPHENE-COPPER COMPOSITE CONDUCTORS WITH SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCED ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES. THIS AWARD REFLECTS NSFâS STATUTORY MISSION AND HAS BEEN DEEMED WORTHY OF SUPPORT THROUGH EVALUATION USING THE FOUNDATIONâS INTELLECTUAL MERIT AND BROADER IMPACTS REVIEW CRITERIA.- SUBAWARDS ARE NOT PLANNED FOR THIS AWARD.
If you missed the offensive material, it seems to be this one sentence:
THIS PROJECT PROVIDES INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS, ENSURING PARTICIPATION FROM WOMEN AND UNDER-REPRESENTED MINORITY GROUPS.
I assume the search function found the word âwomenâ and flagged it as evil DEI, it gets a purple âGENDERâ flag. It is line 75 in the database with a cost of $660k.
Presumably, grant proposals figure they currently get points for some DEI language, so they make sure to include it. I suppose they will simply drop that language and propose the same thing.
But, that may not be possible because congress might just cut total funding in half because so much of current spending is âon DEDâ.
If they misidentified some projects as being DEI that would not surprise me even a little bit.
It does seem like most of them (every one that I randomly picked) are DEI, but yes I can see how the statistical concept of âbiasâ could easily cause them to misidentify something, and thatâs probably not the only trigger that would generate false positives.
I downloaded it, chose a random 100 grants, read the abstracts, and rated them either woke, not woke, or borderline.
Of the hundred:
40% were woke
20% were borderline
40% werenât woke
This is obviously in some sense a subjective determination, but most cases werenât close - I think any good-faith examination would turn up similar numbers.
Why would a list of woke grants have so many non-woke grants in it? After reading the hundred abstracts, I found a clear answer: people inserted a meaningless sentence saying âthis could help women and minoritiesâ into unrelated grants, probably in the hopes of getting points with some automated filter.
Getting the response he wanted, woke people out of there.
When does Conan OâBrien, recipient of this yearâs Mark Twain Prize, to be awarded to him on March 25, decide not to show up? Or will he show up and rip the President a new one?
Oh, and this:
When Trump was asked by press last week why he wanted to be chair, he said it was because they didnât need âwokeâ at the Kennedy Center. âSome of the shows were terrible, they were a disgrace,â he said. When asked if he had seen any of the shows, he said he hadnât.
