Comment by stevenbedrick

Two points. First, the danger is very real, as the specific administrative mechanism for those final determinations involves political appointees outside of the regular scientific or program review processes, so who knows what they will or won’t understand or what sort of priorities they’ll be working off of.

Second, the programs you’re referring to (“diversity” meaning only people with the right skin color etc.) used a very clear and well-defined model of “under-represented minority” that (in addition to members of this or that minority racial or ethnic group) included women, people from rural zip codes, people who were the first in their families to go to college, people who grew up on free/reduced lunch, and a bunch of other categories that have long been known to be under-represented in science. This definition has been around for decades and there’s been a ton of research about the importance and efficacy of these kinds of programs, some of which are training programs to try and diversify the incoming pipeline of scientists, and some of which were additional funding pools to try and address the very, very, very well-documented gap in early career funding awarded to URM scientists. Characterizing it as just being about skin color is simply inaccurate.

Some of the other “DEI” research that has been terminated consists of projects looking at health issues that are specific to certain populations; the NIH has officially said that health disparities research is still allowed but we are all scratching our heads trying to figure out how to write grants for it that don’t run afoul of the current “rules” which are frankly nonsensical and very “vibe” based so it’s hard to know what will and what won’t be allowed. Almost like they don’t want us to bother trying…