Duke Mu
Esteemed Member
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Ban on D.E.I. Language Sweeps Through the Sciences
President Trump’s executive order is altering scientific exploration across a broad swath of fields, even beyond government agencies, researchers say.
A Sweeping Ban on D.E.I. Language Roils the Sciences
President Trump’s executive order is altering scientific exploration across a broad swath of fields, even beyond government agencies, researchers say.www.nytimes.com
“…
According to a program director at the foundation, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, a software algorithm flagged grants that included words and phrases often associated with D.E.I., including “activism” and “equal opportunity.” Other words it searched for were more nebulous — “institutional,” “underappreciated” and “women” — or can mean something else in scientific research, like “bias” and “polarization.”
N.S.F. officials were instructed to manually review grants flagged by the algorithm. Some staff members, including the N.S.F. program director, made a point of removing the flag from most awards. “I’ll probably get in trouble for doing that,” she said. “But I’m not in the business of McCarthyism.”
… Several scientists expressed concern that organizations within the federal sphere seem to be overcomplying, prompting confusion and resentment.
“They’re obeying in advance, they’re going beyond what the executive order says,” said Christine Nattrass, a physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who conducts research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and emphasized that she was not speaking on behalf of her institutions.
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That sense of compliance appeared to extend beyond federal institutions. Two decades ago, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, helped to highlight the issue of racial disparities in health care, with a landmark reportrecommending that minorities be better represented in health professions. More recently, NASEM participated in an ambitious effort to root out the use of race in clinical algorithms that guide medical treatment.
The quick retreat this week from a core mission stunned many NASEM employees. “D.E.I. has been at the center of what the institution has focused on for the last decade,” said one staff member, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “It shows up in everything we do.”
The Academies are privately operated, but they receive a majority of their support from government contracts. Fifty-eight percent of their program expenditures came from federal government contracts last year, according to Dana Korsen, a spokesperson for the institute. …”
On January 22nd I had multiple NASA proposals removed and uninvited because they involved female biology and adaptation to spaceflight. The Trump bigotry and retribution tour did not waste any time.
