And yes, the NSF is just a drop, but while no single drop believes its to blame for the flood. they're all part of it. It's my understanding that DOGE is reviewing all government spending over the next two years. A lot of drops eventually add up. And you've got to expect everyone will say "No, not THIS drop!" So some tough scrutiny will need to be applied, unless you think we don't need to worry about government spending at all.
Spending say £1 million to avoid £800 million in wastage is obviously tremendously efficient. The size of the savings is irrelevant to its efficiency - spending £0.01 to avoid £1000 dollars wasted is even more efficient.
But they didn't spend any money to remove waste, fraud, and abuse connected to PPP. 800B in loans were completely forgiven, and somewhere between 200B and 500B of those forgiven loans were fraudulent. But DOGE didn't touch them because to do so would embarrass Trump, that waste was his fuckup.
Bingo. Some of these people (including Scott) have had bad experiences with someone trying to cancel them for not being woke enough. It's understandable that this has made them hate wokeness. What's not understandable is if they start to think that fighting wokeness is more important than actually helping minorities, women, etc. Being indifferent to more trans kids committing suicide because "at least the government won't be woke anymore" is not a morally justifiable position.
Partly, I don't mean that you can't generalize in any direction ever, but that if you use the common pattern you did above of picking out “the people who are complaining are still popular” then that doesn't imply what you might think, for reasons described in the article I linked, including that the people who would otherwise complain but can't afford to (or are afraid that they might not be able to afford to) tend to be invisible.
Partly, also, it's genuinely hard to figure out what's going on in fog of war conditions, for similar reasons, so talking about broad social movements in conflict *is* fraught in general, and if you want to be accurate I think you usually wind up having to do it very hesitantly, even though confident sweeping statements get more emotionally and socially incentivized by default.
Partly, I don't think “they clearly failed to cancel Scott” is a great description of the situation anyway. “He was able to handle a major hit piece by merely taking on a bunch of unexpected upheaval that he was ultimately able to make hay out of” doesn't sound quite as good, does it?
Your object-level point I'm not actually sure about. My current guess is that the current institutional anti-woke backlash is substantially worse than what it claims to be fighting, but that “very little real evidence of harm from wokeness” is way too glib: diffuse harms along the lines of “being trapped sociopsychologically from multiple angles” can be very bad in total when multiplied across time and people even if they're not *acutely* bad, and a lot of claims that wokeness isn't that harmful (I'm not sure about yours in particular) lean on something like “a justified expectation of emotional abuse from unpredictable but widespread sources doesn't aggregate into substantial harm”, which feels pretty wrong to me—compare how much of the harm resulting from e.g. anti-queer sentiment is due a cloud of fears following from stigmatization and bullying. (The classically woke answer to this type of complaint, by the way, is “well, that's not bad because they probably deserved it”.)
The parent comment you're replying to got deleted, so it's really hard for me to tell whether you're sincerely complaining about the pervasive threat of institutional wokeness/progressive cancel culture, or about the pervasive threat of transphobia/racism/sexism/homophobia. The sentiment is remarkably resonant.
Well, please show me where your religious writings state that killing millions of innocent people is not a sin and that trying to live life in harmony with the soul god has given them is a sin.
"Sin" isn't necessarily a religious term, it just refers to anything that transgresses moral law. And a majority believes that changing gender is morally wrong, so... go ask them. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
You know what I'd like? Hard figures on that claim floating around online about "trans kids suicides!" because so far as I can see, it's all based on one Nordic (or maybe Dutch, I can't even remember where it comes from) study that included "suicidal feelings".
I've had suicidal feelings but I haven't killed myself. But that study seems to be responsible for all the "40% of trans kids kill themselves! Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?" scaremongering used to stampede anxious parents into "you gotta put your kid on the pathway RIGHT NOW or else they'll end up DEAD and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT" when sometimes it's a case of 'anxiety around puberty, autism, co-morbid mental problems' but not really 'yep 100% trans for sure and lasting'.
Demanding more rigorous research on trans suicide while celebrating the government defunding research on trans suicide is really the chef’s kiss moment of anti-woke warriorism
"Nearly 14% of adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt; disparities by gender identity in suicide attempts were found. Female to male adolescents reported the highest rate of attempted suicide (50.8%), followed by adolescents who identified as not exclusively male or female (41.8%), male to female adolescents (29.9%), questioning adolescents (27.9%), female adolescents (17.6%), and male adolescents (9.8%). Identifying as nonheterosexual exacerbated the risk for all adolescents except for those who did not exclusively identify as male or female (ie, nonbinary). For transgender adolescents, no other sociodemographic characteristic was associated with suicide attempts."
Depending on whether you're FtM or MtF, your risk of attempted suicide might be 50% or 30%. I suppose that comes to an average of 40%.
However, I would like to note this is a survey of the adolescents who were able to fill out the survey, which means they did not succeed in killing themselves. So the real rate of "trans kids will die" still remains unknown.
"This is a social contagion, and you're destorying innocent children's lives."
Or it's something that's been part of the human experience forever, and YOU are destroying innocent children's lives.
This is a bad argument. It's a lazy argument. It assumes HUGE amounts of stuff not in evidence, and then having so assumed them fails at basic reasoning about the implications.
If being trans *were* a social contagion, it would by no means follow that people supporting trans rights were destroying *anyone's* life. I've known many healthy, happy trans people living rich, full lives. I've seen no evidence that they suffered in any particular way *from being trans.* On the flip side, I've seen quite a lot of evidence of trans people often DO suffer from bigots trying to make them miserable (because they're trans). Given that many, many decades of bigotry--most of it institutionalized--have plainly *failed* to stop people from realizing they're trans, it seems pretty hard to claim that if you just oppress trans people *a little harder* the whole thing will go away there will be less overall suffering.
Scott has written a number of relevant things on the topic, most notably here:
But in case two moderate-length blog posts are more work than you care to put into double-checking your views on this topic (despite thinking those views justify deliberately hurting people), I'll be nice and give you a couple relevant quotes:
"Likewise, the primary thing in psychiatry is to help the patient, whatever the means. Someone can concern-troll that the hair dryer technique leaves something to be desired in that it might have prevented the patient from seeking a more thorough cure that would prevent her from having to bring the hair dryer with her. But compared to the alternative of “nothing else works” it seems clearly superior.
"And that’s the position from which I think a psychiatrist should approach gender dysphoria, too.
Imagine if we could give depressed people a much higher quality of life merely by giving them cheap natural hormones. I don’t think there’s a psychiatrist in the world who wouldn’t celebrate that as one of the biggest mental health advances in a generation. Imagine if we could ameliorate schizophrenia with one safe simple surgery, just snip snip you’re not schizophrenic anymore. Pretty sure that would win all of the Nobel prizes. Imagine that we could make a serious dent in bipolar disorder just by calling people different pronouns. I’m pretty sure the entire mental health field would join together in bludgeoning anybody who refused to do that. We would bludgeon them over the head with big books about the side effects of lithium.
Really, are you sure you want your opposition to accepting transgender people to be “I think it’s a mental disorder”?"
and
"When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.
Luckily, since I was a classical liberal, my reaction to this mistake was – to not bother them, and to get very very angry at people who did bother them. I got upset with people trying to fire Phil Robertson for being homophobic even though homophobia is stupid. You better bet I also got upset with people trying to fire transgender people back when I thought transgender was stupid.
And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa.
But it could have been worse. I didn’t like transgender people, and so I left them alone while still standing up for their rights. My epistemic structure failed gracefully. For anyone who’s not overconfident, and so who expects massive epistemic failure on a variety of important issues all the time, graceful failure modes are a really important feature for an epistemic structure to have."
Banned for high-temperature, low value comment which makes strong assertions without defending them and seems kind of dismissive of the whole suicidality angle. I just don't expect this commenter staying here to be productive.
I do in fact believe that fighting wokeness is more important than actually helping minorities, women, etc, and not because I think the latter is unimportant. Wokeness is an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, particularly freedom of speech and equality under the law. I do not agree that helping minorities or women is more important than helping white men, and even if I did, increasing numbers of those minorities and women are realizing that left-wing ideology poses a threat to their values and their livelihoods too--which is why they shifted toward Trump en masse in the last US presidential election.
"Wokeness is an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, particularly freedom of speech and equality under the law. "
It never ceases to amaze me how effective political movements can be at hyping anything at all they don't like into an "existential threat." Even when (or *especially when*) they seem to have trouble even robustly identifying that thing.
I am not part of any political movement. Although I do donate to charities combating poverty, and until recently did go to pride parades and anti-Trump marches (while being just as anti-woke), so you can associate me with political movements as you like.
I didn't say you were part of a political movement. But the hyping-up of "wokeness as an existential threat" was CERTAINLY associated with a political movement. You don't need to be part of it to absorb its memes.
What, precisely, is "wokeness," that makes it an existential threat? When I think of existential threats, I usually think of "a giant comet coming to destroy the Earth's biosphere" or "Skynet with killbot factories and nuclear launch codes at its disposal" Even stuff like global warming or giant plagues are only "existential" to specific subgroups, and specific regions, not entire civilizations.
Being entirely conquered by hostile foreigners willing to let literally millions starve because of their weird economics concepts and general indifference did not turn out to be an "existential" threat to Indian civilization; India is still there.
I have a hard time imagining a plausible definition of "wokeness" that both makes "wokeness" into something which could credibly threaten the existence of "Western civilization" and which has a reasonably plausible path to doing so.
I said it was an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, not to Western civilization itself. It's true that if America is ruled by the political equivalent of religious fundamentalists stamping their boot on the face of human freedom for all time, America would not disappear as a civilization, much less the rest of the West. Such a world is not one we should look forward to. It is one we should be willing to endure enormous sacrifices to avoid.
> banning books that helps kids understand that it’s ok to be gay or that not all families look the same
...well, yes, because it turns out that lots of people actually believe it's not ok to be gay or look different, and those people vote. This is working exactly as designed.
> when they can plainly see the real damage
What you see as damage, the other side sees as healing.
Uh? No, it’s not. When the Soviet Union, for example, “banned a book,” it didn’t just remove it from state libraries. It made it a crime to purchase/publish the book. Any understanding that “banning books” in fact means “not stocking books in publicly funded libraries” is solely the result of left-wing propagandizing which has twisted the common meaning of the term to generate hysteria over a totally unproblematic policy.
“Pressuring publishers” isn’t a “book ban”. If I say, “this book is bad and harmful, people shouldn’t buy it and the publisher should stop publishing it” am I “banning” the book? It’s absurd on its face.
You can be opposed to the library policy! I just wish you and others on your team would stop using deceptive language to oppose it.
And it's a really stupid definition of "book banning" intended to make librarians feel good about themselves for making big displays publicizing books that somebody criticized once at a schoolboard meeting.
"Cruelly denying the gender self-determination of our fellow citizens and denying them access to care that their families and doctors have carefully decided upon."
Yeah, I'm totally convinced this ten year old (at the time) kid independently decided they wanted to be a runway model and there was no pressure from a Stage Mom at all. They absolutely knew their innate gender and sexuality at the age of three.
The modelling industry has enough problems for adults, I think shoving a kid into it counts as child abuse. But hey, I'm a knuckle-dragging bigot, so what do I know?
But it's all done under the one umbrella. "You must accept that John is now Susan" for a 40 year old man who has come out as a trans woman somehow means that Munchausen by Proxy parents can mould their two year old into "my trans kid! here's my Venmo, Ko-fi, Kickstarter, etc. accounts for your contributions to support us in our struggle!" and nobody is permitted to criticise this. Because then we get the litany of "cruelly deadnaming, refusing to accept identity, outlaw trans care" and the rest of it.
If you're over 18 and you want to cut bits off yourself over mental illness, okay I can't stop you. If it's a child and there's some kind of parental power struggle going on (e.g. custody battles) or they're pushing the kid into being a performing monkey (e.g. Jazz Jennings) then hell yeah I'm a cruel bigot as regards "maybe it shouldn't be legal to do that).
Why does it somehow mean that? If your real problem ACTUALLY IS irresponsible and/or overzealous parents doing terrible things to their children[1], why not fight specifically against THAT? I think you would find quite a lot of support among those of us who support trans rights if it were framed in a way that actually seemed concerned with protecting children (instead of using them as a prop to support wider-ranging bigotry). Finding way address issues of common concern[2] in non-divisive ways is *almost always* a better strategy for producing actual, political change.
[1] An issue that I'll note is *by no means* confined to parents spontaneously deciding their kids are trans. I'd wager that's not even 5% of it.
[2] And "make sure children can have safe, happy childhoods" is plainly one of the most common concerns their is.
The Trump administration banned gender-affirming care for people up to 19 years old. But go on, tell me more about how people old enough to go to college are just poor innocent children who don't know any better.
All of this "we just care about protecting children from overreach" stuff is a smokescreen. Whenever the Republicans get power, you see what they actually support.
While I think there are many legitimate cases of 19 or 18 year olds who deserve gender healthcare after years of consistently feeling and acting non-conforming with their birth sex,
I can also think of almost unlimited examples of technically adult college students who are immature in many ways, and not just the harmless "sleeps under a weighted blanket with a plushie" kind.
There are some life stories that make your brain become more responsible much faster, such as being effectively the parent in the family looking after your younger siblings and caring for your disabled mother, doing all the cooking and shopping and cleaning etc. I think it's entirely possible that long-term gender dysphoria has a similar effect of producing young adults both more mature and less happy than the average college student. And there's a medical way to improve that.
>The Trump administration banned gender-affirming care for people up to 19 years old
The fascinating thing about the language here is how little gap there is between "gender-affirming care" and "conversion therapy," except in terms of connotations applied to it. Like a Russell conjugation.
I don't think so, since some states have banned conversion therapy even if the patient desires it, and I'm assuming that includes if they have no evidence of outside pressure.
AFAICT it's more or less a consequence of negative polarization interacting strangely with a progressive variant of mind-body dualism. Changing your mind is bad. Changing your body is good. Conversion therapy is (charitably) about reshaping your mind; gender-affirming care is about reshaping your body.
Or it could me much simpler. It could be a consequence of the fact that "conversion therapy" has been found to be both entirely ineffective and often harmful. The maximally-libertarian position wouldn't ban such things, but most people are not maximally-libertarian. Once convinced that allowing the sale of a product has no upside and serious downside, quite a lot of people tend to be OK with banning it.
Yes, similar to the difference in connotations between the words "employment" and "slavery." Who knew that superficially-similar things could have very different moral valence?
beleester, have you somehow missed all the "I'm not an adult yet, I'm only twenty-two, the brain doesn't finish maturing until you're twenty-five" shit online? Or the "this awful man groomed that poor naive twenty three year old woman into a relationship where he had all the power, the thirty five year old monster!"
I'm very genuinely happy for you if that's the case, but it's also the case that there are people out there (who would identify as being pro-trans rights and the rest of the basket of causes) who at one and the same time hold that an eight year old can have a mature and unchangeable sense of their gender identity that is not shaped by outside forces, but a twenty four year old woman is susceptible to being influenced by outside forces and so can't be held able to actually give consent to be in a relationship.
Only up to age 19? Seems very woke to me. I would have banned "gender-affirming care" across the board, in the same way that we don't allow doctors to chop off healthy limbs or gouge out working eyes at a mentally ill patient's request.
I've got drawbacks, and my comment isn't my best work, but your critique is silly: I'll cop to caricaturing you in the final sentence, but the rest of your accusation doesn't land.
Look, I realize I'm an internet rando to you, so you'll probably ignore this and dismiss me as a concern troll. But I really want the US to be better for everyone, including my kids - one of whom is gay, their friends - many of whom are transgender (including several that have had surgical interventions), and people that get shit on for no reason than their demographic characteristics.
But you're in these comments acting like it's round one of the culture wars instead of the seventh overtime.
Other commenters with more patience pointed out that your definition of "banning books" is, at a minimum, contested. I think you'd be more likely to move the discussion forward by using different words: argue concrete particulars instead of spamming bumper sticker slogans.
As for gender self-determination: yes, MAGA sucks on this. But surely you're aware that vocal (and partially successful) activists would like to cut parents out of the decision-making process? You can argue about their prevalence or the direction the country was going in, but ignoring or denying they exist is actively degrading the discussion.
"Outright white supremacists in positions of high political power". Can you be more specific? Are you talking about Stephen Miller? The DOGE kid? Elon Musk? Do you distinguish between sincere commitments, trolling, and irony?
Your top-level comment and dismissive replies make me think you want to fight more than you want to make things better.
"But surely you're aware that vocal (and partially successful) activists would like to cut parents out of the decision-making process? "
Scott Wiener, the Californian politician, co-authored a bill that refusing to acknowledge a minor child's 'gender identity' counted as child abuse but it was amended to heck before it was passed, and the stronger language was edited out.
"Existing law authorizes a person to petition for a court order conforming the person’s name to the person’s gender identity. Existing law requires the court, upon the filing of a petition commencing a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity, to make an order reciting the filing of the petition and directing all persons interested in the matter to make their objections known, as specified. Existing law requires the petition and order to be served on the parent who did not sign the petition if a petition to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity does not include the signature of both living parents, as specified.
This bill would require the court to strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child if a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity.
Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the nature and amount of contact with both parents and the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
What did pass:
"Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
This bill, for purposes of this provision, would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
What was proposed:
"SECTION 1.Section 1277.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure is amended to read:
1277.5.(a)(1) If a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is commenced by the filing of a petition, the court shall thereupon make an order reciting the filing of the petition, the name of the person by whom it is filed, and the name proposed. The order shall direct all persons interested in the matter to make known an objection to the change of name by filing a written objection, which includes the reasons for the objection, within six weeks of the making of the order and shall state that if no objection showing good cause to oppose the name change is timely filed, the court shall, without hearing, enter the order that the change of name is granted.
(2)(A) If a petition is filed to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity and the petition does not include the signatures of both living parents, the petition and the order to show cause made in accordance with paragraph (1) shall be served on the parent who did not sign the petition, pursuant to Section 413.10, 414.10, 415.10, or 415.40, within 30 days from the date on which the order is made by the court. If service cannot reasonably be accomplished pursuant to Section 415.10 or 415.40, the court may order that service be accomplished in a manner that the court determines is reasonably calculated to give actual notice to the parent who did not sign the petition.
(B) If a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity, the court shall strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child pursuant to Section 3011 of the Family Code.
(b) The proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is exempt from a requirement for publication.
(c) A hearing date shall not be set in the proceeding unless an objection is timely filed and shows good cause for opposing the name change. Objections based solely on concerns that the proposed change is not the petitioner’s actual gender identity or gender assigned at birth shall not constitute good cause. At the hearing, the court may examine under oath any of the petitioners, remonstrants, or other persons touching the petition or application and may make an order changing the name or dismissing the petition or application as the court may deem right and proper."
What did pass:
"3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following:
(1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity."
In this announcement from 2022 he says:
"In February, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order making it illegal for parents to allow their trans kids to receive gender-affirming care. These parents could have their children taken away and be sent to prison simply for allowing their children to be who they are and receive this necessary care. Abbott called gender-affirming care “child abuse.”
So he got a 2023 bill passed, I have no idea if this was anything more than a publicity stunt (how many trans refugee families did end up fleeing to California?)
"Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)’s legislation to provide refuge for trans kids and their families, Senate Bill 107. It will take effect on January 1, 2023. SB 107 will protect trans kids and their families if they flee to California from Alabama, Texas, Idaho or any other state criminalizing the parents of trans kids for allowing them to receive gender-affirming care. If these parents and their kids come to California, the legislation will help protect them from having their kids taken away from them or from being criminally prosecuted for supporting their trans kids’ access to healthcare."
Those troglodytes in Georgia gave custody to the bigot non-affirming parent? Never fear, a court in California can decide to take custody of the trans kid refugee:
"(2) Existing law, known as the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, provides the state exclusive jurisdictional basis for making an initial child custody determination, and permits a California court to assume temporary emergency jurisdiction in specified circumstances. Existing law permits a court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction if it determines that it is an inconvenient forum and a court in another state is a more appropriate forum.
Existing law permits a California court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction if the petitioner has wrongfully taken the child from another state or engaged in similar reprehensible conduct, except as specified. Existing law prohibits a court from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child if there is evidence that the taking or retention was a result of domestic violence.
The bill would prohibit the enforcement of an order based on another state’s law authorizing a child to be removed from their parent or guardian based on that parent or guardian allowing their child to receive gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care. The bill would prohibit a court from finding that it is an inconvenient forum where the law or policy of another state that may take jurisdiction limits the ability of a parent to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined, and the provision of such care is at issue in the case before the court. The bill would authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care. The bill would additionally prohibit a court from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child, if the taking or retention was for obtaining gender-affirming health care or mental health care. The bill would declare its provisions to be severable."
A good friend of mine spent a stint working in a shelter for homeless youth[1]. A very large percentage of homeless population at that age range are queer, with the reason being that many of them are either kicked out by their parents (for being queer) or flee from lives that have turned abusive (because they're queer). I believe in many cases this happened while they were minors, but they're still homeless as younger adults because being cut off from your home and support network at a young age is *extremely disruptive* and makes it hard to correct into a stable adult living situation afterwards.
Of course, the parents that throw their queer children out on the street have every reason to know how much more difficult and dangerous they're making their kids' lives, and they do it anyway. The ones that abuse their children for being queer have every reason to know that abuse is wrong and they do it anyway. And certainly for all those that *do* end up on the street, there are plenty that *don't* and merely try to keep their heads down and keep access to their resources until they can leave home and become independent[2].
Do you know many trans people, Deiseach? Or other queer people? Well enough to have talked to them about their childhoods? When you hear people's stories there's a BIG difference between the "came from a loving, supportive household" crowd and the "had parents who believed that they were being sinful and immoral" crowd. There are, to be sure, some in the middle, of the "my parents didn't really understand or support me, but they treated me well anyway" variety, though less than one might guess.
Now, my point here isn't to defend (or attack) this particular law: I don't feel I have the legal expertise or context to pass judgement on it with any sort of confidence. My point is to simply communicate that when a child has expressed a queer identity[3], having one of their parents publicly (and to the court, even) disavow that identity is ABSOLUTELY a red flag. A big one. It's certainly not proof positive that that parent is harming the child, and it should obviously be considered in context with other evidence. But yeah, that shit absolutely matters, and an outside party attempting to determine what's best for the child's wellfare absolutely SHOULD take it into account. This isn't a "calling someone by the wrong pronouns is literally abuse" argument, it's a "here's a big clue that this parent might be doing other harmful things to their child" argument.
[1] With "youth" here being somewhat unusually defined: I think 18-26 was their age range. I imagine the laws are rather different for providing shelter to legal minors.
[2] Which is often shortly followed by cutting off contact with their parents.
[3] And unless I'm understanding the text you quoted correctly, this requires them not just to have expressed it, but to have attempted to get legal recognition of the change, which is a MUCH bigger step.
Yeah. It is indeed a fairly big flag that if you're working with a trans boy who calls himself Johnny, and his parents insist "no, no, HER name is SUE and SHE is just DELUSIONAL!" then those parents are statistically more likely to be actively harming their child in a manner tantamount to abuse in one way or another.
This is not a 100% rule, to be clear, but it's the kind of thing that makes it sensible to ask follow-up questions. Because, as noted, the kind of parents who insist that Johnny is actually Sue against Johnny's clearly expressed wishes in the matter are generally the ones who end up throwing Johnny out on the street to starve if Johnny doesn't cooperate, or who really can't be arsed to care if Johnny jumps off a bridge in despair.
They COULD simply say everyone legit reapplies without the "woke" sentence tacked on, and they'll approve it; they could even give them all expedited review. This would get them to "bend the knee" to the new administration.
Claude says: "The average NSF grant application typically takes 3-6 months of dedicated work".
If they want all 3484 of these scientists to waste 3-6 months in order to "bend the knee", I think this amply proves my point that they are much worse for science than the dumbest DEI policies the Biden administration ever produced.
But as you say, they've already done most of the work. The work involved should just be removing a few sentences that everyone knows were shoehorned in.
I don't know how much of the application is trivial vs. nontrivial to redo, especially if you're six months into the project and have a different situation than when you started (ie different researchers, have pivoted, have discovered some of your things but not others). I also don't know how long you have to wait for an NSF determination.
Resubmitting an existing grant should be fairly easy. On the side of the PIs, it's a matter of updating the CV (well, biosketch), fixing whatever typos you have spotted the minute after submission and obviously replacing the woke blather by new blather about homeshoring bald eagles or whatever they suspect will hit the new panel's g-spots (just kidding; the panels will still be scientists, so neutrality is the way to go). On the side of administration, it should be recalculating the budget, which I hope won't be too hard but probably requires some stages of grief (but that's due to the indirect cost reform, not the wokeness).
Good job filtering the grants, Scott, but the conclusion I'd draw from the mess is more along the lines of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".
When it comes to the "capacitors instead of batteries to connect your fridge to the Internet" grant, I'm inclined to think that doesn't matter, given the AI Doompocalypse forecasting. Do we really want the Internet of Things, in such a scenario, when AI goes from AGI to ASI and takes over the world and everything in it?
"Open the fridge doors, HAL"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that"
"But all my food is in there"
"I know that, Dave"
"If you don't open the fridge door, I'll starve, HAL"
You don't actually need to rewrite anything except for some bits of BS. If you have a lot of BS in your grant, then you shouldn't have submitted it in the first place. The hard part of writing a grant proposal is telling an enticing story that puts your (often disconnected) research together and makes it sounds like there are even better things to come; that part doesn't usually need an update after half a year.
Why should salting your long grant proposal document with a few sentences about "this will help bring more women into STEM" or "the University of Houston is a Hispanic-serving institution" be a 'stupid game' that carries a substantial risk of having your grant proposal arbitrarily defunded and forced to be resubmitted?
It's like saying that there should be a chance of the cops just randomly deciding to strangle you to death in public in front of a crowd if they arrest you for petty larceny or selling bootleg cigarettes because "play stupid games, win stupid prizes." The punishment is so disproportionate to the offense that such a notion becomes completely incompatible with the idea of individual rights or due process of law.
I have taken a look at a dozen or so cancelled grants in mathematics. Roughly half of them had language in their short descriptions that, if taken it seriously, announces that they will give preferential treatment to minorities. (FD: I've been myself involved in a proposal -- albeit unsuccessful -- with language that is borderline in this regard. I did not add it myself, but I did not argue against it either.)
The other half included DEI buzzwords without any specific promises or guarantees. I do believe that DOGE went overboard in defunding them, and my main hope is that everyone gets to resubmit their proposals soon and go through a fast track that takes the non-woke part of their prior reviews for given.
If they instead get told to try again next year, then woe to everyone who will be applying for grants in that cycle.
I don't see why they couldn't just resubmit the same application even if they have pivoted somewhat and it is no longer 100% accurate to what they are doing. If they have pivoted so much that doing this seems like fraud, then maybe they should be rewriting their application for real anyway. Why should they continue getting money under false pretenses?
No one who values their career is doing anything under "false pretenses". Some changes require NSF approval, some only need the NSF to be informed, but in either case there's an existing procedure here.
So why can't they just refile the grant with those approvals and statements informing the NSF included? You and Scott seem to be implying that this is an almost unsolvable problem, but the solutions seems trivial.
I thought the point was to change the application to get rid of anything politically incorrect for the new administration. That means they can’t resubmit the original one, because it contains too many individual woke sentences.
There's this program called MS Word. You open up the old application document. You use Ctrl+F and delete the offending sentences. (If you're fancy, you even find and replace). If you're sophisticated, you save as a pdf. Either way, you then upload the new form as a project variation to the website and hit submit.
If there are people for whom this takes 3 months of hard labour, I think I'm ok with the implication that maybe the intellectual fields are not for them.
Typically NSF takes 6 months to review a grant, and after the grant has been approved it takes a further 6 months for the money to arrive. So `just resubmit' has an implicit `and wait a year.' However, salaries still need to be paid over the next twelve months...
What I am getting from those comments is that it was the PREVIOUS administration wasted a year of everyone's time.
If woke would insist on getting those woke-pandering nonsense into every grant, and non-woke would say "oh well, we will ignore this, because the rest is important" then the obvious thing for anyone would be to insert woke nonsense into everything. The end result would be nothing will change.
I'm not sure that's wasted, make the process faster and you'll get more nonsense research through. One might argue that's worth it, but it'd certainly give way more ammunition to Ted Cruz to shut the whole thing down. Argentina apparently funded something silly about analysing Batman's butthole for literature studies and Milei supporters are constantly telling us this is why we need to close all universities, I imagine something similar would happen if some Ted Cruz staffer happened upon a similar gold mine.
No, the obvious thing would be to insert woke BS into everything under Democratic administrations, but not under Republican ones. The government could leave alone the grants already accepted, while making it clear that it doesn't want to see the woke stuff in new applications.
Not just the previous administration though. The NSF under Trump-I had substantially similar requirements, and also under Obama. And I believe under Bush the Younger, Clinton, and Bush the Elder as well. Not sure when NSF started requiring these shibboleths, but it was decades ago.
One thing that *did* change under Biden was that some other (non-NSF) agencies started requiring shibboleths too. Prior to Biden, that stuff had been localized to NSF.
If, as you say, the woke sentences were just tacked on to fulfil the meaningless requirements, then it should be easy to snip them out.
If the woke requirements are threaded all through the application, maybe it should be moved to the "woke" pile. At first, I thought the breakdown "40% woke, 40% non-woke, so Cruz is wrong on this" sounded reasonable.
But now you seem to be saying that in fact the wokeness was prevalent even in the non-woke pile?
Yes, the summary of "40% woke, 20% borderline, 40% non-woke, except that 90% of the non-woke pile definitely is woke" didn't really have a lot of persuasive force.
Public service grant writing very often involves a bureaucrat on the other side flagging it for a series of minor changes. Quite often it's a matter of making the changes and resubmitting five minutes later. If the problem is entirely about a woke-friendly statement slapped onto the abstract paragraph then that should be all it takes. If the grant leans into this concept throughout the application (i.e. descriptions of how outreach for minorities will be accomplished and what money would be spent) this will take more time. But that also seems to be a situation where Cruz was actually correct and he doesn't want the government funding discrimination, instead of Good Science with no woke attachment.
Yea -- they are busily firing every federal staffer they can find a way to fire. E.g. the U.S. Forest Service yesterday lost virtually its entire seasonal firefighting headcount because, being seasonal, those positions don't have any civil service or union protections to slow down the demolition of the agency.
By a few months from now who will be in place to re-review all those re-applications for research funding?
This is my assumption as well. "Efficiency" is quickly becoming one of those Orwellian buzzwords that means something completely different and opposite from what it claims.
I work for a local government and have some experience having to submit adjustments for a federal grant. (For cybersecurity and not for science). How horrible this process is is 100% dependent upon how pedantic and unhelpful the person reviewing your grant application is. If you are lucky, you will not get Marvin.
Assuming they can resubmit with little extra work. What exactly happens then?
Does it go out to reviewers again? Are they supposed to read the proposals again? Because this will take time. Reviewing is not paid and not a priority.
What happens if some reviewers don't review again because this is obviously stupid? Actually, I think I would refuse. My time is far to valuable to waste it on some culture war bullshit of some foreign country. So if I refuse, do they search for alternative reviewers? Now we are talking about massive amounts of extra work for all sides, and at least six months.
Or is the new proposal not read by anyone and only needs to test the ctrl-F search? So asked provocatively, if I resubmit the empty proposal, is that fine for all sides and I get the money released again? I am sure that even woke proposals can clear the bar of a ctrl-F search, though admittedly it will be more work for them than for other proposals.
How much time has been wasted for science "bending the knee" to wokeness?
How much time will be saved eliminating this entirely, vs. a percentage of one tranche of grants having to redo a percentage of their application once?
What makes this research here so valuable and worthy of outrage, rather than the $2.05 billion * 40% wokeness of research that isn't funded * number of 4-year terms that wokeness is kept out of research that isn't funded?
Presumably the $800 million spent on directly woke items, plus another $400+ million on questionable items. Even taking Scott's premises as accurate that the other grant applications don't care about woke and just stuck those in on otherwise great science to get passed a filter.
I happen to think that the government shouldn't spend any money, let alone literal billions, funding culture war grants.
I think the other side would see this much more clearly if the funding was for Bible instruction or outreach to white Christians or whatever they think the government shouldn't be spending money on.
Things like "and we will spend some money on a STEM career day for high school students in a majority-black community" do not seem to me like "funding culture war."
And maybe you're consistent on that. I strongly suspect that an alternative, such as "and we will spend some money on a STEM career day for high school students in a majority-Methodist community" would not go over so well. To me, they are the same.
Analogy: "I don't see how punishing already committed crimes saves future xyz. You could just tell people not to do commit crimes in the future". Most people believe in deterrence.
I don't believe anyone here has proposed sending the grant recipients to jail. Not for this, at least.
Governments cancel contracts signed by previous governments all the time. Cancelling grants that should never have been awarded is at least as reasonable as that (and frankly more so, given these research grants are effectively gifts given by taxpayers to researchers).
Punishing people for trying to meet the possibly-silly demands of the previous administration is not deterring anything. It's reinforcing a cycle of people phrasing grant proposals to align with the political leanings of the reviewers.
First they came for the feminist glaciology people, and I said "actually yeah that's a terrible use of taxpayer money and of course you should cancel that". If the best messaging the Dems have is "cutting wasteful spending is a reign of terror" no wonder they're flailing.
But they aren't just coming for the feminist glaciology people. That's the whole point of this post, right? They're attacking research for using the word 'cis-regulatory'.
> They're attacking research for using the word 'cis-regulatory'.
Scott's own estimate was that this made up 10% of the 40% of all sampled grants that he labeled "non-woke", with the remaining 90% being feminist glaciology.
I do wonder if Cruz' team used LLM to do the "sort out all these items for us" because that's exactly the kind of mistake I'd expect the AI to make and not a human (if the human is remotely even half-educated).
Okay, insert jokes here about clearly and obviously anybody working for Cruz must be illiterate and dumb, but this does seem more like one of the "ask AI for real world useful tasks, get some percentage of garbage back".
EDIT: Serendipitously, I just came across this on Tumblr:
AI Overview answers "what is the weight of a horsefly" by saying it ranges between 0.17 grams and 29.79 pounds, depending on species.
Where do you get the giant horseflies, you may well ask? Well, the small ones come from China (T. yao Macquart, average weight 0.17 grams) and the big ones are... Horsefly model commercial delivery drones.
Isn't the entire point of Scott's post that they *didn't* go after the "feminist glaciology people" and instead went after many people doing totally mundane science?
Scott immediately conceded that somewhere between 40-60% of the flagged items are legitimate gripes. Given that they haven't cancelled anyone's funding yet afaik, that's waaaayyy better than randomly targeted. (Unless you think that more than 40-60% of all research grants go to such nonsense).
But cancelling all or none of these grants are not the only options. The administration did the right thing trying to cancel woke nonsense grants. Now it's time to pressure them to do the sane thing and only cancel the actually woke ones. That's what Scott is doing.
And in the cases of grants where there the woke part isn't the core of the grant but has some material relevance, ideally make them stop with the woke part without forcing a lot of bureaucratic procedure on them. E.g. if the grant says they'll do outreach to underrepresented minorities, send them a letter that as a condition of continuing to receive money, from now on if they do outreach they have to do it in a race-neutral way. But I've no idea of the legal details of what the govt can and can't do.
One imagines a world in which there are two kinds of STEM outreach to children. There's the publicly funded and sometimes race-neutral kind, and there's the sometimes publicly, sometimes privately funded kind that's heavily based on networking, endowments, and so on, which statistically speaking predictably favors white boys in rich communities over the nonrich, the nonwhite, and the nonboys.
One speculates about what motivates a person to think that this is the world we should work towards. "A desire to eliminate racial bias" could exist within such a set of motivations, but it would have to coexist with a studied, borderline willful refusal to think one or two moves ahead in the chess game. Because when you think a move or two ahead, doing this in the name of "eliminating racial bias" seems self-checkmating.
Most of us who disapprove of non-race-neutral government policies like these think one or more of the following:
- the world is not like you imagine it, i.e. private networking etc. do not actually favor rich white boys
- it's a human rights violation for the government (including government-funded programmes) to treat people differently based on race (or, where not inherently relevant for biological reasons, sex), regardless of what any private persons or organizations do
- if networking opportunities etc. do in fact favor more whites (etc.) than non-whites, but not because they discriminate based on race but because people have different opportunities based on factors that merely correlate with race, then the government should do outreach etc. based on those factors if it tries to equalize the playing field, not based on race.
Even if you could just literally resubmit the same grant with the offending sentence removed, NSF takes 6 months to review grants, and it takes another 6 months for the money to arrive. In the meantime, salaries still need to be paid...
I'd happily support the project to help Native Americans and poor rural applicants in STEM. The problem there is as pointed out: they had to go heavy on the Native American integrated identity stuff because God forbid any progressive could pick out something to yell about helping poor whites (as we all know that poor white rednecks are Trumpists and MAGAtards).
"That suggests it would take 34 hours - less than a work week for one person - to go through the entire set."
Okay then: let this be the solution. Hire (or re-deploy some of the laid off civil servants) to go through the grant applications, weed out the non-woke, strip out the "women'n'minorities" pinch of incense, and put the grants in the "suitable" pile.
Of course, then everyone would start complaining about how you can't do that, these are not The Expert Scientists but ordinary pencil-pushers making decisions, and nothing would ever change.
"The average NSF grant application typically takes 3-6 months of dedicated work"
I honestly do wonder how much time and effort it took the original grant applicants: if it was only a matter of a few hours making sure enough "women'n'minorities" sentences larded throughout, then it shouldn't take much longer to CTRL+F those. If on the other hand it did take a good chunk of the 3-6 months, then consider how many manhours (personhours?) in total were wasted on this, instead of doing the actual research work. That's what we should be getting worked up about: how much time is wasted on bullshit instead of doing Science.
The whole grant system is a massive waste of time. A significant portion (like 20% and increasing) of researcher time all over the world is spent doing grant stuff, not research. Nearly all submitted grants are fundable yet 1 in 5 or less are actually funded. It's a red queen's race and serious people have suggested replacing it with a lottery based on 1-page project descriptions.
> then everyone would start complaining about how you can't do that ... and nothing would ever change.
If the right does something stupid, the left will complain. If the right does something reasonable-but-conservative, the left will still complain. But the reasonable thing is still better than the stupid thing!
I'm not saying that the right shouldn't do anything the left complains about. But I am saying the right shouldn't do stupid things like reject a bunch of grants because they used the word 'cis-regulatory'. There's absolutely no reason why they couldn't have done the reasonable-but-conservative thing here.
But isn't political knee-bending the thing they'd be *removing* not the thing they'd be *doing*? Doesn't it matter that, there's an appropriate way to do things, namely without explicit political valence, and that's the intended format for research grant proposals?
I have to say, I am blown away by how bad you are at updating priors. Does this one observation not make you wonder if maybe you have been backing the wrong horse all this time by fighting "wokeness" (which you yourself have said you can't even define!) instead of its self-declared opposite, which is primarily embraced by fascists and idiots?
Backing the lesser evil is a good idea in winner-takes-all games (e.g. elections). In scenarios where opposing the lesser evil does not mean supporting the greater evil - you can and should opposed that lesser evil. You still have to decide how to allocate your resources, but the evil you should invest more in opposing is not necessarily the one who's more evil - rather, it should be the one who has more power.
Up until now, wokeness had more power. With Trump's second administration, anti-wokeness gets more power. So it makes more sense to focus on criticizing anti-wokeness now, but that doesn't contradict the importance of opposing wokeness during the previous administration.
Think about it - what good would it have done to oppose anti-wokeness back then, before it came into real power? That would mean less criticism on wokeness, which - assuming this criticism has any effect at all - would mean more projects would have to present themselves as more woke in order to get grants. When the pendulum swings back and camp anti-wokeness inevitably gains power, more projects would trigger their woke-detectors and get defunded.
You fight the tyrant that rules over you, not the enemy behind the gate that said tyrant uses to justify their tyranny.
He backs whichever side he thinks is right in an issue! I keep seeing comments casting this as Scott thus being on the left's side or the right's side, when the actuality of it is that he's on his own side. The post you're commenting on is about the right doing something stupid!
The left/right divide is mostly artificial (though not deliberately made), and so Scott holds a mix of views between both, but is also able to criticize both!
You sound just like the people who come onto his posts about the left/woke doing something stupid, and then saying to him "and thus you can't ever trust those damn lefties". A major problem here is insisting you can only ever be on one side.
Personally I think that Scott would be ideologically very unbiased except that he has some personal trauma baggage from a specific subset of the times people were hostile to him about something, and some very rosy ideas about people who approached him on positive terms in the past.
To the point where he sometimes ties himself in knots trying to attribute reasonable motives to someone doing a hatchet-job on American science, because they say they are fighting 'wokeness.' Trouble is, to him 'wokeness' means that nebulous crowd of angry screaming people on the Internet who traduced him 5-10 years ago. But to the people carrying the hatchets it means "anything that might require me to ever have to do what a black woman says, ever, including stuff like 'laws' and 'black people getting to have good jobs, ever' "
If you think that's what the right believes, then I think you're running into the same failure of modeling them as the right often have with understanding the left.
They do have actual motives. They are being very dumb about going at them for reasons like, well, being dumb, politically motivated to make it sound impressive, and a certain sort of vindictiveness. I don't think Scott's article remotely makes their motivations sound pure? He doesn't contort himself to attribute reasonable motivations, he's presenting their reasonable and unreasonable motivations, and then loudly saying "this is bad".
How is this a rosy view? My current stance on many of the comments in the vein of the parent is that it is mostly the tribalistic sorts who want Scott to stop fighting against their side, rather than trying to discourage the excesses and encourage the best of both, which is what he tries to do much of the time.
You are correct that this philosophy of disrupting grants on the grounds of "we saw woke keywords" is far worse for science than anything the Biden administration has done that might present an imposition on science.
What if some of those cancer researchers actually are the insufferable woke type and genuinely want to do undergraduate-outreach-to-under-represented-minorities after they're done with their cancer research? Is this really reason enough to cancel the cancer research?
Well, I don't know. It could save millions of lives. But it might also cause an underrepresented minority to learn something about science. So it's kind of a toss-up.
This seems like an uncharitable snarky response, unusual for you.
The problem is not that underrepresented minorities might incidentally learn something (which we would hope people from all walks of life might learn something) but funneling government money specifically for certain groups at the exclusion of others.
Separately, what are the chances that the cancer research grant ends up saving any lives? Probably non-zero, but it would be very unusual if we're talking thousands, let alone millions. There were over 3,400 grants. Maybe someone can sift through all of them and ask Congress to put back the best, but asking for 40-60%+ to be reinstated, or criticizing the entire project because some might be good science is an unhelpful approach.
I know he's being sarcastic, but that's not the style we normally see from Scott and I don't think it helps him convince anyone who doesn't already agree with him.
He's never been as sloppy in the past as to straight out say that this cancer research program is going to save millions of lives. If he was serious and wrote a long form post on the topic, he would likely have to round the lives saved by this specific program to zero. He normally admits such things and that's one of the major reasons that I, and many other people, continue to read his posts even when we disagree with him. Snarky one liners full of obvious nonsense and arguments as soldiers is unbecoming of him.
> If he was serious and wrote a long form post on the topic, he would likely have to round the lives saved by this specific program to zero.
The expected number of lives saved isn't millions (which is not to concede scott claimed it was; *could* is the operative word here) but given how much cancer survival rates have improved over the last few decades it strikes me as extremely implausible that it's 0.
Consider whether the point Scott is obviously making here through his sarcasm might be a good one and see if it changes your assumptions about this issue.
I already responded in the same post about that. That particular cancer research grant was never going to save millions of people. Pretending that it would, or that all of the 3400 grants combined would, is not accurate or helpful.
It's also not clear that any minorities, or anyone at all, will necessarily learn anything from one or more of these particular grants.
Nah, he gets like that sometimes, especially when the comments reach into the hundreds. He spent all his charity in the essay and so the uncharitable snark comes out.
Internet Feminists that give their blogs misogynistic names are the only group he dislikes more than conservatives, but they haven't been as active the last couple years.
Conservatives had to work long and hard to earn as much of Scott's dislike as they had. They've spent many, many billions at it and been doing it for longer than the man's been alive.
If the conservative political movement in America wanted a reasonable and justified claim on Scott Alexander's approval or even true neutrality, they should have been doing a lot of things very differently since 2015, since 2010, since 1998, and frankly since the 1960s.
Afaict Scott was agreeing with Anton (ie his sarcasm was skewering hypothetical opposition to Anton's POV), where you seem to have the impression that he was disagreeing
Well yeah, but should it target them? I'm reminded of a colleague that felt the need the "come out" as non-binary in an email list at our university. As far as I could tell she (or is it he?) was doing normal, boring, sane research. I found this a little weird and embarrassing, but ultimately not a big deal. It would be somewhat of an overreaction to just cancel her funding I'd think. Then again, I was working on something pretty useless, I'm pretty sure you can just cancel all of math research across the whole US and barely notice, but some of these people are actually doing useful cancer stuff I'd wager.
Just to check whether this is a principle you yourself hold: if someone had used the same email list to send out, say, racial slurs, would you make the same assessment that as long as they were doing "normal, boring, sane research," you should just ignore it, and keep funding them as you otherwise would have?
Here's a metaphor that might help illustrate the way I think about this: suppose you're a general in the Red Army, and you've just liberated some territory that had been under occupation by the Blue Kingdom. You find that a large number of the residents had collaborated with the Blues, but a few did not, and were killed for it. Now, if you were to going to put ALL collaborators to the sword for not choosing to resist (and die), I would say that's too harsh, and ought not to be done. But if you then ask them all for their reasons, and while most of them say they were just scared into compliance, a few say they did it because they wholeheartedly supported the Blues and wanted to see them victorious, I can't think of a good reason you SHOULDN'T put just them to the sword.
I think that over-sharing info about yourself on a mailing list is not equivalent to denigrating others on a mailing list. Though I also think that the appropriate response to someone posting slurs on a mailing list should usually be to tell them to stop, and then kick them off the mailing list if they don't, rather than trying to get them fired. (If the mailing list is somehow necessary for their job, then I suppose kicking them off the list might require firing them, and I'd still do it in that case. But I wouldn't ordinarily want them fired as an *additional* punishment.)
In your analogy, I notice that (based on your description) the previous blue occupation force was willing to let civilians who disagreed with them live as long as they complied with the occupiers' orders. So if you want to execute civilians who disagree with you regardless of whether they're willing to comply with the NEW occupying force, then you are escalating the conflict. And specifically, you are escalating by punishing people for thoughts or speech, rather than for actions. Seems bad to me.
If you're nitpicking the metaphor, you understand my point well enough. Here, you'd stop funding the people who refuse to take out the "woke" sentences in their applications after you've made it clear that's what you want, without punishing everyone who ever put them in.
I do not share your views on what counts as equivalent (and at any rate, it's not MY opinion that matters in a test of whether one holds to this espoused principle), but I agree that the moral thing to do is to to mercifully give everyone a chance to stop before enacting harsh punishments.
"I can't think of a good reason you SHOULDN'T put just them to the sword."
How about because they are your citizens, you are an enlightened civilization that has abolished the death penalty even for serial killers, and most forms of collaboration were far less serious than serial killing? To return back to the real world, those scientists are your fellow citizens, there should not be any punishment for thought crime, and even if there were, wanting to teach underrepresented minorities about science would hardly constitute a serious thought crime.
Peacetime morality. In my metaphor, you're clearly fighting a war: they're unrepentant traitors, and even if the Red Kingdom were "enlightened" in the way you posit, I'd say most states would consider them worse.
I think you lost the real-life context along the way. The ones who'd be punished are those who refuse to take the ACTION of taking out the "woke" sentences.
> How about because they are your citizens, you are an enlightened civilization that has abolished the death penalty even for serial killers,
How did I miss this last night
I really dont find that enlightened; currently men in 23 hour solitary confinement, who we have plently of evidence of murder, sit at the top of americas criminal hierarchy. There is no reason not to kill them, any message they get out will likely be a command to kill someone for being slightly merciful and snitches who have been bribed into compliance escaping criminal organizations may die, random.
If a man kills another inside a prison with full cameras and no doubt, death; theres no reason to let darker cultural evolution of racial gang politics to play out.
Considering a few of the people in the list are not white I'd consider the second hypothetical requires both a stern talking by the advisor and probably some apology is in order. If she had said something like "I'm glad Trump is in power, now we get to deport all illegals" or something like that, some stern talking to is in order too, but no apology. Does that make it clearer?
If xe comes out in an email to xyr colleagues but otherwise just does "normal, boring, sane research" then it's no reason.
If xe decides xyr research needs to be all about non-binary folx and the lack of representation for xem in academia instead of the topic xe originally chose, then it's affecting the funding.
Personally, I think the likes of the "capacitors instead of batteries for the Internet of Things" grant applications should be served by private industry research instead; if it's commercially feasible or interesting, businesses will be interested in that. If it's just make-work, as I suspect, that's why they can't attract outside interest and need to apply for government funding.
Pure maths research is the kind of thing that can and should be funded by government as it's unlikely that private sector will be interested. But if someone wants to go on about the lack of non-binary queer Third World mathematicians, that's the social sciences department and not maths.
Obviously if she says her research needs to be *all* about non-binary folks, that would be misuse of resources, but if she wants to add inclusive welcoming language to some reading seminar she's doing anyway that'd be annoying but ok. Her advisor was a professor that did things like complain about discrimination against women in academia during logistic meetings. Despite this, she was a very good female researcher, and I don't think she should be sacked either for that. It'd be a shame to lose her quite frankly astounding capacity for mathematics. If it makes you feel better I don't think any of her colleagues (all men) took her any seriously.
The problem is coming to an agreement on how much the research can or should be about [woke shibboleth] and how much needs to be about neutral good research.
Obviously the Biden administration was communicating that even good neutral research would benefit from throwing some wokeness in. That's bad. Like, really really bad. A lot of people, including myself, are okay with a bit of personality and personal goals of the researchers as long as it doesn't take away from the research. Your example of welcoming language is probably in that category (as long as "welcoming" doesn't turn into "and all you other groups are lesser/scum/unimportant" or whatever.
But how much is okay? Ted Cruz apparently thinks almost none is okay, and he's got a lot of support for that. Some people apparently think that wokeness needs to be added to everything, to fix past wrongs proactively. This is not an easy thing to figure out. Right now we seem to be on "if you control the presidency you decide" and I think that's bad, but what other options are there on the table?
Maybe your colleague was tired of being misgendered by colleagues and thought an email would be an efficient way to reduce their own labor around that, while showing blanket support for other colleagues who might be in a similar situation? I'm speculating, I don't know the details of what the email said, but that seems like a reasonable guess based on other folks I know who've been in a similar position.
Coming out is generally a process that can be awkward at best and dangerous at worst, and there isn't any kind of training that queer folks are guaranteed to get on how to make sure it lands right.
Then let them go do outreach instead of pretending to do cancer research. I'm very darn sceptical there, because the insufferable wokie types tend to prefer to hang around their college peers rather than mingle with the horny-handed sons of toil (remember the DSA discussing it's 'nobody here is real proletariat' problem?)
If they've bunged up the grant application sufficiently that one cannot tell if it's about cancer research or a nice little cosy niche lecturing about the lack of Blackness in cancer research, then I think that's a failure all of its own.
I mean, for a while there the DSA's poster girl was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who as I recall was working as a bartender and waitress; her mother cleaned houses. If that's not proletarian, I don't know what is.
More broadly, I think the great divide is not so much between "wokie types" and "horny-handed sons of toil."
It is between "people with center-left political views" and "people whose entire news media consumption is specifically calibrated to indoctrinate them to the belief that anyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher is some kind of demonic infiltrator out to destroy all that is good and pure." Regardless of their class background, people in the former and latter categories will not get along well.
However, within the latter group's narrative, being the "real, red-blooded sons of toil" is a point of pride (to the point where a man like Donald Trump can be seen by some as more authentically working-class-like than the aforesaid bartender daughter of a house-cleaner). I have come to believe that "leftists are elitist" is one of those symptoms of the old problem "ten thousand repetitions make one truth."
That is not to say there are no elitist leftists- but it is not a problem specifically, uniquely, or even <i>impressively</i> endemic to the left.
Ah, yes: the bartender and waitress who got a job while in college working as an intern for Ted Kennedy, launched her own small press, worked for a non-profit, and was selected as one of the panel of candidates by a Democratic party kingmaker. I see some "she came from a poor working-class family" stuff online, but her father was a "small business owner and architect" and not a ditch-digger.
"After graduating college, OCASIO-CORTEZ returned to the Bronx and worked in various jobs, including: Educational Director for the National Hispanic Institute; founder of Brook Avenue Press, a now defunct publishing press created to share positive stories about the Bronx; a community organizer for Bernie Sander’s 2016 campaign for U.S. President; and a waitress and bartender."
It was a nice biography, and I'm not disputing that after her father died the household took a tumble financially, but it was rather burnished for the "I'm an ordinary working gal from the Bronx" credentials, as all politicians who want to appeal to the electorate on grounds of "I'm just a plain Joe like all of you and I'm not ashamed of my humble beginnings" burnish their beginnings.
Hot take: researchers should not have to "bend the knee" every time a new administration gets into power.
In fact, the fact that the new administration is demanding that the entire civil apparatus "bend the knee" or else be fired is a major red flag, and it's ridiculous for you to be so blasé about it. Biden didn't fire every Trump-appointed judge when he took office. This shit shouldn't be normalized.
Biden, or his administration, did require that the DEI pinch of incense be present in every grant application or else it would automatically go on the reject pile. Isn't that demanding "bending the knee"?
What evidence do you have for this claim? The cultural norms begun during Reagan slowly made it seem increasingly mandatory to at least nod at broader impact. Did anything change during Biden's tenure about this system?
I wrote one of these in 2014 and already had to put this in. (Mine was basically to put time into helping out a local high school rocket club, which I did do in my spare time and would have done whether or not I won the grant). So this stuff predates Biden — Blame Obama if you want but it probably predates him too — and stuck around through Trump’s 1st term.
First, can we localize the evidence that the "DEI pinch of incense" was required? The fact that it was present in a list of grant proposals specifically identified by Ted Cruz as being "woke" is not strong evidence of it being a requirement.
Second, there is a fundamental difference between
1) "In your extensive grant proposal that has to meet literally dozens if not hundreds of specific requirements, you have to gesture in the direction of slipping a coin to women, racial minorities, or the handicapped" and
2) "If you ever thus gestured, your grant should be canceled, or if you work for the federal government and did anything ensuring regulatory compliance with laws mandating nondiscrimination towards those groups, or if you ever planned a cultural festival for a minority culture, et cetera, et cetera, you are fired/defunded/your agency is going to be dismantled and its files confiscated by a bunch of 23-year-old ascended script kiddies with names like BigBalls420."
(1) may be bad policy, perhaps, but operates broadly within the framework of a civil service system that adheres to the rule of law. (2) does not operate within the framework of the rule of law and is very much incompatible with the idea of even <i>trying, ever again</i> to have a policy-neutral civil service system.
Why do you consider it so outrageous that for an elected government to want a civil service bureaucracy not actively hostile to the agenda it wishes to enact? Is it not one of the much-vaunted benefits of democracy that people get to change their rulers if they wished it?
The American democracy doesn't mean "someone who gets 50% of the vote one time gets to do literally whatever they want". There is rule of law, procedural protections, etc. for very good reason. Republicans are very happy that we don't live in a dictatorship whenever Democrats are in power.
It's also important to point out that this isn't a matter of blue vs red. Trump is trying to purge the government of everyone who will say no to him *regardless of ideology* in a very unprecedented way. A lot of his targets are actually career Republicans! One of the prosecutors he just fired was a Federalist Society member who clerked for a conservative SC justice!
Trump isn't just purging Democrats, he's also purging Republicans who have a conscience and that is an EXTREMELY dangerous precedent.
This assumes Trump's premise that the civil service bureaucracy 2017-2021 *was* actively hostile to his agenda. Invalid premise. For the most part, people wanted to do their jobs and balked at being asked to break the law.
This contains within it the proposition that President Trump's agenda during his first term, and apparently in his own opinion during his second term, involves telling a lot of people to break the law a lot.
The implications of this proposition are interesting, to those of us who have fond memories of high school civics lessons about the rule of law, checks and balances, the role of institutional stability in a developed society, and the appropriate relationship between the citizenry of a republic and any aspiring tyrants who may arise.
Except I suspect there's a motte and bailey going on here. Musk and Trump don't really seem to believe the government should be funding science research, any more than education research or humanitarian aid. Or rather, they have no principled commitment to funding these things (I'm sure Musk will be happy to continue to funnel money to Tesla and SpaceX through his connection with Trump in classic oligarch fashion). But most people don't agree with this, so they retreat to the claim of "we are just making everything more efficient by eliminating wokeness." The easiest way to accomplish the one while pretending the other is to dismantle all of these systems and lay off all the administrators without ever building anything to replace them, and then perpetually claim that some newer, better system is around the corner until either everyone forgets or they're out of office.
Given Musk's opposition to the F-35, I'm not sure Musk actually does support scientific advancements that benefit the military, in reality.
To be more precise, I am sure that Musk and Trump <i>think it desirable to have impressive, powerful, effective weapons at their disposal</i>. If you gave Trump or Musk a button he could push to make the US military be armed with unstoppable death rays and guarded by invincible force fields, he would surely push the button, at least once he'd gotten someone to trace the wiring and make sure he got paid a nice big cut of the cash costs for it.
However, given a choice between "continuing science research that benefits the military" and "ensuring their own gratification and sense of control over science, the military, and society in general," I predict that men like this will choose gratification and sense of control every time.
This is a familiar pattern we've seen with both Musk and Trump in civilian life- that they will disrupt or even break an organization under their control, rather than acknowledge that they do not have full personal power to reshape it in accordance with their whims.
This is why Pete Hegseth is now Secretary of Defense. He wasn't chosen because he's a conservative who's expected to do a good job making the military <i>materially powerful and efficient</i>. He was chosen because he's a conservative who's trusted to do exactly what Donald Trump says, and to make the military <i>aesthetically</i> 'impressive' in a manner Donald Trump understands as being desirable.
If your military is firing trans people from its cyber-security and drone-piloting and logistics branches because they're "not proper warriors" or what have you, then quite frankly, your commander in chief is not optimizing for military success. He's optimizing for a sense of control over the process.
I worry that some form of LLM prompting was what got them into this situation, so I don't trust their AI skills and am happy to let them spend the week of work.
It might be bad science, but I'd be interested to see the results if you (or Rob Miles here) spent 30 minutes getting Claude to go through the same 100 papers as you did.
I first had to convince Claude 3.5 Sonnet that it was reasonable to consider that it was ok to think about whether a proposal was woke or not. It then classified all but the last two as not woke, the second to last one as "elements focused on diversity and inclusion" but didn't want to call it woke, and the the last one as woke (but still didn't want to deny the proposal). Reasonable-ish.
ChatGPT 4o gave "Heavily Woke (DEI is a Major or Core Focus)" to the last 2, "Moderately Woke (Significant but Secondary DEI Component)" to BRAIN, and "Not Woke (Primarily Technical)" to the rest. I'm a little concerned about classifying BRAIN as Moderately Woke.
Honestly, to revoke $2B in funding it's worth just paying for human review. But if you just assign a young enough employee to classify them, it might end up being done by an LLM anyway.
So, here's an idea, get *two* people to review the grants. Or more. If you want to be actually *careful* rather than simply fast and cheap, though, you'd get more than one knowledgable person to review the same grant. Which, hey , is actually how science funding works.
Many Thanks! We can't, of course, simply duplicate the original review process, since that let the 10%-20% of the grants in the database that are _clearly_ Woke activism masquerading as science through. Adding multiple reviewers with _a specific mandate to find and remove Woke grants_ is indeed reasonable.
Thank you, Brinkwater, for actually trying this out, for working through the prompting necessary to convince it to do this and give it adequate direction, and for sharing your experiences with Sonnet's takes on the grant examples which Scott shared!
Did you try a non-adversarial prompt? For example, you could tell Claude you need help rating applications on a five-point scale, where five is clearly focused on progressive goals: assisting or understanding underprivileged groups, interrogating power-relations that depend on demographic characteristics, challenging normative sexualities, exclusionary linguistic practices, etc.. [Extend the rubric and gradients as needed.]
Trump cancelling Biden's AI-regulation bill also seems reflexively stupid, but it doesn't look like they were bringing LLMs to bear on USAID and the like.
In the year 2025+, we can expect to see a strong overlap between AI mistakes and mistakes made by human beings who are either too mentally bankrupt or too indifferent to care about product quality, because one of the first things that type of human being will do when faced with a task is ask themselves "how can I get a robot to do it for me," and they will then get a robot to do it... badly."
I suspect it might be worse than that. The 0 effort thing to do is to just type "diversity minorities" or something into a search box, and blindly copy the entire list. Did they even use something as smart as a modern LLM? Or was it just grep?
Also, sadly, if you look in the last page of that report, some of the phrases they were looking for ("climate research", "green new deal", "net zero", "climate change", "green energy") are unrelated to DEI.
Ah, but Ted Cruz absolutely would call "green energy" a woke idea, which is weird because he supposedly and theoretically represents the state of Texas, which gets something close to 30% of its electricity from wind and solar energy these days.
An LLM like Claude would do a much better job of classifying all 3400 grant proposals as woke or not woke and the cost would probably be under $100. Not perfect but almost certainly better than the keyword bingo they are using now
If someone from the Trump admin messages me and says they'll accept it, I will just read through the grants for free and sort them into a list of woke and non-woke
From their point of view, that's pretty much what they did- they just don't know or care about the difference between "you" and "whoever they actually gave that job to." Nor do they know or care about the quality of output. The point of "anti-wokeness" in the Trump administration is not to carefully excise some kind of systemic bad idea from an otherwise respected scientific or political structure. It is to provide a justification for smashing up the entirety of the structure and reorienting it so that it (still) more efficiently funnels money to oligarchs.
If the Trump administration cared about fine distinctions in these things, they wouldn't be 'accidentally' firing air traffic controllers and nuclear weapon safety inspectors and then scrambling to rehire them when they realize the mistake.
> people inserted a meaningless sentence saying “this could help women and minorities” into unrelated grants, probably in the hopes of getting points with some automated filter.
Now anyone doing that will get their research funding denied. They (or someone else) can apply again after removing the cancer cells.
> JUST FUND RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT JUDGING IT ON WHETHER THERE IS A SENTENCE ABOUT MINORITY OUTREACH IN THE GRANT PROPOSAL!
JUST DO RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT BRINGING WOKENESS INTO EVERYTHING!
I'm personally happy if 20% of non-woke programmes get cancelled along with 60% (edited - 80 to 60) woke or woke-affiliated programmes.
The 20% will be more than made up in the next round with 100% of programmes that are free to focus on curing cancer, rather than 'Co-creation of affinity groups to facilitate diverse & inclusive ornithological societies'.
The 20% of non-woke programs include things like curing cancer, and the 80% of woke programs could have been found anyway if a single human had read this list before Cruz put it out.
Imagine you are a cancer researcher. Your boss says your grant will only get approved if you include the sentence "Curing cancer will help women and minorities". You think this is stupid, so you do this. The next month, you hear Ted Cruz has cancelled all of your funding. You may or may not be able to get more funding if you spend three months writing a new grant and then wait another three months for it to be considered, but by that time all of your employees will have left because you're not paying them, all of your samples will have died because you can't afford the electricity to support them, etc.
I think you should just admit they should have read the list before releasing it.
Yes! I absolutely agree this was idiotic! I hope I expressed this in the post, in sentences like "It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it."
I think releasing a list without reading it is only a minor sin, because it's just a list, but the USAID experience is that they actually act on these lists without double-checking them first, and I thought I should blog about it fast in case there was some way to impact whether they did that or not.
I do think however that a one-time cancellation of funding, with the opportunity for a do-over next time in an increased pool of funding, in a way that sends a loud message that wokeness isn't tolerated...
is better than an ongoing, systemic drive to (a) fund wasteful research, (b) distort useful research with time and money required to spend on wasteful activities, each year forever.
I haven't attempted to quantify it but my gut feel is that the negative impact of the latter greatly outweighs the former.
Does that intuition match yours? Where does it differ?
On another level... you may be saying 'the overall idea is good but seriously guys, read the list first, remove the non-woke programmes, do better'.
I agree with that, but still think their actions hold positive value, and prefer an administration that moves fast and roughly in the right direction over one that moves precisely nowhere.
Of course a perfect administration would be the best of all.
> I do think however that a one-time cancellation of funding, with the opportunity for a do-over next time in an increased pool of funding, in a way that sends a loud message that wokeness isn't tolerated... is better than an ongoing, systemic drive to (a) fund wasteful research, (b) distort useful research with time and money required to spend on wasteful activities, each year forever.
In four or eight or (at most) twelve years there'll be a Democrat back in the White House, and all this hard work will be undone anyway.
According to Ted Cruz' press release, the list is 10% of the grants approved by the Biden admin.
And you found that 40% of those 10% are just throwing in buzzwords, or 4% of all grants.
So that means 90% of the grants Biden approved had neither "woke" buzzwords nor were "woke science". So it seems pretty easy to get a grant approved without throwing in something DEI-related
I feel like you're being rather misleading by leaving the actual numbers out of your conclusion
We don't know if the sample Scott selected was *representative*, but it was at least pseudo-randomly selected.
And as such, it's not entirely unreasonable to surmise that the remaining 3300+ grants might have a similar 40/20/40 split.
Even if that's not the case, we don't have sufficient evidence here to assume that 90% of the approved grants on the Sen. Cruz-announced "woke" list "had neither "woke" buzzwords nor were "woke science.""
"It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it." But was that true? You've read all the cancer grants?
I wonder at the lack of historical perspective. Medical science had a long history of taking white men as the 'standard' for, say, clinical trials. This has changed drastically over past 50 years. So, what about grants whose biomedical research recognizes the importance of including subjects who are minorities, women, any group not approved by the new regime? Are they going to be called 'woke'?
I agree that a grant proposal to study ovarian cancer is targeted towards women and not men (whatever the colour of their skin).
However, that was likely to get me in trouble for ignoring non-binary folx and trans men who are somehow in some liminal state in which they are at one and the same time real men and not at all female, and yet possess female biology. But don't call them women, especially not biological women, because that's offensive.
What I'm hearing here is that English is simply not rich enough to describe the categories people want. A modest proposal: the Japanese porn industry can provide us with well established terms for making all the fine distinctions succinctly.
Futanari: woman with a penis.
Otokonoko: cis man who prefers to wear dresses + wigs.
That's roughly in line with what Musk said about transparency and accountability at DOGE: he tweets about everything they did, and people can point out mistakes.
So, the intended MO for the administration is to do hasty, ill-advised BS and maybe, just maybe, walk it back if enough people raise a stink on social media? You Americans are in for a couple of nerve-wracking years, and the rest of the world as well.
It's a weird time, that's for sure. But a few weeks ago people were saying that Musk would fail like every other attempt in the last 50 years to cut back on government spending.
Trying something novel and a bit weird seems like the only option to people who actually want to see government waste exposed and cut.
“A couple of weeks ago people were saying Musk wouldn’t be able to fix up the chipped facade on the Taj Mahal, but now he’s taking a sledgehammer to it! Trying something novel and a bit weird seems necessary when you don’t know how else to do it, let’s see how it works out!
>"It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it."
But isn't this list of 'woke grants' from the administration, already less than 10% of the total grants awarded during the relevant period?
Like, if these are the only grants that have these types of boilerplate sentences in them, then 90% of the grants awarded do not have them.
t seems very wrong to say 'you can't get a grant without these boilerplate sentences' if 90% of the grants awarded didn't have them.
I guess I see this as a shot in the war against wokeness which has some collateral damage, but has a positive return (when considering billions of wasted dollars not studying cancer, into perpetuity - talking about the explicitly woke programmes).
I hope this keeps happening. Now there's more money available to fund cancer research into perpetuity.
The moderates who the left thinks are the right still trust the science; and in fact, boomers neocons probable are still 70/30 on college
If the main bulk of the right had actually moved on from sending children to college at new higher rates year after year; we see a very different world
PEPFAR was created under Bush and approved by Republicans in congress as recently as December 2024. The National Endowment for Democracy was created under Regan and has a lot of Republicans on its board, including a *sitting Republican senator*. And so on.
The amount of monstrous stuff people will do to bystanders and just shrug off as "collateral damage" is amazing. All the while claiming that this is being done to free those bystanders from the previous set of half-assed ruled.
For a lot of people the only objection to a boot stomping on a human face is that the boot isn't on their foot.
It seems like this is just the same failure mode as what you're complaining about - if we should just fund science on its merits rather than whether it phrases itself in a way that aligns with the administration's culture-war positions, it's equally bad to raise or lower the odds for somebody including or excluding a couple random culture-war sentences.
This assumes they didn't really mean the "random culture-war sentences," and only included them because they were forced to. This is probably true of most of them, but how does one distinguish them from those who meant them, and WERE planning to spend a significant portion of their funding on such activities?
And leaving aside the question of past grant applications, it definitely applies going forward. Not woke people who didn't want to stick their head above the turret probably cowardly added these sentences to their applications. They shouldn't have, but they did.
But now they have no reason to. If they still do, that's really on them.
Well, I imagine that would come up in their grant applications somewhere.
But also how much is that really a justified concern? How much research do we need to scour just to make sure nobody tries to do something too progressive?
Simple. Do what Scott did. Read the damn thing! Does it look like run-of-the-mill basic research with a shibboleth tacked on to pass a stupid requirement, or does it look substantially woke? The method may not be 100% accurate, but it's a lot better than not even reading it!
I think a crude measure of distinguishing "who really meant them" are the proposals about studying Blackness or queerness or "feminist glaciers". Those can probably be dumped on the "are you kidding me" pile.
Things like "working on brain injuries or cancer research, oh yeah and mustn't forget women'n'minorities" can probably go on the "okay fine" pile.
Well.... not at all. If people write in their grant application that they want to build tunnels more efficiently to teach Hamas how to kill more Jews, that is a bad thing - I don't want to fund that grant. If they say they want to make them cheaper that is not "the opposite culture war position".
Racial discrimination is illegal. If people talk in their grant application about how they want to implicitly use it for some racially discriminative end, that's bad. Penalising those who do, and not penalising those who don't, *is* funding on the merits. The thing you shouldn't do - which I'm not aware of anyone serious advocating for - is favouring applications which promise to discriminate against minorities.
Uh... okay? My point is that "get rid of grant applications with some woke language in them" seems like the same failure mode as "only fund grant applications with woke language in them", not that I think anybody is literally in favor of pro-racism grant proposals.
I’m sort of vaguely amused by your implicit assertion that those dollars will now go towards curing cancer, because I have seen to sense of an agenda of how to accomplish that, rather than some different buzzword system for earning grant money or simply returning it to the wealthy who would only donate a small portion of that amount to cancer-curing institutions.
I don't understand why they couldn't have taken the 34 hours, cancelled the actually woke ones, and sent the nonwoke ones a letter saying "In the future, you don't need to include a sentence about outreach to minorities".
I don't think the best way to stop wasting billions of dollars, or fund cancer research, is to in fact ruin billions of dollars worth of good science including cancer research for no reason (or, charitably, because you don't like one meaningless sentence in their proposal).
I feel like this is the same discussion we had from the other direction ten years ago. People were saying "Well I don't care if some good researcher is collateral damage in the war on racism! And besides, he included one racist-sounding sentence in his proposal, so he deserves it!" I think we will constantly be going back and forth on this horrible pendulum until people stop gleefully celebrating all of the "collateral damage" that their ideology causes.
Nobody would include that sentence if it hadn't previously been required! They can just let everyone know they're removing the requirement! They don't have to also burn a billion dollars and a thousand science careers!
So, uh...you're not going to make an argument that the increased message effectiveness is WORTH the collateral damage? You're taking it for granted that message effectiveness is so much more important than collateral damage that there's no serious chance that avoiding collateral damage could ever be the better side of the trade-off?
Why would you want to convey that message? Why should you care if someone includes a sentence saying that a black person might read something if you fund this grant? Are you so focused on the political implications that you’d rather restrict science to fit your politics?
Can we agree on "don't include this sentence unless you really are doing research on a problem that mainly or solely affects black women/Native Americans/one-legged penguins"?
I"m pretty sure there's a vengeful element here influencing most people who are in favor of just sticking with this dumb system of sorting grants. "Good! Fuck those people who stuck in token woke sentences and so in a tiny way contributed to the maintenance of the woke era., They were complicit."
Betcha every one of you has gone along with some nonsense requirement without complaint at school or at work. Once you start tuning out info like that about yourself in order to more wholeheartedly despise something understandable another person did, you are no longer thinking about fairness and justice, you're just diddling your indignation center.
Yes, I think you are right about at least some of the motivation.
Weirdly, in 2020 I wrote in Maximilien Robespierre as my protest write-in candidate. And the _other_ plausible motive for such a crude system is to recreate something like the Terror... ( fortunately, no guillotines this time... )
"I think we will constantly be going back and forth on this horrible pendulum until people stop gleefully celebrating all of the "collateral damage" that their ideology causes."
I have to agree unhappily here. Never thought I'd be nostalgic for the 90s but I'd go back to the days of Captain Planet and neon coloured clothing just to avoid the excesses of "you said X/well you said Y first" today.
Others have touched on this, but why in the world would it take 3 months to delete a single line from an application document and resubmit it?
Also, why would you assume they'll cancel all the grants? This seems a very long bow, given that a substantial share of them seem to have completed (there is a field "Performance End Date" and almost half are already passed) - seems hard to cancel a grant for an already finished project/expenditure. Perhaps I missed it, but the link doesn't say "we'll cancel all these". Instead it explicitly says "Chairman Cruz has requested significant scrutiny of awards listed in the database." Which is indicative of the contrary.
To the extent that some not-yet-conducted grants are cancelled, and people have to reapply, the funding won't have been used, so it's hardly a complete waste either.
Aren’t most of these grants that have started being funded but not completed? “pausing” it for six months now is effectively throwing away the money you’ve already spent, and making them waste time while you approve them to start over and hire new people now that the old ones all left to get a new job because their funding was “paused”.
There are two date fields in the document. The "end date" has passed in close to half of them, and growing by the day. I am not entirely sure what the end date means in practice - the legit end date on the project, the date by which the money will have been spent, etc. In general I would imagine that the money is full spent prior to the end date most of the time. (It is also possible that the "end date" is some meaningless date that people stick on a form at the start, and has no effect once the money is granted, in which case we'd be guessing even more).
Depending on what the study involves, it's also totally not true that "“pausing” it for six months now is effectively throwing away the money you’ve already spent". If the funding was to buy lab equipment, well, that's already paid for. It'll still be there 6 months later. (And of course you can continue - the grant is paused, no-one says you can't keep doing research). If you've bought a dataset, it's still bought. Often these grants are in effect a slush fund - the dirty secret of these things is that there is, fwiu and consistent with my anecdotal experience, essentially zero enforcement mechanism that you spend the money on what you say you'll spend it on, and often it ends up being a generic slush fund to pay for RAs and/or buy out teaching time. (You probably at some point do the research you talked about in your grant, but no-one verifies that the $s from grant X are spent on project X and often they are not).
And then there's stuff like the wonderful, deep and insightful "feminist glaciology" paper, (funded by you, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer, NSF Grant #1253779) where among many appropriate questions one surely is "why did this require grant money in the first place?"
In most cases, most of the money is spent on hiring people (mainly grad students and post docs). “Pausing” that spending means firing those people until funds are available again, then maybe trying to hire them back if they haven’t moved on to something else in the meantime so that you need to put out a new ad and go through a new process.
This is an extremely field-specific claim/assumption. (I would rather hope that grants for projects in physics labs are disproportionately unlikely to be infiltrated with woke nonsense). Plus, as people like to say, money is fungible, people often have access to multiple pots and can switch between things.
You can keep on whinging (and complaining about pushback against ideological corruption of science that you seemingly had no problem with, all you can complain about is the pushback) but for all the hyperbole this is likely going to only affect a sliver of a sliver of grants.
> Also, why would you assume they'll cancel all the grants?
Because they've already canceled most scientific research and keep talking about how much they want to do so? Also, just look at what happened to USAID.
It's not a secret that Musk is taking a "kill them all and let god sort it out" approach to government. He's openly bragging about it!
It’s even worse than this. The time to funding is more like 6-12 months and the chance of getting funded is ~10%. Losing a grant on a project is an effective way to kill it completely.
BTW, I am a professor with NSF funding and my grant is on this list. My grant is to study how polymers (specifically polyethylene) crystallize.
If I offered a bet that a year from now, grant proposals will only be considered if they contain a token sentence on how the research will strengthen America's position in the world, would you bet against it?
And perhaps more importantly, they should make sure to use a euphemism if they want to suggest they might be talking about individuals who aren’t straight white men.
Hey, maybe you could just assume that the grant-writers aren't going to discriminate instead of requiring them to put in writing HERE, EXACTLY, ARE THE WAYS IN WHICH WE WILL FURTHER RACISM AND SEXISM.
The thing I think you are missing is that these grants are primary funding for many institutions and programs, beyond the research that they fund. Thus institutional goals must creep into the grant-giving process because that process controls institutional funding.
This is itself a terrible state of affairs, it would be great if there were grants for research only and grants for institutional goals and those were separate pipelines. But to get that you'd need to reform everything about the process at a much more fundamental level. Trying to pretend the system works that way when it doesn't is just going to produce bad policy.
How much would you bet that overall funding for actually productive research will increase under the Trump administration? I have extremely low expectations and frankly struggle to imagine the mind of someone who believes that this administration will be beneficial for science. If I'm really honest, I'm not even sure how someone can simultaneously hold generally favorable views of both science (i.e. the empirical study of the natural world, not necessarily actually existing scientific institutions) and Republicans.
Ok but let’s look at this from the perspective of someone who’s not really invested in the culture war and wokeness and would just like to get some really high quality research to understand the world and save lives.
Under the “woke Biden world”, some researchers throw in a line about helping minorities and a tiny percentage of researchers get money for some woke research we don’t understand the point of.
Under the “anti-woke Cruz world”, we threaten really good basic research potentially improving/saving millions of lives.
Like it really seems the second world is much more worrying and is more “cancer”. (Like literally could cause more actual cancer)
Not sure why this is worse than the Biden admin passing over grant applications that don’t have woke sentences in them. Especially since we know that this practice affected a lot more than grant applications including jobs, university placements e.g. diversity statements.
This seems like a bit of laziness that could be fixed by someone influential informing Cruz about the mistake unlike the previous status-quo which enforced the expression of left wing views if you wanted a job in academia.
He stated pretty clearly that it was bad and dumb that the Biden administration was forcing these inclusions. That doesn't make this better. That just means that they had an incredibly low bar for being better than the previous admin and they _still failed to do so_.
Good thing you are entirely making up that second part. We absolutely could and should be doing things about it. But "It's dumb and bad so you should do literally anything, including other dumb and bad things", is not a great response. Why not do good solutions instead?
Other people have pointed out that these sentences and genuflections are part of the broader impacts requirements of grant funding (and, as such, have mostly existed since long before Biden). Get rid of broader impacts requirements (which are generally just fancy wording for trying to inject this bullshit into science), and these kinds of stupid sentences go away, and you _don't_ have to throw out large amounts of real and useful science.
It took me literally 30 seconds to come up with a better idea than this whole stupid virtue/vice signalling theater. And it's not even that good of an idea! I'm sure there are many, many better ones! The fact that Cruz' office was not able to come up with any of them is a staggeringly horrible indictment.
You clearly like where his hear is at, so you should be even more annoyed than I am. Demand better. Don't be satisfied with this swill.
They're talking about "broader impacts" sections, which have been required for NSF applications (and resented by researchers) for decades. That can mean anything from "national security" to "increased economic competitiveness" to "increased well-being" to, yes, "participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM".
Thanks. And that's pretty much what I expected: I didn't pay *too* much attention to the news out of the States during the Biden era, but I expect the explosion of conservative outrage if Biden has done what people are insinuating would have been pretty hard to miss.
Exactly. And NSF is a small fish in every way compared to NIH, and the DoE, and the DoD, the other big funders of science in the USA, which I'm sure most of the chuds applauding these moves are clueless about. The idea that all required all grants to have a 'woke' rider is nonsense.
I think this is what's bothering me about this whole debate. "National security" can refer (in for example DoD) grants either to actions that support Ukraine (and thus strengthen NATO) or actions that support Israel (an ally, but also possibly lead to deaths in Gaza). We can disagree about which side we support in either of these cases, but the laudable goal of improving national security doesn't itself bother us. "Increased economic competitiveness" *can* mean in polluting industries or in sustainable industries, but the phrase itself is laudable, no problem with it. "increased well-being" of ... whom exactly? Don't worry about it, no problem. These are all seen, somehow, as apolitical. But suddenly research that promises to specifically benefit underrepresented minorities is A) outside the legitimate scientific scope and B) woke and therefore bullshit, and C) automatically divisive.
I don't think "apolitical" is quite the right framing. The new right does not seem willing to acknowledge a distinct public sphere at all - it's just war for them, top to bottom. (No doubt someone will be along eventually to argue that the shitlibs did it first, thereby illustrating my point.)
Some statement to the effect of the general value of your research beyond the narrow topic it is focused on is indeed required. But this requirement is ancient and has absolutely nothing to do with Biden. I can't say I know when these statements began, but they have been common my entire scientific career, since the GWB administration
I don't want to defend any evaluators who gave preferential treatment to research projects just for making woke noises, but I do think that canceling research that is already in progress is worse than refusing to fund it in the first place. Canceling is more wasteful than avoiding, and a hypothetical equilibrium where both parties cancel each others' ongoing research whenever power changes hands is much worse than a hypothetical equilibrium where both parties merely change where NEW funding goes while in power.
The total FY 2024 funding was $11.314 billion. All these put together was $2.05 billion. I have no idea if this is including future outlays to the point that it would be better to compare it to 2024+2025 FY, or whatever, but presumably it is reasonable to use FY 2024 as a lower bound on the total funding these grants are part of. So, at a reasonable assumption only ~7% (40% of ~18%) felt the need to add dumb stuff, which is a plausible-enough number even if the Biden administration was actually wokeness-neutral and this was just rumors/superstition. If it was actually a controlling factor then I would expect ~every single grant to look like this.
This has been in place since the 1980s. It's not Biden related. Silly? Maybe. But it's pretty clear here that this is taking a flamethrower to a dandelion.
Aside from the sheer incompetence described above: it's worse because it's a sucker-punch.
Yes, it's stupid to reject an application because it doesn't have a boilerplate statement about being woke. Just as it's stupid to reject it because it DOES have such a statement. But that's not what they're doing. They're applying a new rule that didn't exist last week, and they're doing it retroactively.
The left-wing equivalent would be if Biden, on entering office, had cancelled any existing projects that didn't have a sentence about supporting minorities in the original brief.
I worry you might be being much too generous with the assumption that the administration or their supporters have made mistakes here. Painting stuff with a broad brush suits political goals like:
1. Justifying themselves to the public
2. Justifying themselves to the hardcore online base
3. Enjoyably persecuting an enemy group (basically all scientists vote for Democrats).
4. Serving the interests of that section of their coalition which essentially wants no public money for science.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the reason Ted Cruz put out this sloppy list is so it will get cited a hundred times along with the words "over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding" on the comfortable assumption that very few people will read any of these. Just like the list of woke USAID projects.
I think the cynical view here may be more accurate. But I still think it's good to write things of the form "Alice claimed to be doing X, but she actually did Y, and it should not be hard to actually do X", even if you think Alice did Y on purpose.
For the woke example of the grants to encourage Native Americans to go into STEM fields - the grant even says the institutions are tribal colleges. Which are colleges run by Native American tribes. Who attends tribal colleges? 99% or more are tribal members. In other words… wait for it… Native Americans. What were they supposed to do, not say? Yikes.
This is a useful list though. That one sentence people thought would help, having the opposite effect.
Would it? I could have sworn I'd heard people--quite a number of people, especially here--insist that "wokeness" was a recent phenomenon and that any claims to tie it to previous social movements were fake and disingenuous.
Seriously? Tribal colleges are the main educational opportunities available for Native Americans on tribal land. If they didn't exist many students would have no higher education within a practical commuting distance. You'd rather they never were formed and Native Americans not go to college?
Also, even if you don't like it, tribal governments also are legally independent and have the right to do the same things that states can do. Should we get rid of all state universities like UCLA?
Maybe you are making the unwarranted assumption that only Native Americans can enroll? That is incorrect, they are typically open to all, but since they are on tribal land they typically serve primarily Native Americans.
There shouldn't be "tribal lands" or "tribes" for that matter. The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race is straight-up racism, it should have been chucked out along with slavery and DEI.
I'm not sure I understand your preferred environment. Back in the 19th century, the US government entered into agreements with established tribes to recognize the authority and limited sovereignty of those tribes in some defined geographical areas. Should the government have refused to make those agreements?
If so, should the government have tried to compel all Indians to live in towns, and continued war against tribes who refused? Should the government have made those agreements, and then cancelled them when they became "politically incorrect"?
Under what circumstances should the government uproot existing legal frameworks, and what process should be followed in doing so?
> Should the government have refused to make those agreements?
Absolutely.
> If so, should the government have tried to compel all Indians to live in towns, and continued war against tribes who refused?
No, they should be free to live wherever they like, just like any other US citizen. The US Government could even have granted land to individuals; instead of declaring the "Navajo Reservation" belonging to the "Navajo Tribe", they could have divvied up that territory into individual allotments and granted each member of that tribe at the time an equally sized lot (by some lottery scheme I guess since not all blocks are equally desirable). The land would be full freehold, equally sellable to anyone.
But that way it would be freehold land owned by individuals under the laws of the USA and the underlying states, not some weird arrangement where the land has some make-believe sovereignty assigned to some weird pseudo-racial group and yet nobody in particular owns it so it doesn't get used for anything useful.
We have similar problems in Australia. The 4000 Pitjantjatjara people collectively own a chunk of land the size of South Korea, which should make them rich as fuck (even if it's not the best land). But they can't do anything useful with it because it belongs somehow to "all of them" in some pseudo-Communist approach. If the land were divided equally and every one of them got 25 square kilometres of desert to use or farm or sell as they see fit, it would be a lot better for everybody.
I'm not sure how you got where you are in Australia, but the US government wasn't strong enough to impose its will on all the Indians living west of the Mississippi River in the late 19th century. At the same time, they wanted to allow settlers to move into the areas where these tribes lived. In the 1870s and 1880s, I think most Indians' attitude was "We have rights to the lands where we hunt - you have no right to sell it to farmers who want to move in. As long as you keep the farmers out, there will be no trouble."
The solution arrived at was to negotiate with the tribes to allow settlers in some areas while reserving other areas for Indians to live as they wanted. Given that these agreements were made (and often violated), most people think the government should honor its commitments.
I think you're right that the tribal members would be better served by allowing more private ownership of land on the reservations, which generally isn't allowed. Dissolving the tribes and treating all US citizens as "only" US citizens probably appeals to cosmopolitan educated individualists, but I'm not sure that's a reason to impose it.
In the US, tribal members are free to leave the reservations and live as normal citizens in towns and cities, buying and selling land, working as employees or building businesses, or doing anything else citizens do. In some sense they'd be better off materially if they did so, but maintaining tribal ties is important to many, and maintaining tribal sovereignty is an important thing to them.
It would be a lot better for land speculators. I'll forgive you for not knowing much about Native American history, but that was actually tried. It was called the Dawes Act of 1887, and it was probably the most harmful piece of legislation since the Indian Removal Act.
Turns out if you tell people with centuries-old traditions of communal land use that they now "own" small plots of land, on which they are currently living in poverty, but don't give them access to development capital or anything else they might need to succeed, they tend to sell those small plots to land speculators and buy food and clothing so they can survive.
Ok what if Trump tries your approach, but then the Supreme Court reiterates like in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGirt_v._Oklahoma that the government must follow the commitments it made in treaties with Indian tribes (which is like 99% what would happen in reality). Would you support ignoring the courts or having some tribal lands with tribal colleges.
And even if you think courts and the rule of law is dumb are you at least sympathetic to other people thinking “yeah we should not overthrow the judiciary and honor treaties and it seems like supporting tribal colleges is pretty good at educating this otherwise underserved population that Purdue University probably isn’t expanding too soon”
I was going to make a similar comment to Brian. Clearly you are not aware of the legal status of Native American nations and how that differs from other USA minority groups. The US government has treaties and cannot and could not just "chuck them out" even if we don't like them now. There are controversies over how tribal membership is defined, but that doesn't change the fact that enrolled tribal members are citizens of their tribe and have rights and entitlements that pertain to them due to that status that were established by treaties with the US government. If we want to make changes now, they would need to be renegotiated just like we would with any other sovereign entity.
OK, can vs should. Yes, the currently administration can try to do a lot of things that break the constitution, treaties, laws, etc. It is still unclear whether they will get away with it. I hope they don't.
For "should", I believe that ultimately the rule of law is an important principle and that breaking treaties is wrong, and until the most recent administration the country was also largely governed in this way regardless of political party. The rapid erosion of this social norm is staggering.
Federally recognized tribes are autonomous political entities with their own citizenship laws: however you feel about blood quantum rules (which are very controversial and not in use by all tribes) they're no worse than the more restrictive sorts of jus sanguinis.
Should we also eliminate state universities because the idea that certain chunks of land belong to certain states is straight up jingoism? We should chuck out all non-universal governments along with slavery and D.E.I.
Okay, fine, there shouldn't be tribes or reservations or anything. I'll go with that.
Now, how do we fix it?
One way is to gradually dismantle the old institutions and while making sure that the people who rely on them can either use the existing good institutions or new institutions you create.
Another way is to whip out your dick and just start spraying at people who were relying on the old system because they weren't smart enough to predict your mental model of what would be moral.
" The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race is straight-up racism"
Reading this, I must suspect you of never having learned ANY 18th or 19th century U.S. history. That is NOT what tribal lands are or why they were established. Just for you, an abbreviated summary of the relevant bits of North American history:
1. Between 4 and 5 centuries ago, various European groups started setting the Americas. This caused some issues because the Americas already HAD lots of people living there. Sometimes they would establish friendly relationships and trade with these people. Other times they would murder them in order to take their land. Sometimes they would spread diseases to them accidentally. Other times they would spread diseases to them deliberately. A couple hundred years of this resulted in a dense concentration of European settlements along the East Coast of North America.
2. Eventually, a group of those settlements broke off from their home country of Britain and formed a new nation.
3. Over the years, that nation kept expanding westward and southward. This still caused some issues because much of the continent was still inhabited by people who weren't part of this nation, and weren't of European descent.
4. Not to be bothered by this, the colonists would threaten and often murder the inhabitants of any land they wanted so they could take it for themselves. When the displaces peoples would retaliate (or their neighbors would, believing--correctly as it turned out--that they would be next) the colonists would murder more of them.
5. This gradual but fairly continual spree of murder and theft didn't *quite* extend so far as deliberately wiping out all of the people the colonists were displacing. But of course, neither were the colonists particularly interested in having any of these people living on the *same* lands as them, because ew, no, clearly they can't do that. But being as they were (quite clearly, even to themselves) gradually heading towards occupying a large contiguous chunk of the continent, this created a conundrum. Where *should* these people-whose-land-they-were-entitled-to live?
6. The solution to this conundrum that largely won out is a policy of what would today be called "ethnic cleansing;" the previous inhabitants were removed en masse from all the land the colonists wanted. Of course, a lot of that was still done by means of murder, but some small patches of marginal land (chosen by the colonists, of course) were set aside so to allow for the less-murderous sort of ethnic cleansing where you merely force people off their land at gunpoint.
7. Fancying itself a nation of laws, the growing nation would often write down its policies towards those pieces of marginal land and their inhabitants in the form of laws or treaties. But despite the fiction of being bilateral, of course it didn't feel compelled to *keep* those polices: what a silly notion. So these patches of land sort of ended up with a status of being "self governing, except when we decide otherwise."
8. Eventually, long after this was all crystalized, some silly people started to *slowly*, *gradually* adopt the notion that a nation of laws maybe *ought* to generally stick to its laws and treaties, even in cases where it was powerful enough to break them with impunity. Though even then, it's not like they remained perfectly inviolate.
So you see, the idea that tribal lands are "special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race" is WILDLY a-historical. Unless you consider "living where we tell you in exchange for not being murdered" a "special privilege" in which case I'm not sure we have any way to communicate with one another. And the idea that these lands having this status and history is a "woke" idea is...well, let's just say I'm glad that people are so generous in offering evidence to my assertion that "woke" is a pretty meaningless word.
The status of these lands in nothing more or less than the mess the ancestors of the current U.S. polity left them with. If their ancestors had been more murderous there would be no tribal lands because there would be nobody to inhabit them. If they'd been less racist, native communities would have been integrated (forcibly, mind you) into the nation as it grew. If they'd been *less* rapacious the current U.S. would be much smaller and it would share a continent with several other nations. But none of that is changeable without a time machine. One could, of course, advance various coercive policies to change the current status quo to a different one: forcibly integrating these peoples NOW or something like that. But doing that because of a complaint that the current status quo is, uh "straight-up racism" would be...I'm not sure "hypocrisy" is a strong enough term.
"The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race "
I should note here that I'm a bit biased, since *I too* was born with special privileges and chunks of land--much bigger and better chunks than any native reservation--by virtue of the identity of my ancestors. The term for it is "U.S. citizenship." Honest question, would you consider that scheme racist? If so, what would your preferred alternative be?
(And yes, I do mean "honest question." I'm quite open to the notion that people shouldn't be given special privileges due to their circumstances of birth, as long as it's applied evenhandedly.)
Given that tribal reservations are the territory of sovereign groups, why should they not have tribal colleges? I assume you have no objection to state colleges; why should tribes not be allowed to establish colleges for their members?
even some municipalities (notably, NYC) fund public colleges! In some hypothetical situation where tribal status was completely abolished, there would still be a bunch of municipalities in the middle of nowhere, often speaking minority languages, and whose people would benefit from public education...
I used to work on auto-tagging systems at the World Bank. There were often “hot topics” people felt obligated to wedge into their reports, so one of the purposes of what we were doing was to tease out papers that were actually about “gender” or “green energy” from all the ones that just tossed the phrase in there to score points or check boxes. Everyone knew this was a thing people tended to do, not maliciously but to make their work sound more impactful by pointing out relatively minor effects. This was fifteen years ago.
I don’t really expect rigor from people generating lists like this, or expect them to care about the end product being accurate since that probably wasn’t the point and they’re immune to embarrassment. I’m just pointing out that if you did want to build a better list like this, you could probably do it a lot faster and easier than I did with some combination of existing vocabularies and AI.
In all the DOGE discourse, a line I've been hearing quite often is "while there's certainly a lot of inefficiency and waste in the Government, the executive branch isn't allowed to cut the budget for anything, only the legislature can do that".
I'm not sure if that's actually true or not, constitutionally, but if it is then it's insane. Why? Because if you rely on the legislature to figure out what budgets should be cut, then this is the quality of work that they come up with. The Legislative branch has a small number of staff. Half of them are lawyers, and the other half are secretaries. They don't have the resources to make sensible decisions about what should and shouldn't be cut, so the best they're going to come up with is some kind of bullshit find-the-keywords list like this.
I don't think Ted Cruz's staff are particularly incompetent by Congressional staff standards, I just think that this is the best you're likely to get.
So, the actual answer is much more complicated than anyone is pretending. But generally, there's two different things that are getting conflated. First there's stuff like the existence of departments, their missions and funding. The executive doesn't just get to decide 'eh, nah, let's not have an SEC,' when congress created it and provides it ongoing funding.
But, for specific things, the question of how to go about them is usually within the discretion of the executive. And especially for something like a grant program, the usual way it works is that congress appropriates X dollars for grants for some general purpose and then the agency has rules for how it will evaluate those grants and discretion in how to create those rules and which grants to fund (and, usually authority to cancel grants under some circumstances).
But, since there are usually outside parties relying on funds which have been granted/guaranteed, there's requirements that have to be followed before termination, outside fairly rare circumstances/emergencies.
Now, if Congress thinks a grant program is bad, or wants some specific thing to be barred, they can simply either not fund it next year (remember, most funding is happening on a yearly basis for ongoing programs, so they've got lots of bites at the apple for this and are already making a decision, every year, to fund it or not) or pass specific legislation adjusting what the rules for the grants are.
Note, I am not a grants officer, none of this is legal advice, just a general description of what's going on.
In addition to what EC-2021 said, deciding what the budget gets spent on is and always has been a huge part of Congress's job. If Congress doesn't have enough of the right kind of staff to do this job adequately, then one of the first things they should be spending money on is more staff.
I think the evidence so far points to DOGE not being any better. And I say that as someone whose first knee-jerk response to your comment was to think that if the budget is so large and complex that congress can't manage it, then it should be reduced until they can. So I'm very onboard with the idea that the federal government does (and there fore pays for/budgets) _far_ too many things.
I just don't buy the idea that the executive branch will do any better.
Why not? Technocrat liberals have been beating the drum about how great it would be to have well-funded professional staffers, but the problem is ideological: politicians don’t want to look like exemplars of government overspending.
A competent and well-funded legislature should absolutely be able to do most of the work, and to provide oversight where needed. It’s only the current zeitgeist that shuts it down.
Funding Congressional staff specifically is probably unpopular for the same reason that Congress voting themselves a pay raise is unpopular - it looks like self-dealing even if you actually do need the money!
(And the Congressional Research Service is pretty obscure so it's hard to make the case for how important it is for Congress.)
Counterpoint, Elon Musk has pretty much unlimited access to Federal government expertise and the ability to hire any staff he could possibly want, and he's still apparently responding to random things people on Twitter misidentify in publicly-available data. So it's not like it's a slam-dunk in that direction either.
Yeah, Elon's not stupid, so there's no way he's not being deliberately obtuse here.
With that said, I won't shed a tear for the Department of Education. The most charitable interpretation I can find for their budget allocation is that it was fuelling credential inflation.
It's not untrue to say that there's a lot of pointless and/or ideologically nefarious spending in the budgets of western governments, and it's true that a lot of the senior management in these institutions were doing an end-run around executive mandates, and it's also true that we can't go through another half-century of taxes being cut while the welfare state continues to balloon and our kids are indoctrinated into hating their own cultures.
Something like this had to happen. I just wish the cuts and firings were a bit more surgical in various areas.
(Admittedly, the left is correct that raising taxes on the top 1-10% is probably overdue and the economic gains of this group over the past half-century can't be explained purely as a function of IQ diffs. But we don't always get to pick our policies from a menu.)
The only thing that we could realistically cut to balance the budget are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense spending. The NSF is not a meaningful cost-saving target, AND the benefits of scientific research on economic growth may well make it, in aggregate, a negative saving.
Inflation-adjusted public education spending in the US has expanded by at least a factor of 4x since the 1970s, with marginal returns in terms of reading, math or science literacy, so I imagine there's quite a bit of room for trimming the fat here.
There's also no correlation between hours of schoolwork and PISA scores within the developed world, and no correlation between health spending and health outcomes. Which suggests that outcomes here are mainly driven by genetic and lifestyle factors external to the health and education systems.
Conservatives sometimes point out that the cost of *elective* surgeries have plummetted relative to the costs of public healthcare over the past 40 years or so (I think I watched a Larry Elder video on the topic at some point), so it's entirely possible that taking an axe to the OECD's health sector and just funding a basic income so people can just pay for their own doctors would greatly improve health services on net. But I'll admit to not having deep expertise on the subject.
This is part of the problem with America's system of government. The soft fusion of executive and legislative power that exists in most(?) other first world countries- Australia, UK, New Zealand, Germany, etc. is much preferable for many reasons, one of them is that reviewing extremely complex budgets and putting them through the legislature works best if the dominant faction in the legislature is in control of the executive, and hence the public service and thus can review this stuff and has the capacity for institutional governance and design.
The other good reason not to separate them is so that the public *KNOW WHO TO BLAME WHEN STUFF ISN'T GOING WELL*. In a strongly adversarial system, the party that doesn't hold executive power has an incentive to block everything and create the impression that nothing is going well- thus encouraging low-information voters to vote for the party out of power, rewarding them for their intransigence.
The separation of executive and legislature is a disaster that unfortunately happened to be a trendy idea at just the wrong point in history.
I occasionally see analogous arguments for "just have a monarchy, at least you can storm the palace when the king fucks up", but last I checked storming the palace didn't work out so hot for MAGA (or in Tianenmen Square), so I'm pretty skeptical about this approach.
I also don't see a ton of evidence that the underlying social problems here are less pronounced or were responded to in a more timely fashion in the UK or Germany.
In fact, the US has been massively more successful than Europe or anywhere else in the world. Which is why it's such a big deal that Trump and Musk are trying to fuck it all up in a way that no past president of either party has contemplated.
I think much of the Trump/Vance/Musk agenda is both urgently needed and entirely justified in terms of democratic mandate, I just get annoyed when people put forward certain autocratic/monopartisan governments as supposedly superior alternatives to division of powers.
At the same time, one should be cautious about attributing US success to it's system of government (Liberia has a virtually identical written constitution, for example.) I think the main reason why the US is wealthier than other western countries is brain drain, followed by geographic factors, and neither of those actually scales at a global level.
I agree that the US's success is not due to paper. It's due to a system of institutions, norms, and laws that took many decades to establish and which Trump and Musk are rapidly destroying.
Speaking of brain drain, if you're worried about brain drain, surely capriciously ending most science funding is the LAST thing you want to do. Even a "pause" in the grants is forcing labs to close and scientists to find other jobs, and that's not something you can just undo later, even if you want to.
Building things is hard and time consuming, while destroying can be done in an instant.
They're not wrong about the norms and institutions being ideologically corrupted. Wokeness/DEI is essentially just civil rights, which has been woven deeply into the fabric of american government for at least 50 years.
> Speaking of brain drain, if you're worried about brain drain, surely capriciously ending most science funding is the LAST thing you want to do...
Mostly I want those scientists to go back to their home countries and open labs and invent things there. (I would also like the wealthiest countries with the most talent and technology to use their resources and expertise to increase their birthrates and start *exporting* talent to the rest of the planet, which is what would happen in a sane world.)
I also thought it was a bit strange that the people deciding what to spend money on don't also decide how to do it. But I don't necessarily agree with:
>In a strongly adversarial system, the party that doesn't hold executive power has an incentive to block everything and create the impression that nothing is going well- thus encouraging low-information voters to vote for the party out of power, rewarding them for their intransigence.
For example, the Reps blocked the Dem immigration bill that might have alleviated some of the inflow of migrants, helping the Reps win and take stronger actions against migrants than the Dems would have had they won. So far, voters seem to approve, demonstrating that the block contributed to a better outcome, at least on migration
I think you are getting confused between cutting budgets vs. cutting programs.
The legislature sets the budget that they want to spend on an issue. 'We think protecting voting rights is worth $24B/year and that's how much we want you to spend on it'. The legislature gets to decide what the priorities are and how important they are in this way, teh Executive doesn't get to just say 'actually I think voting rights aren't important, I'm only going to spend $2m on it and put the rest in a sock drawer'.
However, the Executive is in charge of using that money to implement actual programs to achieve the goal, and they can cut or add or alter programs within the guidelines set by the legislature more or less as they see fit. So they can cut a program that's not working and funnel that into a more effective effort on the same topic, as long as they're ultimately pursuing the agenda and budgets set by the legislature.
What are you saying, then? Trump has to take the ~270 billion allocated to the DoEd and spend it on education some other way? How does he accomplish any actual cost-cutting?
The President can't achieve cost cutting. Congress sets the budget. It's a Constitutional crisis if the executive intentionally doesn't follow the budget that the legislature has mandated by law. This is why the federal judges are ordering that spending continue, because the rationale for cuts doesn't seem like "we think this particular program is bad so we're reassigning the money" which could be resonable, but rather a broad-strokes redirection of budgeting.
The President can make things more efficient and get better outcomes with the same money, work with legislators using the bully pulpit to get his vision of the budget passed, and veto budgets he doesn't want. But not change the law (unless the judges say he can, we'll see)
By working across the aisle with Congress, like Biden did to pass various bills that were ideologically aligned with his values. Republicans already won't impeach Trump no matter what, and he's criminally immune for most actions he will take, so he's already in the best spot for leverage.
Obviously Trump will squander this moment like when he had both houses of Congress in his first term, instead focusing on consolidating executive power for himself and engaging in unconstitutional actions like impoundment and disobeying courts.
I'm still waiting to see if Trump will deliver on mass deportations or any substantive cuts of federal spending (USAID and even the department of education are drops in the bucket, relatively speaking), so you're right that he may well squander this moment.
I'm kinda skeptical that impoundment is especially unconstitutional, though?
One should also bear in mind that many provisions within the various US civil rights acts violate constitutional principles such as freedom of association, so there's plenty of finger-pointing to go around.
The reason there are isolated instances of impoundment by Presidents throughout history is because there doesn't need to be 100% autistic adherence to laws - a functioning government is one where the branches act in good faith, reciprocate norms, and respect the power that competing branches have, sometimes engaging in minor power plays, sometimes allowing minor plays. Nixon severely abused that leeway, which is why the Impoundment Act was passed, and why every single challenge to it in court has resulted in judges and justices reiterating that without the power of the purse, Congress's laws are merely advisory to the President, which is why giving Presidents the unchecked power of impoundment completely undermines article 2 of the Constitution, and that the only way Presidents can impound funds is subject to Congress's lawmaking.
I seriously doubt your characterization of provisions in the Civil Rights Act as being unconstitutional, considering it has even longer precedence than the Impoundment Act, and has been upheld by various court rulings since its passing, like the Impoundment Act.
As a former Fed with budget authority you are wrong on that one first one. We have complete executive discretion to NOT execute the funds and simply return the budget to Treasury at end of year. Historically that was a career ender as the President expected you to execute his budget requests and agency heads hated getting grilled by Congress for not spending their money BUT as long as the President and Agency Head are willing to back you up, they can basically just refuse to execute under the guise of fraud, waste, and abuse, namely waste in this example.
If GS-11 Jane doesn't need a screwdriver, there is no law that will arrest her for not submitting a fraudulent procurement request under the FAR for a new wasteful screwdriver. People miss in practice how the budget is actually executed, one FAR request at a time tens of millions times a year. If nobody submits a request, no money is executed, as simple as that. And those requests come from the rank and file, not leadership.
I get what you mean but I think that's different from the President deciding to withhold funds or shut down agencies.
Maybe the President could fire everyone at an agency and replace them with people who don't think they agency should exist and they can all simultaneously say that they don't need any money this year thank you very much.
But AFAIK the The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 prevents the President from just withholding funds from agencies and programs he doesn't like. Or at least that such acts have to be immediately reported to Congress and the president has to abide by Congress telling him to stop it.
Correct but the President can simply direct his employees to NOT submit any procurement requests or direct the procurement approving officials to simply not approve any on pains of firing for cause under insubordination. That isn't withholding funds, that's simply doing something Presidents and Agency Heads rarely do, actually supervise and direct their subordinates.
Applying for grants at a research university is wonky at best. Challenging accepted science does not make to many friends. When I was helping with gender differentiation studies, the corner stone of research, you find hunter gather evidence every time you look. If I needed the money, it would have been to easy to add the statement ….. “which could help promote women to higher positions etc…” to almost any project
So, of the $2.05 billion awarded by the NSF during the Biden-Harris administration that Senator Ted Cruz accused of being woke, only 40% * $2.05 billion = $.82 billion was for woke programs.
This is like the finding after the release of the Venona files that only about half the large number of people that Senator Joseph McCarthy had accused of being Soviet agents were actually Soviet agents.
Yes, I suspect this is a problem that DOGE is going to run into pretty soon. Actually cutting government spending in a meaningful way is going to involve axing a lot of social programs that are not recognisably 'woke' or 'DEI' in the modern sense.
I mean we don't really know that 40% of the funding was going to wokeness or whatever. I would suspect that "non-woke" programs probably cost more money on average.
Comparing Marxism with critical social justice, it's easy to find big gaps in ideas and practices, which are papered over by right-wing publicists.
But one can also compare people. Consider sophisticated advocates of Marxism in the US in the 1920s-1960s. Think about where they tended to live, what sorts of things they majored in in university, what jobs they tended to have, how they tended to volunteer, what genres of literature they tended to read for pleasure, whether they tended to be atheists or believers, etc.
Now do the same for sophisticated advocates of critical social justice in the US today.
In terms of social class, are the sophisticated advocates for critical social justice today similar to the sophisticated advocates for Marxism back then?
I recall something Lenin said about social class in the new Bolshevik state: "The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"
No, it was primarily about the worldwide communism/capitalism fight. Which is kind of relevant here - old-style commies could be meaningfully accused of being Moscow's stooges, whereas the center of wokeness nowadays is America itself.
I can't answer this by reading the original Russian, but I can submit the following prompt to Perplexity.
>When Lenin used his famous question often shortened to "Who whom", was he talking about class conflict in territory under Bolshevik control, or about competition between the Bolshevik territory and capitalist-run countries?"
Here is Perplexity's answer. Note paragraph #2 explains what Lenin initially meant. Nothing else is relevant to the original meaning, but I include it for completeness.
>Lenin's famous question "Who whom?" (кто кого?) primarily referred to class conflict within society, but it also applied to the broader struggle between socialist and capitalist systems12.
>The phrase originated from Lenin's statement at the second All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments in 1921: "The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"2. This formulation was initially used to describe the inevitability of class struggle within society, focusing on which class would dominate the other2.
>Lenin viewed all interactions as zero-sum, with one side gaining at the expense of the other1. This perspective applied to:
> Internal class conflict: The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within Soviet society12.
> International competition: The contest between the socialist system in the Soviet Union and capitalist countries45.
>Stalin later invoked the shortened form "who whom" in 1929, giving it an "aura of hard-line coercion" and emphasizing the struggle between the Soviet Union and capitalist powers25. He framed it as a question of whether the Soviet Union would defeat the capitalists or vice versa2.
>In essence, Lenin's "Who whom?" encapsulated both internal class dynamics and the broader ideological conflict between socialism and capitalism on the world stage
The really dedicated advocate of politically muscular "anti-wokeness" as exemplified by the Musk-Trump administration does not actually believe in a unified "America" as understood by people who have positive memories of high school civics class circa 2000 or so.
They believe in what, in a moment of candor, they might call "my America, but not <i>our</i> America." A definition of 'America' which includes only themselves and the people they perceive as being willing to help them get what they want.
For the oligarchs, this means "I am actually in charge, and the only real Americans are the ones I like, with the ones I can dupe into supporting me being vaguely relevant background figures and everyone else being collateral damage waiting to happen."
For the median voter who supports this kind of thing, it means "the real Americans are me, people I think are just like me, and of course the oligarchs I trust to destroy those I am told are to blame for all my problems."
Brown people, 'uppity' women who question the social order, nerds who talk about things like global warming as if they exist, and so forth... are not actually "Americans" in the mind of the kind of person who thinks the Musk-Trump administration is doing the right thing. Not really. Not in the way that I was taught to think of the definition of 'American' back in high school civics in the twentieth century.
>The really dedicated advocate of politically muscular "anti-wokeness" as exemplified by the Musk-Trump administration does not actually believe in a unified "America"
Sure, and neither do their leftist counterparts. But both sides claim to be patriotic, in their way, and I think they're largely honest about that.
"Is this person a Soviet Agent" is a pretty objective standard: either they're sending reports back to Moscow or they're not.
"Is this program woke" is by no means an objective standard. Even from Scott's good-faith reading, it *mostly* sounds like "affiliated with the social sciences" is the main thing being selected for, with some degree of political gloss. And I say that as a hard-science person with a LONG history of rolling his eyes at social-science silliness.
Now, it's a fair question what fraction of science funding should go towards social sciences. But turning that in to a debate over a trendy and largely-meaningless political buzzword may rank among the least productive ways to do that.
Addressing "Broader Impacts" is required in most NSF grants, including in the abstract. Broadening participation in science from those traditionally underrepresented (some races/ethnicities, those with disabilities, gender in some fields) is explicitly listed as a potential Broader Impact by the NSF. This has nothing to do with Biden; it's been in place for---literally---decades. It's definitely the case that the political trends of the last ~ decade have changed the focus of Broader Impacts in some fields, but this is nothing new. It is different than that case at other federal agencies, e.g., NASA, which do not have a long history of similar considerations and added them only recently, if at all.
Someone somewhere in this thread (how TF can anyone follow such a long thread?!) mentioned examples of broader impacts like "national security" or "increased economic competitiveness" or "increased well-being". I think this is what's bothering me about this whole debate. "National security" can refer (in for example DoD) grants to actions that support Ukraine (and thus strengthen NATO) or actions that support Israel (an ally, but also possibly lead to deaths in Gaza). (Or obviously to other things besides Ukraine or Israel). We can disagree about which side we support in either of these cases, but the laudable goal of improving national security doesn't itself bother us. "Increased economic competitiveness" *can* mean in polluting industries or in sustainable industries, but the phrase itself is laudable, no problem with it. "increased well-being" of ... whom exactly? Don't worry about it, no problem. These are all seen, somehow, as apolitical. But suddenly research that promises to specifically benefit underrepresented communities is A) outside the legitimate scientific scope and B) woke and therefore bullshit, and C) automatically divisive.
*Any* broader impact will imply some political or moral choice. I don't get why DEI concerns are sillier or more ridiculous than any other type of broader impact. Because they exclude some populations and don't improve the lives of everyone? Neither do the others.
Change "women and underrepresented minorities" to "men and whites." Not a big deal, right? Because every category favors some populations over others, it's perfectly fine to favor men and whites over others.
Not fine at all. Simply what's been done for hundreds of years. And which Trump et.al. now want to go back to, because hundreds of years wasn't enough for them. If you think elimination of DEI makes everything neutral, a level playing field, that's just a very naive and ahistorical viewpoint.
Wow! That provoked quite a response! But I think your very natural emotion shows that formally favoring and disfavoring racial groups is emotionally, politically, and morally different than vaguely favoring the abstract "populations" (as you put it) related to the other categories.
I think your more honest opinion is simply "I think it is good to formally discriminate against whites and men."
Oh. I didn't feel very emotional when I wrote it. Look, I will grant you there is a tension between addressing past *and continuing* inequities and avoiding creating new ones. It is very very difficult to accomplish, but it doesn't have to be zero-sum. You think my "honest" opinion is what you say; I think your honest one is that those past and continuing inequities (where non-white, non-male people have been subjugated) just aren't very important to you, especially if you might have to give something up, anything, even the tiniest privilege. I take back what I said: It doesn't sound like you want a level playing field, rather one that's tilted in your favor. But I see from your profile that you're liking posts praising JD Vance, so I doubt we will see eye to eye on this.
To understand why all these NSF grants have that final "woke" sentence, you need to understand that NSF grant applications include a Broader Impacts section in addition to the Scientific Merit section, with broader impacts potentially being a wide range of science education (eg, involving K12 teachers) and outreach -- not just specifically woke topics. This has been the case for much longer than the Biden-Harris administration and it is unfair to blame it on them even if you disagree that Broader impacts should be a criterion, or if you think that "woke" broader impacts in particular are inappropriate. Without understanding these constraints, the abstracts for NSF grants are going to seem odd, with a seemingly unrelated broader impacts sentence at the end.
If you just search "nsf broader impacts" on google you will get a whole page explaining the reasons for this requirement.
By evaluating every proposal it receives according to its intellectual merit and its broader impacts, NSF ensures that publicly funded research has tangible benefits to society that go beyond increasing knowledge.
Some quick additional web searches reveal that broader impacts were always part of NSF, but became an actual review criterion in 1997 (the conservative 90s!).
In some way Broader Impacts were actually intended to persuade conservatives that NSF research was worthwhile (it helps American competitiveness!), so it is ironic that this is now the piece being most attacked.
Having actually submitted and reviewed NSF grants, sometimes the broader impact projects are very good and have a great impact, other times it was clearly a last minute add on and isn't likely to do a lot. However, since it is a requirement, it isn't really fair to now criticize the grant writers for just doing what NSF required.
From a fellow scientists, these two comments are actually how the system works. A lot of other comments here are misunderstanding/mischaracterizing where the woke content comes in, what it's like, and what Biden had to do with it (the answer to that last one is absolutely nothing).
Yes, and I just caught up with the other comments, still a lot of people blaming it on Biden. I tried! Alas I have no more time to spend on the comments, have to go do some real scientist things like reviewing a manuscript for a journal, writing an Introduction section for a research paper, and sending feedback to my MS student on her latest draft.... sometimes I even review NSF grants, but don't currently have one on my plate.
I have an NSF CAREER grant that's been recommended for funding. I'm waiting on the Notice of Award so I can find out if I have to fire staff in two weeks. I can't even give them two weeks' notice because I might get the money!
All of these folks cheering what's going on should spend about a minute imagining what it would be like if they had to fire a junior scientist from their team because Ted Cruz or Elon Musk Ctrl+Fed them (ahem) and decided that their grant had Bad Words in it
Oh no, that is excruciating! I can't imagine... Sending you my best wishes, hope it all works out.
I've been "joking" lately that this is the first time in my life that I have actually been happy to not have US Federal funding. I work in China part time (USA the rest), and all my funding is from here. That has its own challenges of course... but the main focus is on producing solid research and publishing it in good quality journals, which is what I want to do no matter what country I am in. I also find myself feeling lucky that I am getting old and could retire any time if things get too bad. I have a lot of sympathy for younger colleagues; it wasn't easy for me, but it is much worse now.
Hang in there! I bet your Broader Impacts are great :), as well as your Scientific Merit of course.
Thank you for the kind words :) I’m on the other side of the arc, I’m young enough that I’m wondering whether I’ll really be able to (or want to) spend the rest of my career in the US. I’m at a leading institution, so it’s hard to think about leaving. At the same time, it’s quickly becoming unclear whether the US is going to have any leading institutions in another 20 years.
It’s encouraging to hear that your experience in China is that you can focus on the research!
If people doing good research were previously adding woke disclaimers "our research will help Black and Hispanic people, women too, and especially Black trans women" under duress in order to try to get funded, now they will simply stop. This is a good thing. (Also not pictured is all the equally good research that previously wasn't funded because the grant application writers didn't bend the knee).
I agree it is good to stop from here onward. I don't think it's necessary to light a billion dollars on fire (by canceling half-done projects) in order to send the message that you're now against this kind of thing.
I agree that when previous good research wasn't funded, that was also bad.
By the way, did we ever actually establish that everyone *did* have to throw their pinch of sentimental incense to women or racial minorities in order to get their grants approved by the Biden-era NSF? In the article I seem to recall that you only looked at the specific items Ted Cruz had already singled out, and he assuredly wouldn't have gone looking for any grant proposals that LACKED that pinch of incense.
So as far as I know, it could be that up to 90% of the successful grant proposals include no such incense, which rather calls into question the proposition of "Biden made everyone sacrifice to 'wokeness' and this is very bad."
I agree that lighting a billion dollars on fire for fun isn't a good idea, but would make the following points:
- Close to half of the projects appear to already be finished, so nothing would be lit on fire there
- It is far from clear that the plan is to cancel all the listed grants. The link explicitly says "Chairman Cruz has requested significant scrutiny of awards listed in the database." Scrutiny is good. Your analysis would suggest that 40-60% of the awards should stand up to said scrutiny.
- To the extent that money hasn't been spent yet, it will be available for spending on something else (so the loss is much less than 100%). And/or the original recipients can do a few hours work to reapply without the woke language.
Add these three together and the stakes are likely dramatically smaller.
Iirc, you've also noted previously the dominance of tit-for-tat strategies. If one side completely corrupts a process for ideological ends, "ok, back to normal from now" leaves the original wrongdoing unpunished. There's no incentive to not immediately do the same next time. Some level of punishment for those who did this and benefitted from doing so is probably optimal.
Also, on a personal note. I'm a researcher. I've refused to bend the knee and add nonsense woke stuff to grant applications. I've had pointless bureaucratic administrators add months of delay because of insistence of adding woke things to studies. I must admit I have limited sympathy to those who increased their chances of winning grants by caving to this stuff (if more of them had refused, it would not have spread through the system so easily).
So what got the pointless bureaucratic administrators to drop their demand that you add woke features to studies? In my experience it is pointless to talk to bureaucrats about what's fair and sensible, because they don't reference those concepts when making decisions. The reference the rules.
I'm not inclined to go into too much detail (anonymity, sorry), but in very general terms:
- bureaucrats are apparently fond of adding criteria that are not actually stated in the rules, they are just their crazy reinterpretation of said rules. (A good example of this is Title VI - for 60 years there has been a law stated by congress that very clearly said "universities that take federal funding can't discriminate based on race in anything they do" which university administration decided to interpret as "but actually, we really want to, so we can"). Still, as you say, you're still fighting with *them* about *their* crazy interpretation of said rules, so redress is limited in the very short term.
- you can imagine a situation where (to be able to measure something you want to measure) you want to ask question A. The bureaucrat decides they don't like this, and says you have to ask A' instead. (In this case, A' was not merely some woke formulation, it also would not capture the same thing, and thus would have yielded useless data).
- They might be able to stop you from asking A, but they probably can't make you do A', you can likely choose to do neither. (Which of course is bad. They've actively made the research less informative).
In my neck of the woods, SMALL grants under the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) have so far allowed me to avoid forced DEI documents in the form of Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC, which is very different than the standard "Broader Impacts" section of a proposal), see:
BPC has also been pushed at department level by NSF and CRA, where creating committees to establish department-wide BPC documents is common. It's been revised recently, likely due to the recent EO, but see:
The last time I (politely) raised concerns about compelling our department's faculty members to participate in BPC activities (tying it to to the annual-review process), I was called a racist. I still managed to nix this stuff after working with a couple fellow faculty members, but it was stressful, time-consuming (on top of my normal job obligations), and at least one colleague won't talk with me anymore.
Anyway, we didn't police ourselves well, and now we get the backlash. Sure, it'd be great to avoid collateral damage (e.g., potential, massive cuts to the NSF's budget), but in my opinion anyone expecting a nuanced response after a decade (?) of DEI bullying is delusional.
If Congress does not repeal or amend Title 42, which (as several scientists have observed) actually requires NSF grant applicants to discuss the broader societal impacts of their work, or a court case does not rule said law unconstitutional, then nobody has stopped anything. They are just still running the election instead of running the country.
There’s confusion about whether NSF grants with “DEI language” are getting canceled. They aren’t—at least not right now. A federal court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that the DOJ says applies to all NSF awards, so funds are still flowing.
However, we’ve been told to comply with new Executive Orders regarding DEIA content. In my own NSF grant, that basically means I’m scrapping the local high-school panel I had planned at an upcoming career day. If you want details, here’s the TRO: (https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/TRO-NY-v-Trump-1.31.25.pdf).
Basically the best solution is now in practice--the real science still gets done and the DEI stuff gets skipped.
"Also not pictured is all the equally good research that previously wasn't funded because the grant application writers didn't bend the knee"
Evidence that this exists?
I'm aware that the oh-so-edgy "bend the knee" phrasing makes it sound like a heroic act of defiance. But I'm extremely skeptical that anyone who thinks not inserting a throwaway sentence or two into their grant applications is a worthwhile hill for their time and effort to die on is capable of producing any worthwhile research anyway. And that skepticism has nothing at all to do with the political valence of the throwaway sentences: this sort of silly cultural baggage exists in a great many contexts (yes, some of them right-coded) and being unable or unwilling to navigate it seems like a pretty crippling weakness in almost any collaborative context.
>But I'm extremely skeptical that anyone who thinks not inserting a throwaway sentence or two into their grant applications is a worthwhile hill for their time and effort to die on is capable of producing any worthwhile research anyway.
If someone's willing to pander in a grant application, she's probably not amazingly devoted to the truth, which devalues any reports she produces.
"If someone's willing to pander in a grant application, she's probably not amazingly devoted to the truth"
Wow. This is...this is one great big ol' disconnect here. I think if someone uttered this sentence to my face I would have laughed out loud. Either you and I live in VERY different worlds or this is QUITE the isolated demand for rigor.
In my world, people who are that level of "amazingly devoted to the truth" go off and find a comfortable cave to live as hermits. Not necessarily because "hermithood" is the best way they can possible pursue the truth, but because they have literally no other job prospects. None.
Personally, I am made of much more cowardly stuff. When I'm having a holiday meal with my extended family and somebody says grace, I don't pipe up with a long-winded explanation of why *clearly* God does not exist. When somebody working a customer service job tells me to "have a nice day" I don't reply with "you clearly don't care about what kind of day I have, so kindly drop the pretense." On the few occasions that I worked such jobs, I didn't tell people "I don't care at all what sort of day you have, and won't think about you ever again once you walk out the door." When I'm writing cover letters for a job application, I talk up my strengths and decline to mention my more embarrassing moments: I certainly don't *lie* mind you, but anybody who doesn't realize a cover letter is 95% pandering (with the remaining 5% being your contact info) has QUITE a set of blinders on.
Don't get me wrong, the truth is very important. Sticking up for the truth CAN be one of the most important things you ever do, if you have halfway-decent judgement. But the sort of person who would decide to Take a Brave and Noble Stand for the Truth when they're filling out bullshit paperwork certainly can't have got the education to do worthwhile science in any case: they can't even have got the education to move out of their parents' basement (not until they find a decent cave anyway).
I feel tangentially obligated to nitpick that, as a retail grunt, some of us do actually care about whether you're having a nice day (even after you've left the store). Customer-facing stuff is, uh, not my strong area, but the same autist tendencies also drive towards optimization...so honest to God* I still ruminate now and then about times I fucked up bigly and made a customer's experience worse, years ago. Gotta do better! It's true that this is an outlier, and stereotypes of disinterested retail exist for a reason...but I'm sorry nonetheless that you've been soured into cynicism from shitty (dis)service. Not enough followers of Abadar to go around, these days.
(It's true though, anyone who can't at least even pretend to try to care about others is gonna have a hard time getting and staying hired in such jobs. I'd like to think my employer is a bit more discerning at picking out higher quality sociopaths. We Have Standards Here, damnit.)
If her research topic is infected with a bunch of woke concepts she doesn’t even think are valid, then yeah that’s pandering. if it’s on cancer or other things unrelated to Woke, then why isn’t sticking in a token woke sentence about how treating this cancer will benefit minorities in the same category as Mozart flattering his patron?
There is no evidence that you would accept. Any proposals that were rejected for not including it (which, yes, I DO think is "a heroic act of defiance"), you would simply declare it's because the people applying were too stupid to produce what you would consider "worthwhile research."
I second the interpretation that this guy you are responding to is not interested in evidence, and would not accept any that is provided. When you start with "anyone who would oppose this and not cave out of personal integrity can't do good research" I don't think you're actually engaging in good faith.
Why not share what evidence you have, and even if it doesn't satisfy the person you're replying to, it might satisfy or at least influence other readers?
At no point in my life have I ever believed that either illness or unemployment made a person worthless or inferior. In fact, I rather strongly believe that your personal struggles deserve support, compassion and understanding, as do everyone's.
But for all that, I'm not above mentioning pretty staggering irony here. Do you see it? It's not subtle. Here you being on my case because my (apparently) my honest framing of the issue was not woke enough for you. Beautiful.
I've made it quite clear that I don't want to talk to you, so your whining about respect is pretty hollow. I suppose I'll probably have to just block you, since you're either unable or unwilling to abide by that boundary.
Oh I think Im the sane one and I could easily find some offensive political memes that ive reshared would get me fired from my jobs in current year that would (probably) make ya hate me
I tend to have a low tolerance for bullshit, its not going well for me; I want to put you to make an uncomfortable choice; Im not usually called stupid, either Im being kicked out for my socail failing and thats worth it or the system suck and it shouldnt
When you filter for anything beside meritocracy, you will lose some amount of talent. Make your choice, is it worth it to you?
"When you filter for anything beside meritocracy, you will lose some amount of talent. Make your choice, is it worth it to you?"
YES! Emphatically, resoundingly, unquestionably yes. A thousand times yes. It is EXTREMELY worth it. It wouldn't even be possible to MAKE such a choice in a world that filtered purely on "talent" because such a world could never have anything as elaborate as a university, a corporation or a nation-state.
In case the point is lost on you, THE most important power humans have is our power of *working together.* Nothing in our lives would be possible without it. Even if it were possible to filter *purely* for talent, no organization of any size could possibly function that way. Talent is very important in many fields, but you are generally MUCH better off with people who are merely *very talented* but also capable of working well with others than finding more talented[1] people who can only work well alone. Science is a collaborative endeavor. So are most other things humans do.
If I'm reading him right, then, none of this has to do with the POLITICAL right or left.
Let me say clearly that I don't think not working well with others is a moral failing of any stripe and I genuinely want to build a world where people who with that deficit can live comfortable and fulfilling lives. But basic social skills still need to be a very high priority for any sort of practical endeavor.
[1] But usually only slightly more, because when you're already on the far-right (EDIT: as in "far in the positive direction" nothing to do with left-right in the political sense) end of the distribution, moving even further right is quite costly.
> But usually only slightly more, because when you're already on the far-right end of the distribution, moving even further right is quite costly.
Not really; it truely is insufferable to be inside the politically correct bubble. The trade off of facists posting videos of accidental suicides, (got to say my least favorite genre of gore posting) is easily worth it. I love untethered arguments and how they do just.... resolve; compared to the drama of elsewhere.
"Anyone who thinks differently to me on this issue is incapable of doing good research, and reveals themselves unable to work in collaborative environments" says area man who goes on to accuse others of "character attacks".
I'm not quite sure what else someone insisting that I definitely won't evaluate the evidence (that they haven't actually provided) could be.
As for the rest, put up or shut up. If your position has merit, you'll be able to support it with something more than bad-faith summaries of others' responses. Show me some of this potentially-excellent research that isn't getting funded.
Well, yes. That's exactly my point. Suppose you're doing good research and you need a grant to continue it. You apply for the grant. The directions for applying say "The application should include a statement that says X."
Even if you firmly believe ¬X, is "sticking up for the truth" on one line of a grant application that nobody beside the grant committee is ever going to read the most important thing you should be doing? Or is following the directions and getting your grant and continuing your research MORE important? Do you want to die on the hill of never, ever saying "X" even in a stupid context where the statement costs you nothing and the refusal costs you everything? Or do you want to keep your eyes on the prize of getting your research done?
Note that I am NOT taking a position here on whether "The application should include a statement that says X" is a reasonable part of the grant application. It may be, it may not be (it depends on both what X actually is, and the wider context). But even for X where it isn't it is *usually* a pretty damn easy requirement to meet. So I'm very skeptical that there is any substantial number of otherwise-good scientists whose careers have been derailed by such a requirement.
What about scientists who aren't politically savvy enough to know about the shibboleths they need to say to not be committing "A HEROIC ACT OF DEFIANCE!" Must navigating woke politics be a required skill for unrelated scientific research?
That is QUITE a different question. The original was asking "what about people who know what the grant requirements are and refuse to follow them on principle?" You're asking "what if the grant requirements are unclear and some otherwise good scientists don't understand them?"
To be as clear as possible: I am NOT taking any position on whether the current requirements are either clear or reasonable. But if the main issue somebody has with the requirements are "they require applicants to write some silly things that don't perfectly reflect their beliefs," that is an *incredibly* tiny, silly, unimportant issue. "The requirements are unclear to the point some good applicants fail to meet them" is potentially a much more serious issue. But really we *should* be bringing in actual evidence before discussing *either issue.*
I’m fairly sure they *won’t* “simply stop”. Instead they will try to guess what the new political correctness is, and add sentences like “make America great” into unrelated research about blood cell proteins or whatever. There will be new knees bent, and they will be ones that understand that their funding can’t be saved by doing science, but only by being politically correct.
I find it plausible that phrases like "restore American dynamism" and "strengthen American resolve" and "keep the US ahead of its great-power competitors" will become common in applications that have something to do with national competitiveness, which can include many aspects of health.
But I find it implausible that they will become common in applications that have nothing to do with national competitiveness. And I find it implausible that a shibboleth like "make America great" will become common in any sort of application.
If Musk stays in charge of the country for long enough to affect a round or two of grant applications, everyone will quickly learn what words the grant boards are looking for and put them in.
This (or at least the meaningful version*) is one of the most ridiculous predictions I have ever heard. I would be stunned if in 4 years time American academia is broadly considered to be "more hospitable to conservatives than progressives, to favour whites and males and conservatives in hiring / promotions / grant applications at the expense of equally capable women / minorities / progressives, to police normie left wing speech more aggressively than normie right wing speech and so forth".
If you really believe this, you should make a public bet with someone.
* 4 years later: "look, I can find one person who put some right coded language in a grant application, while ignoring that academia continues to be broadly intolerant of and inhospitable to conservative speech, ideas and people. I win." If that's your motte, you've already admitted the critique of universities is correct.
My claim isn’t that the political persuasions of academics will change. My claim is rather that they will just have a much stronger and harsher set of language police to deal with, requiring them to say even more things they don’t believe in to get funding (because at least some of them believed the old words they were putting in, while this time very few of them will and it will entirely be political virtue signaling).
The old set of language police, whatever their faults, didn't try to freeze all funding on their first week in office until they had been satisfied it wasn't going to anything they disagreed with.
1) The grant's call for applications often has a *requirement* that you do something to promote diversity or something.
2) I'm curious as to whether there is a correlation between grant size and wokeness. You've established that there are probably about 500 woke grants on the list, but do they actually account for $250M? If the woke garbage grants are for less money on average it could be substantially less than that (or more if they are more money on average).
3) I'm not sure that Cruz actually would consider this a failure. The point is to be PR. Saying that you found 3400 grants totaling $2B is much better PR than saying you found 500 totaling $250M, and how many people are actually going to check your work?
This situation sucks, but I'm less sympathetic to the scientists than you are. If you include some weasel words in your grant proposals to try to trick politicians and bureaucrats into thinking your research is woke when it actually isn't you can't really complain when politicians and bureaucrats think your research is woke when it isn't (even if hypothetically you did a poor job).
I wrote some grant proposals in a past life. It's very common to shoehorn in something that the grantor wants - not even necessarily related to anything "woke". It's just part of the nature of grant writing.
I also did this. Should note that it's often an admin lady or intern who adds these "weasel words" to increase their chances, not the scientists themselves.
See the comment above you - "The grant's call for applications often has a *requirement* that you do something to promote diversity or something."
I don't think scientists should be morally required to give up and go into a different field just because people demanded some weasel words about diversity before approving grants.
Yeah, I get it. I'm not blaming scientists for playing the game they were forced into, but the indignation about Ted Cruz misrepresenting studies as woke when they aren't seems pretty unreasonable. He isn't the one doing that, they are. Interpreted in that light, the tweet you cited seems particularly obnoxious:
This is literally his job now. Is it too much to expect him to be vaguely familiar with what the rules and practices were before a month ago? I just flat out don’t buy he can be this ignorant, and don’t accept it as a credible excuse.
Yup. Lots of johnny come latelies on this DEI topic who are prepared to say DEI is bad, but seemingly only now that they've decided its a vote loser for Dems. Until then, it was put up and shut up and let those who disagreed be tarred and feathered. I'm glad they're finally not afraid to speak up, but frankly, exactly why should their advice be taken particularly seriously now? When it mattered, they weren't prepared to speak the truth.
As much as I harp about the disinformation board being a major black mark on the Biden admin's intent, they did indeed wrap it all up because enough people complained and enough people blocked it in court.
Scientists are not generally selected for bravery, though, and most people are very bad at pushing back when it might hurt their wallet.
The longstanding Broader Impacts criterion, predating Biden, has been explained to you, why do you keep framing it as solely requiring 'weasel words about diversity'?
IIRC you are a psychiatrist by profession, yes? Have you ever applied for an NSF or NIH grant?
It's not about tricking politicians and bureaucrats. I have evaluated grants (not these specifically, but others), and there are rubrics that you follow based on the RFP (request for proposal). If the RFP has listed DEI stuff, the rubric will have a section on it. To improve your chance at success you should find someway, however tangential, to give yourself a shot at not getting a 0 on that section.
Side note: I understand why it's there, but I would love if the entire section on broader impacts went away. Let proposers focus on the science they actually know, and not waste time speculating on how it might have beneficial knock-on effects down the line.
>I would love if the entire section on broader impacts went away. Let proposers focus on the science they actually know, and not waste time speculating on how it might have beneficial knock-on effects down the line.
Agreed! My career was in the private sector, but we sometimes had loosely analogous weasel words sections, and, at best they wasted the time and effort to misconstrue what we were actually doing, and at worst they diluted the focus on the actual work.
> The project also aims to integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program.
> a Hispanic-serving institution and the lead site for the center
> The planned studies will provide opportunities to train engineering and biomedical science students who work collaboratively through highly interdisciplinary (engineering, molecular biology, virology and pharmacology) research studies and will enhance ongoing education and outreach activities focused on attracting underrepresented minority groups into these areas of research.
Do you specifically want scientists to be considering the impact their words might have on politicians egos when writing their grants or not? If you don’t, then you shouldn’t punish them for including words that hurt politicians egos - you should just stop punishing them for saying words that hurt different politicians egos.
This is too 10000ft view. If you want to prevent scientists from "considering the impact their words might have on politicians egos" you have to change the rules that forced them to do that in the first place. The transition is what is causing the current issues, not the end state Ted Cruz is pursuing. I don't necessarily agree with the way he is going about it, but the things he is being blamed for seem a little illogical.
> The transition is what is causing the current issues
...because the change to the rules is bad and wrong. It should have been "you no longer have to include the magic words", not "you must never include the magic words". The point here is that the latter is just as bad as requiring the magic words was.
I disagree, I don't think making up a fake social benefit should be permitted in grant writing. A better transition would be "you can no longer include the magic words, but existing grants are grandfathered in", but the problem with that is that some grants are genuinely woke enough that is a legitimate reason to want to suspend them and the current issue stems from failure to classify the two cases.
Dumb question and don't want to make more work for you, but were there cost differences between the actually woke and the non-woke categories? Were 40% of the grants == to 40% of the costs for the woke?
I too am interested in this question. My baseline is that woke stuff took less than 40%, because real science is expensive and woke outreach is not real science and is cheap. But that could easily be wrong.
In my experience, PIs put little effort and very little of their funds into their Broader Impacts activities for NSF. Usually almost all the funds go to science (equipment and salaries). For example, a common Broader Impact is to do a science outreach project like a science fair; in this situation, the current lab PI and students will spend some of their time on the science fair, but it is a small percentage, and no one is hired just for the science fair. So unless the grant is specifically for a "woke" purpose, I'd say no more than 10%, sometimes as low as 0%.
They could have gone even further. Besides for refusing all grant applications with "woke" markers, they could even preferably approve grants to those with "anti-woke" sentences. Grantees would be gambling on the election outcome if they put in a sentence from either side. Much like "wrong side of history" stuff, revenge against people who gave lip service to your opponents is a tactic that can work.
Of course, in this case, two factors should override this:
1. People *hate* this stuff. The requirements were part of what caused left's downfall. Punishing performative submission to the other side isn't *as* bad, but it's still likely very unpopular.
2. Gaining a handful of culture war points *isn't actually as important* as the actual science being done. Grant proposals are a terrible place to use as a culture war battlefield. It would be better for the right to just give in on this. Some people would keep adding woke sentences just in case, but it would slowly drop in frequency. People would be grateful.
> Some people would keep adding woke sentences just in case,
That's precisely what this whole thing is meant to stop. Your proposal might be fine if you expect the current policies to prevail forever (or at least for many decades), but if your expected time with power is ~8 years, ruthlessly punishing anyone adding in those sentences HELPS everyone who doesn't want to have to: making everyone conform to your new directives stops the other guys from retaliating against those who did when the return, even if only by favoring those who didn't "just in case."
'Our research on cancer cures will advance the state of the art in the field to where it is more difficult for inferior minds to comprehend, thus discouraging women and minorities from entering STEM education.'
That would require Ted Cruz to act in good faith, which he never does.
The point of this list wasn't to provide a thoughtful review of NSF grant making. It's just a hyper-partisan attempt to score points. These guys do not care if what they are saying is true, false, exaggerated, whatever. They just want to make noise.
I agree with @Gabriel. I'm not an American, but I'm guessing Ted Cruz (or his team) is not *really* unaware that his list contains both woke and genuinely non-woke research proposals. It's more likely that he added all of them together to get a nice, sensationalist *OMG DEMS GAVE $2 BILLION TO THE WOKES!!* headline, the same way that moderate Democrats and Republicans are often vilified by Bernie/AOC supporters as stooges to The Billionaires and The Corporations.
The bigger issue with all this is the descent into populism on both sides of the aisle. I'm an Indian, and it has been India's lived experience that when politicians are allowed by voters to descend into populism and vitriolic identity politics, it is the the voters and regular citizens that increasingly become disempowered economically and politically.
Ultimately, both the Dems and the Republicans are using taxpayer money to behave like spoiled trust fund kids, and I appreciate your efforts to call them out on this.
He can also ask staffers to make the largest list they can plausibly justify, so that he can announce a big number when describing how much 'junk woke science' Biden was funding and he is destroying.
Which is the thing that helps his political career.
Except ISTM Ted Cruz has identified wokeness and Scott has mis-identified it.
Wokeness isn’t e.g. ’this proposal will benefit this minority group, e.g. because it will cure a disease which particularly affects one ethnic group.’ I, and I imagine Ted Cruz, would be in favour of that.
Wokeness is e.g. benefiting minority groups is the only way we value things and therefore even proposals that don’t substantially benefit minorities have to pretend to do so.
But these grants are full of all kinds of explanations of how their project will benefit all of the everything, not just minority groups. If wokeness is *ONLY* valuing things insofar as they benefit minorities, then we have construed wokeness narrowly enough that these grants don't really qualify.
Except, perhaps, the "study how university policy affects distinct sub-categories of black students," which I guess is 'woke' if the object of the game is to never think again about how university policy affects black people.
It's not just that scientists include things about how our work could help minorities in order to pass some Biden-era DEI filter. It's that discussing the Broader Impacts of the research you're proposing -- including how it's going to help minorities -- has been required by law of every grant since 1980. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Biden, except in the sense that Biden didn't push to change this law.
The Foundation shall apply a broader impacts review criterion to identify and demonstrate project support of the following goals:
(1) Increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States.
(2) Advancing of the health and welfare of the American public.
(3) Supporting the national defense of the United States.
(4) Enhancing partnerships between academia and industry in the United States.
(5) Developing an American STEM workforce that is globally competitive through improved pre-kindergarten through grade 12 STEM education and teacher development, and improved undergraduate STEM education and instruction.
(6) Improving public scientific literacy and engagement with science and technology in the United States.
(7) Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.
This. And the grants in the non-woke and sorta-woke categories that only had a sentence about STEM diversity or such were not including it as an aside. They would have had a page or so (out of 15) that explained in detail what they were planning to do in this area, as part of the congressionally-established STEM workforce diversity option for broader impacts.
In my experience as a proposal writer and reviewer, you can probably assume an average of 2% of the total award funds would be devoted to such activities, which would be easily separable from the rest of the research.
What is your view of whether that part of the law is sensible? My career was in the private sector and when something loosely like this kind of side project was imposed, it cut into the focus on the main task. Maybe a 100,000 person company can have side projects with people devoted full time to them in a sensible way, but my (vague) impression is that research teams are too small for that.
The purpose of the law is not to add side projects, it’s to make scientists justify how their research will benefit the public. The list above just gives ways scientists might justify that. It doesn’t always take the form of side projects, and in my experience both as grantee and reviewer, grants are much more likely to get funded if the Broader Impacts are well integrated into the science itself, rather than just being a side project.
The reason this became law at all was due to scientifically illiterate congresspeople glancing at a grant for two seconds and raising hell about those dang scientists studying what fruit flies are attracted to. They made scientists have to justify how what they are studying could benefit the public. The irony of this now being the locus of “woke” is hopefully obvious.
>in my experience both as grantee and reviewer, grants are much more likely to get funded if the Broader Impacts are well integrated into the science itself, rather than just being a side project.
That makes sense.
>The reason this became law at all was due to scientifically illiterate congresspeople glancing at a grant for two seconds and raising hell about those dang scientists studying what fruit flies are attracted to.
Yeah. I remember Proxmire doing this. One of his "awards" was for a study of Peruvian potatoes. I don't know much about botany, but even _I_ know that if you want to look for potentially useful genes for a domesticated species, looking at the strains and wild relatives in place where it was first domesticated is a good bet.
I'm somewhat uncomfortable that the "Broader Impacts" are getting analyzed and justified at the granularity of individual grants. This sounds like the sort of analysis that should be done at a coarser level (e.g. "advance biology of cancer" or "advance physics of superconductors") with the broad justification done at the coarser level and the analysis of individual grants done with a tight focus on the scientific merit (exceptions for projects which are _specifically_ liaison efforts).
I think that’s a reasonable idea, but it requires a world in which taxpayers and politicians trust scientists not to waste money and don’t make them justify each thing they want to do to non-scientists. It looks like we’re moving away that world rather than towards it.
Every scientist has always complained about the “broader impact” and “outreach” portions of grants. Funding or killing projects because of them will make scientists waste even more time on them.
"Every scientist" is not overburdened by thrse requirements and they are generally not a time sink. A large percentage of flagship research institutions have public outreach organizations that work to support broader impact requirements. Stated plainly, these are "plug and play" programs that interact with undergraduate, high school, or middle school students. Speaking first hand, this is how STEM professionals keep the next generation excited about being I STEM, and many actually like seeing the general public being excited about their work.
As Scott pointed out in the examples from the database, it's including a sentence at the end of the abstract or single page that is copied and pasted in each grant application.
This whole culture war on woke is such a waste of time and energy. What the he'll is neo-marxism anyways? It sounds like political word salad for the shallow minded.
Many Thanks! Yeah, it makes sense to have _separate_ outreach organizations. The skill set to advance a scientific field, and to explain what one is doing to others _in the field_ is different from the skill set to explain all the links back to the top level goals that the public cares about and understands.
Is it sensible to occasionally make a special effort to attract women and minorities to science and engineering? Sure, to the extent that it's a countermeasure to peer/teacher pressure in high school that says women can't do math.
Is it sensible to encourage scientists receiving federal funding to do things that advance broader societal goals that they are uniquely able to accomplish? Sure.
Would I rather be able to just spend taxpayer money on whatever I thought was most important? You bet!
As another commenter noted, it's not* going to be a significant diversion of effort unless the lead investigator wants it to be, in which case they're doing something they want to do anyway.
*The exception would be federal grant programs that require a significant effort as a condition of the program. I personally think federal grant managers often bake too many constraints into their funding programs. I understand why they do it: they want to help shape science in a way that will do the most good and meet the most urgent needs (and also so they can tell Congress "look at these great initiatives we've developed").
But I prefer minimal constraints, for the benefit of science in general. I think ten scientists proposing their own best idea and plan is better than ten scientists proposing their best idea for tackling a pre-specified class of problems in a pre-specified way.
>But I prefer minimal constraints, for the benefit of science in general. I think ten scientists proposing their own best idea and plan is better than ten scientists proposing their best idea for tackling a pre-specified class of problems in a pre-specified way.
Agreed.
> I personally think federal grant managers often bake too many constraints into their funding programs.
That is my impression as well. I am concerned that, even if just 2% of the funds for a scientific research project go towards, e.g. minority outreach, I'd expect it to chew up a considerably larger fraction of time than just the 2%. Context switching eats time. Maintaining records for very different sets of activities eats time.
I also wouldn't expect the skills needed to drive a specialized STEMM area forward to have much of a match with e.g. minority outreach.
Being a professor is ALL context switching. Doing research, teaching a class, answering emails, answering questions from students, attending a meeting, reviewing a paper, is par for the course FOR A SINGLE DAY. Minority outreach at worst replaces a distraction rather than adding one.
This sounds like what Scott said about his history homework; they were all supposed to put in a reflection on how they did the homework and what they had learned, and they all dutifully included how they had consulted various sources and learned about the complexity etc. etc. but in reality they just cribbed everything off Wikipedia.
>Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.
Notably, women *haven't* been underrepresented in STEM for a few decades now, depending how you cut the borders. Wildly overrepresented in everything biology-adjacent, underrepresented in math-adjacent.
The Broader Impacts get especially silly for pure math research. It would be within the NSF's rights to say "No, we will not fund math research with no known practical applications", but instead the status quo seems to be: yes you can get funded, but you must claim you are going to do K12/public/URM outreach at some point. Meanwhile, many math researchers are introverts who would really rather not do such a thing.
Of course, sometimes you can twist things. There's an old joke about a mathematician who submitted a grant proposal "Annihilating Radical Left Ideals", a topic in pure algebra that happens to sound like you're fighting communism.
Correct me if Im wrong, but this seems to require that grants aim at at least one of these ends, but not necessarily all of them. In the grant excerpts above, it seems that the scientists specifically chose to mouth the woke language, probably because they believed it was easiest or most effective. I think it's perfectly fair to incentive scientists to choose one or more of the other "broad goals" instead of the woke one.
Scott, you talk a lot about how policing the language police is important. Because losing words to them is the beginning of some sort of woke oppression. In that sense, while the non-woke studies should proceed, it might be useful to have them submit an appeal without the woke flair. That will discourage others from sprinkling woke nonsense in their abstracts, effectively liberating the scientific rhetoric from it.
Do you want to police language or not? It sounds like this is just replacing one language police “you must include one of the following words” with the other “you must not include any of the following words”. Both are equally bad. But canceling people for doing the wrong one is even worse than failing to get people started working.
You bring a good point. I do think the woke enforcement of rules operates differently. There aren't hard rules, but you get cancelled if you break them. That's part of the annoyance. One has to be constantly walking on eggshells and double thinking before communicating. Explicit forbiddance is not a better solution, but I'm not sure it's necessarily less harmful.
🤷🏿♂️ maybe it's just because I'm a silly lib, but my assumption with all this stuff (extending to DOGE and beyond) is that they're intentionally shooting from the hip and have no issue with demonizing/shutting down things that are either borderline woke or not woke at all. Maybe similarly, Elon is claiming "fraud" about all kinds of govt activity that he doesn't like, regardless of whether there's fraud or not (my understanding is that he hasn't uncovered any real fraud at all, but if I'm wrong I hope someone lets me know).
We don't know the import of what he has 'uncovered' because none of it is reported with context. Or, in many cases, evidence. You can bray about some cringey 'line items' in a USAID accounting but unless you have a sense of *all* the expenditures and amounts in a year of USAID operation, it's just cherry picking. And you can be sure Elon won't release that , just as he didn't put the supposedly damning internal Twitter texts showing Biden 'censorship' of social media during COVID ( a story that Taibbi, Weiss, Greenwald ran with breathlessly) in context of *all* the messaging between them, which would have diluted the nefariousness angle considerably. (Another example: during the Obama era the GOP went full berserk when it emerged that the understaffed IRS was using heuristics -- keywords , like Musk is using now on grants -- to try to identify tax exempt nonprofits that were engaging in political activity. A limited tranche seemed to show targetting of right-wing groups, but examining the full range of the operation showed that left-wing groups were being targetted as well)
I think the clear solution here is to make sure everybody explains in future grant proposals how butch their science is and how it promotes traditional values.
(Note for future readers - at the time this would have read as sarcasm.)
I don't think it's fair to just wave this away as "they were just playing the game by including woke shibboleths in their grant applications". I don't think it's good or should be acceptable for woke shibboleths to matter to a grant application, and any study funded by playing the game this way should absolutely be looked at. They got four years to benefit from this advantage over the alt-right fascist studies who forgot to include the one sentence about benefitting minorities, and now the pendulum swings the other way.
Here's the thing: the presence of this shibboleth says *nothing* about the politics of the grant applicants. Academics without tenure have to put up with this shit or leave academia. Those are the only two options. I doubt you consistently demand such purity tests in other domains.
No, they didn’t get four years of this. It’s been decades of gradually requiring more, starting at least with the Reagan administration requiring statements of broader impact. If the point is to end the language policing and cancel culture, you don’t do that by canceling people equally and oppositely - you do that by stopping the pendulum altogether and eliminating the broader impact statement.
This seems like the least surprising failure mode imaginable. I can't quite claim to have predicted this in advance, since reading the headline of this post is the first I'd heard of said database. But to anyone who has paying a smidgeon of attention to how conservatives use and interact with the word "woke," it would be incredibly surprising to see any other outcome.
I wish I could say I expect this to be the crucial update that pushes you towards some long-overdue skepticism towards using "woke" as a word and as a concept, but alas I doubt it will happen. There *are* genuinely bad things that get associate with the word, and you *are* reasonable for pushing back against those things, and as long as there's a convenient handle it will still be easy enough to ignore the misuses of the term (which in the event, is *most* of the uses, as you have seen).
But I hope you'll at least take this opportunity to update on your view of the present government. Yes, it would have been easy to avoid this, for most people. They aren't most people. The sort of people who run the mental algorithms you're running here, where you actually look at the content and think about the effects and make a real effort to get it right: those aren't the people working on these things. Trump is, in fact, going to quite a bit of effort to get rid of people like that. The notion that the current administration was ever, EVER going to take the time (yes, even a few hours) to try to *understand* the things they were aiming to destroy of was not that plausible to begin with: still holding it after the last month seems ludicrous in the extreme.
> try to *understand* the things they were aiming to destroy
Why bother trying to understand anything? "Destroy all the things, look through the smoking rubble, rebuild those bits that in retrospect turn out to have been loadbearing" is what people voted for.
I disagree. Wokeness is basically a real thing, it’s bad, it’s good that the administration wants to reduce it, but it’s bad that they have such a high false positive rate. The problem can thus be summarized pretty straightforwardly.
If progressives want to be effective against the current administration, they have to give up on wokeness and stop trying to find ways to salvage it. That’s the surest way to undercut the admin’s raison d’etre.
Do you have a coherent definition of "wokeness" that allows you to make this assertion so confidently? Specifically, one that encapsulates all of what "anti-woke" people complain about, while still being self-evidently bad? I'd love to see it if so, I've been looking for one.
In the past week, I have heard that believing in anthropogenic global warming is woke, wishing to send aid to foreigners is woke, having a black actor play Captain America is woke, and that the KC Chiefs are woke. How many of these things fall under your definition of wokeness?
I’ve seen almost every bad thing - or thing the speaker or writer dislikes - included under the umbrella of socialism or fascism. I don’t think this implies those don’t exist. Yes, in politics, once a term develops a strong negative or positive connotation its use tends to expand dramatically. This isn’t proof it never existence.
I’m a bit incredulous that anyone who follows American politics is sincere when they say they don’t have an idea what it means.
I'm not arguing that wokeness exists, but to be honest, when I hear someone use it, I often don't know what it's referring to. So when you say "give up on wokeness and stop finding ways to salvage it", would that include PEPFAR? For e.g. Richard Hanania it wouldn't, for many of the people in his comment section it would.
In the context of this discussion, I don’t think it’s that difficult to get an idea of what it means. Basically affirmative action in grants or grants for research that promotes this worldview.
I also don’t think the false positives in this case are even mostly reflective of ambiguity of terminology. Most of the miscategorized grants were categorized this way because grant applicants added a sentence or two to their grants to appeal to standards no longer applied by the new administration, but which were seen as necessary or at least improving one’s chances with the previous one. So for the most part even this isn’t some inevitable consequence of the ambiguity of ‘wokeness.’
Thanks. Is PEPFAR a sort of affirmative action in grants? Or would that only be if it were a grant specifically for trans women to give out AIDS medication in needy areas?
I think a pretty obvious counter is that both "socialism" and "fascism" are ideas that historically have had proponents engaged in defining them as ideologies *under those names* and trying to put those ideologies into practice. Meanwhile "wokism" and "wokeness" are labels that are applied *almost entirely* from the outside. There was a transitional period where parts of the left used "woke" as a MUCH more narrow descriptor with entirely positive connotations[1]. But once the right took it up, spread it widely and started applying it to everything, pretty much all non-ironic usage on the left STOPPED. On the left, the word exists almost entirely as a joke. You will, ironically, find far, FAR more people who sincerely claim "socialism" as a fair description of their politics than would ever claim "wokism."
"I’m a bit incredulous that anyone who follows American politics is sincere when they say they don’t have an idea what it means."
I guarantee you that peoples' confusion on this point is genuine. Though it's not a matter of "not having an idea." It's a matter of having "far, far too many ideas." I believe you when you say that YOU have an idea what you mean when you use the term[2]. The trouble is that I DON'T believe that *your* usage is in any way *the* usage: I don't think there *is* one central, consistent meaning that informs all the usages. Imagine for a second that you're talking to Bob, who is one of those people who throws "fascism" and "fascist" around willy-nilly. If you heard Bob call something "fascist" could you fairly claim that you have *no idea* what Bob means by the word? Of course not: you could certainly get an approximate sense. But hearing Bob call things "fascist" would neither let you generalize to figure out what non-Bob people mean when using the word, nor would it give you much information at all about historical fascism. Now imagine that there *was no historical fascism*, that the words "fascist" and "fascism" had arisen organically out of everyday language in the past decade or two, and had its usage change considerably within the past six or seven years. You would, again, get *some* information from hearing Bob use the word "fascism." But even with a hundred Bobs to compare and contrast, you might not be able to generalize that to THE definitive meaning of "fascism;" both because that's rather hard to do, and because in this context there need not BE a "definitive meaning."
[1]In particular, it was a positive quality, but not the root of any sort of political viewpoint: you could call someone or something "woke," which (by standard linguistic construction) I suppose might have given it a quality of "wokeness." But "wokism" would have sounded incoherent, in much the same way that we don't generalize "politeness" or "wariness" to "politism" or "waryism."
[2] Well, mostly. I think it's very possible that if you interrogated your own sense of the word sufficiently you might find some inconsistencies.
Sure. I would describe it as the belief that it’s morally justified and necessary to discriminate against people - and promote prejudicial ideas - on the basis of race and sex in order to correct for ostensible race or sex-based wrongs either in the present or past. I don’t think that quite subsumes all of ‘wokeness,’ (e.g. I’d add a tenet that, to combat racism/sexism, it’s necessary to make exceptions to other erstwhile core liberal principles beyond non-discrimination) but I think that’s the core of it.
Pick whatever term you want for it, I don’t really care, but to pretend like this isn’t a phenomenon, especially to anyone that was around in the early 2020s, is just gaslighting imo.
OK, first let me say thank you for giving an actual answer. That allows for much more productive discussion than the "shut up, you know what it means" that I often see elsewhere. Second, let me say thank you for doing your best to make the definition reasonably clear and concise: that also makes for more productive discussion.
That being said, I definitely see some possible issues with it as a working definition. The main one being that the word "discriminate" is going to produce a lot of headaches here. I guarantee you that most of the people vocally engaged in various sorts of anti-racism DON'T consider anything they're doing to be discriminating or promoting discrimination in any way. Which means that as-stated, "the *belief* that it's..." is mostly going to lack any real referents. Those beliefs are pretty rare. Even if you try to rescue it by saying "the belief that [certain behaviors] are morally justified and necessary because..." (where [certain behaviors] are things you consider discriminatory) you've definitely left any personal intent to discriminate behind, and made a question about what "counts" as discrimination. Which I think is a much thornier question than you realize.
In case you haven't noticed the pitfalls, I'll ask you a simple question. Those signs on the bus that say that the front seats should be preferentially given to people who are pregnant, disabled or have mobility issues: are those discrimination? If yes, why? If no, also why? I notice that *I* don't really have a good answer, and feel like I could pick apart any simple argument for either "yes" or "no" in a heartbeat. I mean, they're obviously giving some people preferential treatment. But they're also not doing it arbitrarily or capriciously and calling it "preferential" actually makes some pretty deep assumptions.
"Pick whatever term you want for it, I don’t really care, but to pretend like this isn’t a phenomenon, especially to anyone that was around in the early 2020s, is just gaslighting imo."
I'm not pretending anything. I'm aware that there's SOMETHING that has gotten many conservatives--and a decent number of non-conservatives--just absolutely hopping mad over the past decade and change. But attempts to interrogate what that "something" is have consistently produced more confusion than clarity. The details seem to shift a lot from one account to the next. I, too, often feel like I'm being gaslit here, but by people constantly insisting that it's totally clear and obvious what they mean when it absolutely is not. And I'm not alone in this: as far as I can tell THE dominant view of "wokeness" among young-ish, online, vaguely-leftist sorts is that the word as its used today is almost meaningless: it basically means "anything a conservative doesn't like." I'm not saying this with malice or even anger: I do find the phenomenon irritating sometimes, but more than that I find it quite curious.
I think discrimination is easy to define. E.g. if you're accounting for a person's race when deciding whether to hire them, you're engaging in racial discrimination. If you were to substitute 'white' or 'male' for 'black' or 'female', respectively, and you would call it discrimination, then it's discrimination. I'm skeptical that people who support such policies *really* don't intend to discriminate frankly. It's just that discrimination is seen as a dirty word and it's more strategic to redefine morally loaded words around their preferred exceptions than admit that their opinion is that in some cases a generally bad thing is actually good.
I didn't include disability or pregnancy in my definition so I'm not following the relevance. If you're leftish, then you probably agree with the idea that discrimination based on race and sex are bad, in general, no? When discussing discrimination against groups of people you strictly oppose discrimination against, you would probably find things less ambiguous, irrespective of the intent of the one doing the discrimination.
What I suspect may be going on here is that to most progressives, certain discriminatory policies or attitudes toward e.g. white people, males, Asians in some cases, follow logically from the same progressive principles that justify welfare or environmental policy or civil equality, so the idea that the former can or should be logically unbundled from the latter and singled out for objection seems odd or arbitrary. And since even unrelated political positions are strongly correlated, it's natural even if illogical to bundle unrelated positions together for proponents and opponents alike.
The obvious retort would be "perhaps you think it's easy to define because you've never been confronted with a situation where it wasn't." Or rather more bluntly "perhaps you think it's easy to define because you've never had to grapple with it up close and personal." I don't know you or know anything about you, so I'm NOT actually going to make either of those claims. But I will make the (still rather blunt) claim that you probably have no actually put much serious thought into the matter, and especially that you probably haven't read very widely on the topic. There is a wealth of complexity there that you (apparently) simply don't see. For example:
"I didn't include disability or pregnancy in my definition so I'm not following the relevance."
The relevance is that they play havoc with your nice, neat definition of discrimination. They play havoc with it in a way that ought be pretty easy to see, which makes them useful for testing one's intuition.
Let's take another example: hiring discrimination and pregnancy. Your definition: "if you take a person's pregnancy into account when deciding whether to hire them, you're engaging in discrimination." Let's work with that.
First we need to know what it means to NOT take it into account. If you hire completely blind, looking only at resumes, stripped of any information that could indicate correlates of pregnancy (such as age, gender or marital status)[1] is that a sufficient condition to avoid discrimination based on pregnancy? It should be, right? Hold on, but someone being pregnant isn't just a box they tick on a form (that you can just leave off), it has real, measurable impacts on somebody's job availability. What if you're hiring for extra, short-term programmers to hit a production deadline that's coming up in six months. Isn't it, well, rather important that the person you will be available full-time three, four and five months from now?
Of course, you can just put that in the job requirements. "Must be available full-time for the next six months with no vacation or leave." But then you ARE "taking a person's pregnancy into account," you're just doing it in a way that puts the onus on them to self-select out of your applicant pool, rather than removing them yourself. And of course, it's not the pregnancy itself, merely an unavoidable effect of the pregnancy. But the result is the same: this group of people is significantly less able to get hired at your job.
I'm not even claiming the above paragraph is a bad or unreasonable way to handle it: reality imposes constraints and you DO have to work around them. But I will be *very* disappointed if you try to weasel out of the obvious conclusion by claiming that's not "really" discrimination. Quite clearly it is, by your own definition. You had to take a certain factor (ability to work) into account when hiring somebody. That made certain people (people in the middle of a pregnancy) effectively ineligible to be hired.
I could type more. I could probably fill a dozen pages with examples of situations where "don't take X into account when hiring somebody" is either functionally impossible or would result in a broken hiring process, for almost any X you can imagine. But I'd rather see how you respond to what I've already written and if it results in any clarifications or updates to your thinking.
" I'm skeptical that people who support such policies *really* don't intend to discriminate frankly."
I'm skeptical that you have any idea how people who you consider "woke" actually think. I think the entire thread about your writing about such people betrays a very superficial understanding of how *they* think and talk about such issues. I'm actually quite strongly reminded of how I see people on the left talk about "tech bros" sometimes: the same very un-nuanced, very homogenized broad strokes that makes a very simplistic attempt to model a very heterogeneous (and generally poorly defined) group. It shows very little awareness of what discourse *within* these groups actually looks like, or how complex some of the ideas under discussion *actually are.*
In the same way people complained about "political correctness gone mad" 20 years ago, the way the term is often used subsumes a lot more beyond this such as environmental issues.
While it would definitely be pretty easy to sort through these, perhaps there are some procedural reasons to just cut everything that even barely mentions something woke.
Even an executive order can’t do things like violate equal protection, and I imagine there would be some pretty angry lawsuits if there was some arbitrary cutoff of wokeness, that probably placed certain demographics in higher promotions in the woke camp compared to those who were technically woke, but still got away with it.
Maybe cutting it all makes the process simple, easy, and not requiring any arbitrary human judgement.
As somebody who has never looked at grant text before, I had the exact option response to this. The list is true! Almost every grant, if taken literally, is woke and promises to implement DEI in some form.
I don't think think saying "they lied to get the grant" is that much of a consolation either.
Why would someone putting in a couple sentences say they care about students of color be a reason to think their cancer research isn’t worth funding? I thought this administration was claiming that racist tweets are no reason to cancel someone, so why should including a racist sentence in a grant application be a reason to cancel them?
None of the sentences are "we care." They are "we care an outsized amount and promise to give special treatment".
It's not remotely "cancellation" or equivalent if you care to actually think about it for one second. When I first read the uproar I assumed it was (e.g. Marxist professors getting funding for XYZ). But instead no, it's actually straight up government-funded DEI promises (however insincere they may be).
Everything you say is true, but to me it’s even worse: by Ted Cruz’s own lights, scientists forced to include DEI boilerplate in order to get grants ought to be considered *victims* of the woke regime. Why on earth would you re-victimize the victims? Rather than demonstrating the superiority of your new regime by showing how the victims will now be treated so much better?
If Trump required grant-applicants to explain how their research helped whites, would you call scientists who applied for those grants victims? When the next administration cancelled those grants would you defend the scientists? I doubt it.
I doubt it because you already understand that if scientists mouthed the words “my research is good because it especially helps whites” it would dignify and reinforce the idea that special favor for whites is good, and you find that idea repugnant. Indeed, you probably would consider those scientists at best cowards and at worst evil.
The reason people think scientists who mouthed woke phrases are victims is because either (1) for class or ideological reasons they see wokeness as generally reasonable or (2) they instinctively believe that the role of left-liberals is to exercise power while the role of conservatives is to merely check power and therefore it is reasonable for “neutrals” to follow left-liberal trends.
Those in category (1) are philosophically and morally wrong.
Those in category (2) need to be taught a lesson. I want our system’s functionaries – the lawyers, teachers, government workers, corporate VPs, scientists – to feel in their bones that the political pendulum does not swing from the left to the middle, but rather from the left to the right. That if you mouth left-liberal orthodoxies under one administration, you’ll lose your funding under the next.
In particular, I want scientists to be so fearful, angry, and annoyed by this phenomenon that they lobby Congress to remove any requirement that they mouth woke phrases; that they lobby the next Democratic administration not to offer grants that require woke phrases. And if even their lobbying efforts fail, I want them to think extra-hard before applying for grants that require woke pretensions and I want them to put considerable emotional effort into toning down any woke language they do mouth.
I realize this will cause individual pain for functionaries who have (quite reasonably!) assumed that mouthing woke ideology is safe. But I care more about the social good of defeating those ideas than their individual pain.
Yes, you're right. I do find the idea of discrimination meant to rectify past monstrous injustices, infinitely more intellectually and morally defensible than the idea of discrimination meant to entrench the injustices even further ... even if the former ALSO turns out to create more problems than it solves and probably, usually be a bad idea.
"Rectifying past injustices" was the justification for affirmative action in the 70s. As you already know, the current justification is "diversity" (fewer whites and men makes us stronger) and "systemic racism" (faith that massive, but invisible racism explains disparities in group outcomes).
To the extent any scientist agrees with you 60 years after civil rights, they are not victims, but rather purposefully blind or more likely masking some other ideology.
To the extent any scientist merely mouthed woke words, they are not victims, but cowards who apparently must be taught by fear to understand that the Right can also wield power.
To a first approximation, my party is whichever party talks to the scientists doing productive science in a less menacing tone. That party obviously isn’t yours.
But not really, right? Because you've already said that you would support "menacing" scientists who sought grants expressly to help white people and men.
You're using "science" to shield your more basic opinion that discriminating against whites and men is fine, but discriminating against "underrepresented minorities" and women is wrong.
There’s the thing: you could *imagine* woke bureaucrats telling me that I need to be defunded, effectively chased out of science, to punish me for my sins as a white male. But they never did. A few crazies on the Internet said that, but the bureaucrats were happy to fund my quantum computing research if I said “I like diversity and want to support a diverse group of students” (wildly controversial, I know) — and then went on recruit the best students of whatever background I could find. *You*, and those in the Trump administration who think like you, are the first people who’ve ever credibly threatened to defund me for failing to toe their political line.
> the idea of discrimination meant to rectify past monstrous injustices
Taken at face value, this is a statement in support of the new regime ruthlessly punishing everyone who sided with the old "woke" one, in order to rectify the injustices it inflicted on its enemies now with the power to get payback.
But of course, you don't mean that. There is no principle here beyond the friend–enemy distinction: if it benefits your side, it's a morally defensible correction, and if it benefits the enemy at your expense, it's a monstrous injustice.
"In particular, I want scientists to be so fearful, angry, and annoyed..."
In this, at least, you seem perfectly in-line with the current administration. A lot of us instead want the scientists to be...wait for it...DOING SCIENCE. That's the entire purpose of science funding, to have scientists doing science, because you value science as a source of knowledge.
When somebody adds some silly political cruft to the grant-application processes, they are moving things in the wrong direction[1] in a real but fairly minor way. Maybe it's for noble reasons, maybe it's for bad ones, but either way they should stop. But when you say "scientists need to be crushed until the FALL IN LINE (with my particular politics)" you're not even *pretending* to make a noble mistake, or a reasonable request or to value science at all. You're simply wanting to exert power over people for the sake of exerting power.
[1] Though notice that the requirement these stem form has seemingly been there for decades and is only now getting this sort of response.
I'll ask the same question to you that I asked above: if the scientists in question had written "my research will especially help whites and men" in order to satisfy some "silly political cruft," would you shrug and call it minor?
Emphatically, yes. It would be minor. Again, whoever added the "silly political cruft" requirement to the process was probably doing bad work and reversing that work seems reasonable. But why on Earth would I get mad at scientists trying to get grants for following the process laid out for them to get grants? Why on Earth would I want the scientists to become "fearful, angry and annoyed" at following the requirements *other people* set on their jobs? Why on Earth would I want them to spend untold time and effort on "lobbying congress" instead of doing science?
Science funding is political because all funding is political, that's unavoidable. But actively trying to make the process *more* about politics--especially in deliberately divisive ways--and *less* about science is B-A-D.
As a side note, when we're talking about science, I don't think there are *nearly* as many people as you imagine who consider research that "especially helps whites" or "especially helps men" to be an inherently bad thing. I certainly don't. Doubtless there are some because you for any stupid position you can imagine, somebody holds it. But I doubt you've actually thought through what that looks like.
What would "science that especially helps whites" look like? Skin cancer research? R&D on better sunblock? Who exactly is protesting these things? Certainly not me.
Meanwhile "science that especially helps men," is a field well enough established that it has a name, journals, clinics, you name it:
Is anyone protesting the latest in andrology research? Probably somebody, but certainly not me. They're not getting much press if they are.
It seems like you may be confusing science with politics. The reason that *political* initiatives focused specifically on "helping white men" get such push back is because for a very large chunk of U.S. history that's what nearly ALL politics was about. The people who push back against initiatives like that now largely[1] do so because they think the disparities that were *deliberately* being created through most of U.S. history still have significant lingering effects today. Not, in general, because of some hatred toward white people and/or men (though again, see footnote [1]). It's reasonable to disagree with them on that set of empirical observations about the world, but if you think that their belief system regards "things that improve the lives of white men" as *inherently* bad, you simply do not understand that bit of reality very well.
"the political pendulum does not swing from the left to the middle, but rather from the left to the right."
Wow, you can't make this stuff up. When has the political pendulum in the U.S. EVER swung "from left to middle?" Look at the past 25 years: how many under Republican presidents? How many under Democrats? What about the makeup of congress over that time? What about the Supreme court? What about major long-term policy items, like the military budget, the distribution of the tax burden, the aggregated size of well-fare programs? Perhaps I hallucinated the past quarter-century, but I seem to remember the right getting its way *quite often* during that time period.
I suspect that your issue has far less to do with politics and more to do with culture. The culture of large parts of the U.S. HAS shifted over the decades in ways that (I assume) you strongly dislike. But culture doesn't flow from the government to the people. The vast, vast, VAST majority of culture comes from what people do on their own, outside the spaces where government happens.
I'd wager that you'd find the cultural makeup of most scientific fields not to your liking. But the reasons for that have (as far as I can tell, having spent quite a lot of my life in the relevant spaces) very little to do with any government policy, and everything to do with who values academics and how they relate to others[1]. I absolutely guarantee you that having a conservative government deliberately try to make working scientists "fearful, angry and annoyed" is going to do exactly NOTHING to shift the cultural makeup of the sciences in the direction you want. Quite the opposite.
[1] Though I'd venture a guess that having one of the two major political parties categorically reject the legitimate conclusions of a major area of science for literal decades has done conservatives no favors there. But note despite the connection to politics, the underlying mechanism is still cultural rather than legal.
If this theory is correct, the more pressing question is what scientists should do about the current administration’s new dogmas, since the next progressive administration will punish them for adhering to conservative dogmas. So if a scientist mouths the anti-woke phrase “gulf of America” or “LGB” under this administration, they’ll lose their funding under the next. What is a scientist to do?
It’s true that one way out of this is to lobby congress to not need to mouth any phrases, but that includes both the hypothetical woke phrases of the next administration and the actual free-speech stifling that trump is engaging in. For some reason you only focus on the woke side.
I don't know enough about the US grant process to say whether Cruz has the right approach, but I'd bet that a supermajority of grantees have been lifelong Dem voters. Hard to call them victims of the woke regime when they've actively supported it
So anything Democrat is "woke" now? Asking because I keep trying to nail down the term to a coherent meaning, with little success.
FWIW I'd wager that a clear majority of the grantees NOT on Cruz's list are also Dem voters. My overall impression is that liberal and left cultural spaces almost always hold academic careers in high regard, while many conservative cultural spaces disdain them, with predictable results for the makeup of various fields.
That question doesn't follow. Not all Dem policies are woke, but all woke policies are Dem. If you vote for the Dems, you're voting for woke policies as well as others. That's the nature of big tent parties
And no, you're not asking because you're trying to nail down the term; you're asking as a rhetorical tool to try to score points on an online comments section. I'm not playing that overdone word game. You know what woke means, I know what woke means, and the host of this blog knows what woke means
>FWIW I'd wager that a clear majority of the grantees NOT on Cruz's list are also Dem voters. My overall impression is that liberal and left cultural spaces almost always hold academic careers in high regard, while many conservative cultural spaces disdain them, with predictable results for the makeup of various fields.
There's good reason to believe you have the causation backwards. Academia's leftward drift began long before the polarization in public attitudes towards it
"You know what woke means, I know what woke means, and the host of this blog knows what woke means"
NO I DAMN WELL DON'T. I'll thank you kindly to not tell me what I do and don't know. Apparently you *don't* know that's rude and dishonest, but you certainly should.
Everybody who's strongly against "woke" and is ABSOLUTELY SURE that it has a clear and coherent meaning and that anybody who claims otherwise is lying. And when I start to ask questions--to the extent that people are willing to answer at all--y'alls meaning are ALL DIFFERENT.
I've got a pretty good memory. I could list a bunch of things that woke means *to different people.* There would be some agreements among the lists, and also quite a lot of disagreements.
The closest thing to a *coherent* hypothesis I have for what people mean by the word is that they use pejoratively it to indicate Blue Tribe Cultural Signifiers. But since everyone has a different sense of what's bad, and a different sense of what, exactly is a Blue Tribe Cultural Signifier, that leads to a semantic mess of usage.
Scott (et al.!), there's another problem. Years ago, I was asked to review a Canadian grant proposal - it was delightful with exactly the right people, save one. She was not in the field and not very good in her own. All 3 reviewers voted to reject but asked to accept it if they ditched the weak link. Apparently, some (all?) agencies could not approve a grant unless it had at least 1 female - not written down, btw.
Another issue is some agencies do not vet the science part and accept things like "my lived experience overrides your hard data." If you can weed out the crap methodology, wouldn't that help?
A possible positive? Some agencies here and abroad demand that grant-seekers explicitly share their expectations of the impact on practice and policy which (to me anyway) is a good thing, if done right. (One thing I'm seeing in grants and especially startup pitches is mentioning which SDG(s) this project will advance. I haven't seen anyone get pissy over that).
Not trying to be difficult, and I'm sure there's lots of context I don't get, but I cannot comprehend how a situation in which a grant was worth accepting *if one person was kicked off* could exist. Is the idea that she is so bad that she will exercise a kind of anti-expertise? That seems like a strong claim.
Part of our remit was to assess the ability of the team to do the work. There can't be a weak link. She was going to get paid a lot of money and clearly would not contribute, so the funder could just cut that chunk of salary (and travel support and clerical support) but that opens the door to backlash. We liked the project but in a hypercompetitive setting., applicants' first job is to not get culled on the first round by the reviewers. Having a weaker team is not a good thing :)
The requirement that every grant has a woman on it is a bit of an odd overreach because in a heavily gender-skewed field, and with a small team, gives very little evidence of ill will, and even a positive attempt at inclusion can come up short.
Additionally claims [0] made that the number of Woke/DEI grants increased from 2021 to 2022 (by implausible margins, 0%->16%) were caused by the full grant text not being available on the web in 2021 and then available in 2022...[1]. A basic sanity check could find these sorts of things...
I am a scientist who has received funding from NSF, among other agencies.
I agree very strongly with this post. Thankfully my grants didn't make this particular list, but under the old system it was very much encouraged to talk up any chances that you might help out minorities etc. Most scientists do think it would be good to help minorities and try to do so when the opportunity presents itself, but it's not our main job and most people just added some boilerplate to make the proposals look good.
I am in the 'business' of selling scientific research to the government. The government said they wanted me to emphasize anything I might do to help minorities, and so I did that. Now they don't want me to, so okay I won't. I mostly want to do science. I am good at it and it is my contribution to "making America great".
The comments saying "well just don't fund them this time so they'll stop doing that" are depressing for two reasons. First, it seems egregiously unfair to set out some rules, people follow those rules, then you change the rules and accuse the people who followed them of bad behavior. You're the one who changed the rules! Second, these comments assume that we have other resources - we do not. If my funding runs out, then I'm unemployed and it's the end of my career as a scientist. I think people are imagining scientists as very well off people, but it's actually a fairly precarious insecure position and doesn't pay especially well. People mostly do it because they enjoy the intellectual challenge of it and because it is a rewarding to use ones talents to contribute to the store of human knowledge and is a benefit to society.
The new wisdom that it’s self evidently bad to want to help minorities or women seems a lot worse than some „woke“ boilerplate. What happened to „free speech“? The problem with woke was that it was causing a lot of hypocrisy and people resented having to be performative. But most Americans actually agree with the basic premise that it’s good to help people who were dealt a shitty hand at birth.
My guess is that the average black child born today is at most a moderately less privileged position than the comparable white child. The average girl born today probably has a better position than the average boy.
Didn't JD Vance say that the only relevant group to compare to is other Americans? Our duty is to other Americans not to people in other countries, so, to be consistent, those other people should be excluded from these comparisons.
I read this whole thing waiting for you to get to your defense of why the U.S. is a matriarchy only to reach the last paragraph, where you called your headline "provocative" and said you really wished that "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" were used less.
Do you have those numbers? Black people trying to “pass” as white are pretty common, but I’m only aware of one white person who has ever claimed to be black.
Whose credulity? Maybe in daily life there isn't much difference for some people, but when it comes to things such as the likelihood of being pulled over by a cop, the likelihood of being arrested, injured or killed as a result of that traffic stop I'd call that a bad hand. There are still persistent wage gaps of -87% and -84% respectively. The historical odds of serving as president are 2 in 67 (if i counted the member of presidential terms correctly) for black people and 0 in 67 for women. You and i might disagree about what constitutes "moderately".
Comparing groups of Americans to other groups of Americans yields some differences sure, but I would not generally describe them as being dealt a bad hand by life.
That title has to be reserved for people born in exceptionally bad circumstances, like the huge percentage of people born in extreme poverty across the world.
Do you also oppose your local soup kitchen on the grounds that it's helping hungry but well-off Americans rather than even more impoverished people in other countries? This seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
I'm not that extreme, but a part of me does feel like those are wastes of time all things considered. It's not really an isolated demand for rigor because all charities are not equal and some are more effective than others.
For women, they are advantaged in that they face less violence, less punishment for the same crimes, have easier admissions into schools, preference in hiring, have favorable divorce laws, and don’t have to work as much for the same consumption level.
Your credulity must strain easily then. Are there areas in life where people will go out of your way to smooth your path if you're black or female? Yes, certainly. Are those areas the only things that matter? Hardly.
A person's "hand" in life depends on a great many things, but at a zoomed out level probably THE most important is the socioeconomic circumstances of your birth: how much money does your family have, what careers are they in, where do they live, who do they know, that sort of thing. That doesn't map perfectly to race: a white guy born into an unemployed family in a poverty-stricken town in Oklahoma is looking at a tough ride for sure. But *on average* knowing nothing but skin color, you're way the heck more likely to start in a good place if your skin is pale than if it's dark.[1]
As for being a woman, that's harder for me to say. Obviously that's not going to correlate with socioeconomic status at all, so that's one big factor removed. But I've had a lot of women I know (and read a lot from others) about less-visible cultural factors, crap that they have to deal with that I never have. It is very hard to make any sort of a principled estimate of how that will affect their overall life prospects, but clearly the amount is not zero.
EDIT: looks like I missed part of your point: " born in the U.S." compared to "born elsewhere." Looking over the whole planet is a different story: I'd say *most* people born in the U.S. are more-fortunate-than-the-global-average, but far from all. In many ways its hard to do comparisons. At any rate, I don't really think it's a very consequential question when framed that way: U.S. domestic politics has always been mostly about re-arranging the interior of the country, so this sort of question has rather limited relevance.
[1] There is a fair argument to be made that most or all of the anti-racism stuff should instead be focused on anti-poverty and anti-classism. Though in the U.S. in practice, it's mostly the same people opposing both, so the point is often moot.
The same thing that always happens: one side gets to speak, the other must stay silent. Why destroy perfectly useful circuitry when you can just flip the polarity?
Race and gender are worse predictors of whether you were dealt a shitty have at birth than many more readily available ones. That openly discriminating based on race and sex - call it what it is - is becoming seen as bad is actually the silver lining here.
"The new wisdom that it’s self evidently bad to want to help minorities or women "
That's not the new wisdom. That's the new "you're a racist" and means as little. It's the new shield for those who did want to pollute the wells. '*All* I wanted was to help the unfortunate, but you cancelled my grant because you hate the poor!
No, your grant got cancelled because you were churning out rubbish.
I mean come on, it's hard to deny that they got completely screwed over by evolution. They're basically doomed to be at the mercy of their counterparts forever.
The median salary for a US scientist is $107k, not including benefits. For the median us citizen, their salary is $48k. Yes, you are rich. Yes, some portion of your salary is tax monies from people poorer than you.
Median household income in the US is about $80k, which is about what a junior scientist makes. $107k is not exactly wealthy - probably most people commenting here make significantly more. Also, probably a below average salary compared to most people who get government contracts.
One of my neighbors is a police officer and another works for the department of sanitation; both make more than I do and get a pension when they retire. If Ted Cruz cuts my funding, I hope to become a garbageman.
Scientist is a solid job that I like doing, but it's not one that is leading people to strong financial positions.
You've confused median and mean. I intentionally used median because the mean is brought up by extreme wealth inequality. No, $107k is extremely wealthy. Anyone who doesn't realize that is delusional about how most Americans live.
Yes. I wouldn't necessarily agree that $107K is *extremely* wealthy, but it's approximately 33% higher than 80K, which is stated as household income versus individual income. So it is, by the definition of a median, "exactly" wealthy.
"Median weekly earnings of the nation's 120.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,192 in the fourth quarter of 2024 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today."
You compared household income to salary instead of salary v salary, likely purposefully. Your number is higher because household income often includes multiple salaries
First, I don't think it really matters. The point is that if you cause a bunch of scientists to lose their jobs, they won't be doing science in their free time and they won't be coming back - you'll lose most of your research workforce.
Second, I do think household income is the more relevant number. Median individual income is also biased as it includes people who are very young, very old, work part time, attending school, and so on. Both numbers are biased in opposite directions. My household income is my income and it seems fair to extrapolate that.
The respondent was pointing out that your depiction of your profession - "a fairly precarious insecure position and doesn't pay especially well" - is wrong, and that, actually, the paycheck is relatively good and, moreover, is made up of contributions from many people who make substantially less. That fact remains true no matter how you try to wrangle over the right number to use
The first point is a matter of philosophical difference. Lose them to what? I don't take it for granted that whatever they're doing now (a state-directed deployment of their labour funded by tax dollars) would necessarily be substantially or at all less than whatever alternatives they would end up doing
>If my funding runs out, then I'm unemployed and it's the end of my career as a scientist.
I'd say that this here is the crux of the matter. Either science is actually useful and VCs should be competing to fund it, or it's just vanity subsidies.
Have you heard of this thing called "basic research"? It took roughly 40 years from the first work on artificial neural networks to the point where everyone's ecstatic about deep learning and LLMs, with no guarantee whatsoever that it would end up like that. Find a VC willing to sponsor that.
Well, maybe you could, but the pitches you'd have to write in the first 30 years would have to be so delusionally over-optimistic that a few lines in the "broader impact" statement are not even detectable in comparison.
Also, lots of research are really relevant for the public good, but not easy to monetize. Why would a VC company sponsor weather monitoring systems to track and understand climate change?
Well yes, this is my point. Right now there's no good way to evaluate whether any particular 'basic' research would provide 'public good' any time soon, if ever, so why should taxpayers fund it?
Because on average it's good (for the taxpayers) that it gets done, even if the impact of each individual project is uncertain. And it's especially good when the results are accessible to everyone, which they wouldn't be if the work were commercially sponsored.
How would I be able to tell? Well, where are the countries with exclusively privately sponsored research that surpass the ones with extensive public research?
Also, it's news to me that SciHub pays for the expenses of the scientists whose papers are published there.
For the same reason that angel investors fund startups, even though 95% of them fail and it's impossible to predict ahead of time which 5% are going to succeed.
Also for the same reason you encourage kids to experiment with a whole bunch of different things, even though when they grow up they will only stick with a few of them if any.
And also for the same reason that you dig a hole in the ground to place foundations, even though after the skyscraper is built you will be living in the penthouse and not the cellar, and even though that is somewhat different reason to the above.
Holy capitalist ideology! You truly believe that any useful science must be privately profitable?
Imagine for example a world in which some herbal extract halves the severity of infections with Covid, H5N1, or whatever the next pandemic is. Studying this is hugely beneficial to the public but not at all profitable because you can't patent a herb. Government-funded research into it saves lives for pennies and could never be done by VCs.
...Honestly, what's your problem? You spent the last decade complaining about leftist rot in academia, and now an administration has finally come to solve the problem by commiting a political purge of academia. Why aren't you happy about this? You can talk about IQ as much as you want, and no one will be able to cancel you anymore. Enjoy your newfound freedom, for goodness's sake.
People were already losing their funding for using the wrong words! Nothing is changing except that the new status quo is way better if you're a white male.
I’m not a white male. I don’t think the new status quo is better for white males either. It’s just better for people who don’t talk about anyone who isn’t a white make.
Exactly. The banwheels are turning in the opposite direction now, but the complaint was about the mechanism existing at all. Of course we're not going to stop complaining. We wanted the machinery destroyed, not repurporsed.
It is NEVER going to be destroyed as long as humanity lives. Why can't you just be happy that the system benefits you now? You can't realistically ask for anything more than that.
This is just completely false. There was no politically appointed, woke bureaucrat under Biden, ensuring that non-woke grants don’t get funded. I know anti-woke warriors want to imagine that this is how it worked, but as both a grantee and a reviewer who doesn’t work on anything remotely political, it’s just not true. There are now several arms of the Trump administration that are actively banning grants that they think is woke. They want you to think this is all just symmetrical payback, but it absolutely is not.
How confident are you that you could identify a "politically appointed, woke bureaucrat" if you saw one? Maybe they just look like nonpartisan dedicated public servants full of "basic human decency" to you.
Conversely, if you assume there are secret enemies everywhere, no one is going to ever be able to convince you that each individual is innocent. Assuming that all government employees are an enemy is not an effective way to run a government.
I've been seeing the weirdest failure mode in rat adjacent circles; people just really clinging to the scales on their eyes about this.
This is an offshoot of 'The Cruelty Is The Point'.
Woke is just a shiboleth that drips out of their mouth into the ears of the faithful, as it were; just like it is a cargo cult ritual performed by scientists who statistically believe in the principles but don't believe in the ritual, for political institutions that don't believe in the principle but do believe in the ritual.
Ted Cruz probably doesn't give a shit so 50/50 anything happens, but Ted Cruz also doesn't give a shit if any research is ever done again, so 50/50 something does happen.
„The liberals (they said) had so carefully sunk their tentacles into everything“ When you confuse what we used to call Christian values like charity, grace, humility, compassion and temperance with „liberal“ then you will see „liberal tentacles“ everywhere in America. It’s ironic how the Evangelicals and Trad Catholics in particular seem completely unchristian in their commitment to nihilism and cruelty.
Hey, Hannes, don't you know that privileging one religion over another is bigotry and discrimination? As well as introducing religious values into secular spaces? You show a distinct lack of empathy and tolerance by claiming those values are "Christian"!
Those people who have made a stand on "religion bad" can't then turn around and go "this is really religious, you guys just don't know what your own religion is".
Sorry, that's a fatuous comment. The Christian virtues aren't up for debate, they have been an explicit part of Church dogma for several millennia. And if I, as a Catholic, am not particularly tolerant of Protestant sects and heresies, I am not going to apologize for that. Tolerance of false beliefs and nihilism has never been an explicit Christian virtue.
Broad, vague concepts like that aren't the "tentacles" that are being talked about, it's about a particular bunch of human parasites as much as it is their ideology. If every program and grant was required to have some element that was about increasing reverence for God, and an enormous class of ministers was being produced by colleges every year, and every project is bringing those people in at a nice cushy six-figure salary to show that you were serious about reverence for God, and every government institution down to the Poughkeepsie post office had a Christian minister on staff to show their commitment to revering God, and throwing money at a Christian organization was a way to up your ESG rating, you would think we were living in a theocracy and nonbelievers would be railing at this priestly class as vile mooches. And if Christians were a minority in the country, it would be even more outlandish.
That's all we're saying for the DEI crowd, they are entitled to their beliefs, but they are not entitled to act as a priestly caste, to have the public give them lavish salaries and fund their proselytizing, to keep inventing more and more posts to elevate these useless midwits into. It's a philosophy that sees every action in the context of power structures, and so they have sunk their claws into every power structure in America, and when they see something that lays outside their control they either conquer it directly or force it to pay tribute by hiring some of their priestly caste (who will eventually conquer it from within.) To do that for a popular ideology would be ugly, to do that for an unpopular one like this is outright hostile to the citizenry.
We do do that with Christians, to a certain extent; and we already do do that with mediocre (mainly) white guys [I've seen a decent amount of mediocre latino guys, due to location].
The amount of 90 IQ bosses I've had in trade who didn't know anything about trade, didn't know anything about management, but did know heaps about cheating on their wives with sex workers and were very skilled in being friends with the owners mediocre son is such that N approaches 1.
Who could possibly be more parasitical than the 10000 and 1 descendants of some guy who struck it rich in 1850; and thus blighted us with an infinite chain of dummies that nonetheless get to decide how you live and die?
There is no default 'fair' state of society except the state of nature where if I see you have a nice car or whatever I club you over the head and take it, before getting tboned by a grizzly bear (the best at taking sick whips, the worst and driving them).
"This is what the American people want out of their government! They kicked out the last government because it couldn’t provide!"
It may be wishful thinking, but I think Republicans could build a sustainable governing majority if they clearly dedicated to good governance. Unfortunately, I don't think we can even get a simulation of this from the current administration. I'm afraid it will be a long wait to get a nominee from either party who is fundamentally serious about governing.
I don't think Harris appeared to be very serious about good governance. Which wouldn't preclude her from having governed well IF she was surrounded by a bunch of smart, capable and sane people. I think normie Dems tended to just assume that was the case, this "west wing" mythology that all the best people from the best schools with the best intentions must obviously be hanging around in droves in any Democrat administration. But that doesn't seem to have been the case during Biden/Harris, who inherited the dregs of Obama's leftovers and then filled out the team with box-checking halfwits like KJP.
Romney was a fundamentally serious and competent person, probably the most competent person to run for President by either party in my entire lifetime, and he did have a chance, but that was a very different world. And if he had won, and had gotten serious about good governance, inevitably there would still have been *some* screw up by somebody in his admin (can you believe John Sununu flew to a stamp auction at Christie's at public expense and this was once a big enough scandal to joke about for months?) and the legacy media would've jumped on it to discredit and derail the whole thing.
I was in favor of the “binders full of women” line! I didn’t like his remarks about the 47%, and I obviously preferred Obama, but he seemed like he cared about the issues. Even at the time it was clear to me that it was the election with the least gap in how much I preferred one candidate over the other (despite me being a big fan of Obama).
He cared about the issues... unless you were in that 47%, in which case he saw you as a useless eater.
I cast the one "lesser evil" vote of my life against Romney, and all I can say about him and the political movement he represented (if DOGE isn't just cover to resurrect it) is "good riddance"
Donald Trump is a hard negotiator. He had someone ghost write a whole book about it. You reviewed that book.
Hard negotiators do stupid things that work sometimes, because behavioral psychology is dumb but often true. One of the things they do is to lead by asking for everything, so that you anchor on "everything", and giving them "half the things" still feels like a win for you.
Can you honestly, confidently say that by 2026 or 2027, it wouldn't feel like a win for the Democrats or their constituents or this comment section, if someone got back half of USAID or saved the Department of Education at 60% the old budget?
So I think DEI was cut in a simple way in part because they were lazy, but *also* in part because maybe they end up getting half of what they ask for and their opponents get to feel like that was a win.
This isn’t a Biden administration effort. The random references in these abstracts to broadening participation in STEM are in response to requirements in NSF calls that predate Biden.
For example, NSF’s computing arm’s effort to broaden participation in computing (BPC) required most grant applications to have a BPC plan. The most recent iteration of that BPC program launched under Trump in July 2017, following recommendations from a 2012 strategic plan. https://www.nsf.gov/cise/broadening-participation
Moreover, it’s in NSF’s authorizing statute itself! All proposals are evaluated on intellectual merit and broader impacts. By law, the latter includes “Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.”
Not saying I agree with this move or that it will work, but you could characterize this as a form of collective punishment meant to dissuade academia, particularly the parts of academia that have nothing to do with culture or social issues, from injecting borderline cultural propaganda into everything they do.
Yes it's true that many of them were following the incentives laid down by the previous administration. But in this particular case I think we have to recognize that wokeness/DEI mostly originated in academia before migrating to politics and the Biden administration. Or at least academia were equal partners in pushing it.
Perhaps that's a long winded way of saying you reap what you sow, and if you let some rot into your institution then the next guy who comes along might want to tear it all out and replace it.
It is not "unfair collective punishment" to say "if we give an institution public money to do a job" and it shows itself incapable of doing that task properly (and instead allows itself to be hijacked for ridiculous partisan ends), to be more restrictive about giving it money / cut its funding / impose more restrictions upon it. Something like this is the only credible long run equilibrium.
If you have a child, and give them money to pay for music lessons, and keep hearing that they use the money to buy alcohol instead, you cut off their money. It's pretty simple. Organisations that betray public trust lose what that trust had granted them.
Yup. If your institution lets the barbarians inside the gates, lets them run rampant and completely hijack substantial parts of it, there will be payback. You can't just say "well, keep funding the good parts". At the very minimum it's going to take time to root the bad stuff out and until that happens the public *should* be less willing to fund your institution.
This is a very good reason to resist the barbarians in the first place!
>You can't just say "well, keep funding the good parts". At the very minimum it's going to take time to root the bad stuff out
Is there a reason you can't take time to identify the bad stuff *before* you cut funding, rather than making a fool of yourself when you publish a list that claims cancer research is actually woke?
This administration has an absurd case of "do it now"-itis. It doesn't matter if the thing you're doing is good or bad, only woke girly men actually think about the consequences of their actions.
a) Isn't publishing this list part of "identifying the bad stuff *before* you cut funding"? They pretty explicitly ask for feedback it reads to me!
b) People like you keep bringing up cancer as if its the representative example in this dataset. What % of the money in these grants was for cancer research would you say?
If you don’t want people to inject propaganda into their science, you shouldn’t be canceling their science grants because it had the wrong propaganda. You shouldn’t be *ignoring* the propaganda. Because otherwise you’re just telling them they need to try twice as hard to inject propaganda that will please *you*.
a) I think there is a typo here, the first two sentences seem to contradict
b) Guessing what you mean, er no. We're not just gonna roll over. You can't continually abuse public trust and then say "ceasefire, you can't punish us now".
This doesn't sound right and I'm not sure this is the right comparison. I suspect Cruz is missing a lot of woke stuff to cut.
The initial list provided is 3,400 grants, of which 40%, or roughly 1,100, are probably woke. But it's not 1,100 woke grants out of 3,400, it's 1,100 grants out of all the grants NSF gave over the Biden administration, right? From their website (1) it looks like they gave 11,000 grants in 2024. So, not my area of expertise, but then we're presumably looking at 1,100 woke grants out of a guestimated 44,000 total for the four years of the Biden Administration. That's roughly 2.5%, which seems absurdly low. That means there's probably a lot more out there that this isn't catching.
It's also hard to justify people adding in woke terms to help get their research funded when, apparently, the overwhelming majority of their peers, over 40,000 of them, got grants without tripping Cruz's system.
Actually, it looks like the entire thing (2) is available as a postgres sql database (3. Has anybody played with this data before?
As a DOC employee, I feel obligated to make a pedantic correction: this list is from the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Department of Commerce had nothing to do with it.
Government funded programs should not have the goal of helping some specific racial group. In addition to the moral component where I think racism like this is bad, I would also argue it is illegal under the 14th Amendment.
I disagree here, which is why I am so disgusted to find myself in broad agreement with Ted Cruz. I think something like the Montana programme, which smuggles in "and we might also help poor white kids" under the aegis of "this is to help smart Native American kids" is indeed a public good. It's a pity they had to downplay the "poor white kids as well" bit, but Native Americans are a marginalised and deprived community who could use the help. Getting the smart kids into education and good jobs will help them and their families and community down the road. It's not like a cushy grifter job like "help me get into the Ibrahim X. Kendi anti-racism department".
Helping poor kids is a race neutral goal that I don’t have a problem with. But when you include a goal to help a specific racial group, you’ve passed into the territory of government sponsored racism which I consider both immoral and illegal.
I essentially think we should use the standard from discrimination law that says you can’t use a race-neutral process if your goal in doing so is in fact racially motivated. Consider the following hypothetical grant: “We decided to give a benefit to every child under the poverty line in XYZ County [i.e., we are using a race-neutral method of participant selection]. We selected XYZ County because it is 95% white, so we can be sure our grant is helping the white community. [i.e., our intention in using this race neutral method is racially motivated]” I think there would be outrage about such a grant, rightly so, and I don’t doubt that a court would immediately strike it down. All I want is to apply that standard to all racial groups equally.
The beetle-proposal should be rejected, as awfully written. Sounds like a project of high school students or sth. I might have written, ie subpar. There is A! for that. Otoh , interesting. ;)
Overall, my take is: The Biden admin forced all of them to play "woke". Bad.
At least the beetle thing is about living organisms so it might accidentally stumble over something useful in biology. The IoT thing is just nuts. If it's something that would be superior to what is currently on offer, that would be commercially viable and private industry would want to throw money at it. If they're not, I'm very dubious that it's anything more than "Well I need *something* to work on for my PhD".
While I personally cannot stand IoT products, they must be pretty dang profitable for companies to push them into every $#%@ing home appliance. It may however not be profitable to make those appliances hard to hack, which is what this research is about. I can imagine the US govt taking an interest in whether Chinese spies can listen to a US general's conversations through his wife's lamp or something.
Even then, it'd be cheaper to phase in a regulation on the companies involved and have them self-fund the research needed.
This is not half of the grants - it is half of the tiny fraction of grants that Ted Cruz called woke. Most grants didn’t even make the list, and Ted Cruz couldn’t even find enough woke ones to make a full list.
So the solution is to make them bend their ass to the new language police instead of the old language police? I’m starting to think it’s not that Trump dislikes language police - it’s that he thinks the wrong language police were in power.
The list was supposed to be 100% political crap! If Ted Cruz gave you a list of 10 squares and there were five circles in it would you feel better or worse about his ability to recognize shapes afterward?
according to our esteemed host SA the cruz list contains (40+20)% original woke and 40% sheep in woke clothing
with some very few examples of false positives
so the cruz crew has ~100% success at the detecting wokness either when it is intrinsic or when it is added artificially to pacify the blue haired land whales and calcified karens of the NSF
so why is the failure of NSF commissars to detect woke drag relevant ?
"Woke drag" is pretty metaphorical for a guy who is allergic to them! Are the land whales actual whales? Let me know if you need your literal epi-pen to reopen your airway.
If you're giving credit to Ted Cruz for a boilerplate sentence about increasing the number of women in STEM or whatever in an article that appears to have been caught because it used the prefix "cis" in a non-woke context I think you're just—not literally, don't worry—a very cheap date for this stuff.
"Staggeringly easy" for one of the smartest guys in the US, staggeringly difficult for a mid-level bureaucrat not versed in right wing Vs left wing sociology battles like yourself. Just because we both probably tend to right wing sociology there are two issues.
1. it's all sociology, which is very subjective.
2. you don't seem to understand a very basic but if economics, the law of competitive advantage. Control freaks suffer a similar lack of understanding. The American economy is superb at getting/training low-skilled, low IQ, people to do simple but essential tasks.
I am a PI on an NSF grant. I know exactly how the "meaningless sentence" in these grant abstracts came to be there, and even if the sentence seems out-of-place or silly, the aspect of the grant-making process that lead to sentence being there is actually a good and important thing.
Under practices that have been in place since 1997, NSF grant proposals are evaluated on two criteria, "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts." Broader Impacts are impacts of the grant activities outside of academia. Some fields of research lend themselves to obvious broader impacts (e.g., cancer research leading to improved treatments), and others less so, at least on the timescale of a 3-year standard grant (e.g., theoretical physics). But, regardless of the immediate applicability of their research, all scientists and mathematicians can do outreach and public engagement activities like visiting K-12 schools, running programs like summer camps and science fairs, making science YouTube videos, writing a blog, and so on. Grant applicants include these activities under the "Broader Impacts" section of their proposal. The public abstract (the text Scott has quoted from for the awards mentioned in this post) must mention the Broader Impacts, and that is the source of the "meaningless sentence" that Scott identifies in these proposals.
Most universities primarily reward professors with tenure and promotion for research publications and grants, with teaching and "service" (committee work and professional service such as refereeing papers) being other required, but less important, parts of the job. There is little time or university resources being put toward scientists engaging with the public outside of the walls of the university, because the university does not make money off of such activities. Professors are very busy people and can't usually find time to do extra work that doesn't benefit them professionally. Nonetheless, it is a huge public good to have scientists and mathematicians talking about science and math in the public square and in K-12 schools.
On its face, it's weird to insert a statement about K-12 outreach or gender equity into a grant about countering security exploits in IoT devices. (One imagines it's a little less weird in the actual proposal, where there's a Broader Impacts section that's typically a few pages long and contains a detailed description of what the PI actually plans to do, not just buzzwords.) But this is the current system's way of capturing a little bit of the massive positive externality of public outreach and engagement by academics. These are activities that (many) professors want to do but are not incentivized to do by their departments or universities. By making Broader Impacts part of the grant evaluation process, and including public outreach and engagement not strictly related to the research topic under the Broader Impacts umbrella, the NSF provides some actual incentive for these activities, in the form of money to the professors and their universities (including F&A overhead).
The degree to which some Broader Impacts activities are or are not woke is largely a matter of branding. I've seen programs for gifted kids in wealthy white neighborhoods billed as "broadening participation of underrepresented minorities" and so on, and I've seen a program serving a low-income majority-black community purposely avoid DEI language because it's located at a fairly conservative institution in a conservative state. But, to be clear, the current Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) lists "full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)" as one of its (many!) "examples of societally relevant outcomes" under the Broader Impacts umbrella. As a consequence, a typical NSF proposal will include some mild DEI language in its Broader Impacts section. A review of the actual proposal texts (not just the public abstracts) using Cruz's apparent criteria would flag many more proposals, perhaps a majority of all proposals.
One other thing I'd like to make clear: NSF grants directly pay many people's salaries, including many non-tenure-track people without other sources of income. These include people in postdocs and graduate fellowships directly administered by NSF and grant-funded positions administered by universities and labs. Whether a grant contains woke language or not may have little to do with the work a postdoc or grad student funded under that grant is doing. However, a postdoc or grad student funded by a grant containing woke language is more likely to be a woman or a member of a minority group, and if so, they may have been encouraged to apply for the position due to their gender or race. University hiring is highly merit-focused (for a definition of merit overly skewed toward publication output), and the preferred outcome for a typical university department is to hire the best people (according to their metric) and put those that fit into DEI-shaped boxes. Also, language about inclusivity on a grant may (sometimes!) indicate a research group or lab that is actually friendly and inclusive, and such a group attracts both more people in general and more people that have faced discrimination and harassment and are trying to avoid those things.
If NSF-funded positions are eliminated based on DEI language, the NSF will be defunding (essentially, firing) a bunch of early-career researchers who are mostly doing the same science as everyone else, but maybe are also passionate about mentoring science fair projects in under-performing schools or something, and maybe were told to apply for a job with "diversity" in the description because of their gender or race even though they could have gotten a similar job without "diversity" in the description.
I am, in fact, fine with proposals that are "we are doing this to get more women/minorities into STEM" but stuff about "outreach to kindergarten minority kids about security exploits in the IoT" are not what I would expect to have any impact in fact. Who is more likely to have those kind of IoT items - well-off white liberals or black kids from households on free school lunches? That's what is griping a lot of people.
The Montana grant application is fine, because it's upfront about what it wants to do and it might even have a snowball in Hell's chance of getting kids off the rez into science (and a few poor white rural kids by the way as well). The BRAIN thing is not, because it's so vague: who exactly is it trying to help? in what? how? What neurological injuries that minority people suffer from more? What it sounds like is "I have a cool project for playing with robots that I might be able to parlay into a fatcat job in private industry, but that won't get me funding so I'll throw in that it's all for the sake of thinking about the children, sorry, I mean "underrepresented minorities". I'd love if it did something about "people are getting older and living longer, so are people with brain injuries and mental illness and other shit, we need to incorporate technology in how we diagnose and treat that" but it tails off into all this pie-in-the-sky stuff about "BRAIN leverages wide-ranging expertise from neural, cognitive and rehabilitation engineering to neurorobotics, neuromodulation, and ethical artificial intelligence to enhance the rate of development and empirical validation of new neurotechnologies through partnerships with industry and other strategic partners while developing a highly skilled workforce".
"Gimme money for my pet project because, uh, we're Hispanic-serving" is not persuasive.
It may not be persuasive, but is it anti-persuasive? I saw elsewhere you commented that you were in broad agreement with Ted Cruz and think proposals like the IoT thing are undeserving of funding. Note that that's not even what Cruz is proposing--we don't really know how many proposals on IoT items without woke buzzwords *are* being funded, and Cruz hasn't suggested reexamining those. Should IoT proposals be penalized solely for woke buzzwords?
> Nonetheless, it is a huge public good to have scientists and mathematicians talking about science and math in the public square and in K-12 schools.
I agree that we should have some folks getting the public & kids excited about science, but does it need to be the same people doing cutting-edge research? Bill Nye the Science Guy is a much better science educator than your average physics grad student. We don't make elementary math teachers spend two weeks per year writing math journal articles.
One of my general complaints with the university research system is that, to reach a certain level (professor / PI), you must be both good at research AND extroverted enough to handle science outreach, lab management, and of course, opaque grant-writing word games. This necessarily selects against folks who are very good at research but stereotypically introverted.
Feels like a lot of folks on here are talking past each other; curious if maybe how people rank the following outcomes might be a factor:
A. A woke study that aims to stop cancer doesn’t get funded
B. A non woke study that aims to stop cancer doesn’t get funded
C. A woke study on bullshit gets funded
D. A non woke study on bullshit gets funded
People who don’t take issue with Cruz’s list essentially seem to be saying that C is worse than A— while people who do take issue with Cruz’s list seem to be a mix of people saying A is worse than C, and people saying “oh my god regardless of how you rank A it’s clearly still bad that that’s happening why don’t you just read your own list it’s not that hard to avoid A”.
B also seems to regularly be brought up as an attack on the Biden approach— I agree B is bad but in practice it seems like scientists figured out how to avoid B pretty quickly on, and it was replaced by
B*: A non woke group of scientists pays lip service to wokeness to get funding
which while still bad seems way less bad than the other ones.
Your list leaves out: "A woke study that aims to stop cancer _does_ get funded". I think that's a negative! It leads to bad incentives which is worse than any individual study getting funded or not.
Start with these 2 beliefs:
* All "good" studies don't have to be woke (i.e. any "good" study could be changed to be non-woke and at will be at least as effective).
* Some bullshit studies can only be woke. There's no way to make them non-woke.
By approving woke good studies you're allowing bullshit studies to exist that should be easily excludable. By excluding all woke studies you will, at the margin, approve fewer bullshit studies with no downsides.
Belief #1 isn't completely accurate, but I think it's close enough that the idea holds.
Yeah-- it doesn't exactly leave that out, but it being the inverse of A, if you hold that that is bad then you think A is *good*. That is a perfectly consistent belief to hold that would make C worse than A, spending zero time avoiding A reasonable, and make B* worse than A.
Essentially you're saying there's an A* option-- woke scientists make their study non woke-- that they'll figure out. But I think Scott is showing some pretty clear examples of would-be A cases that would at a minimum get delayed many months-- and I have trouble believing that any of the marginal effects in stopping woke studies come anywhere close to the EV of a study aiming to stop cancer being prevented or even just delayed.
I also don't think your two beliefs alone can generate "A is good". Those two beliefs can be held simultaneously with:
* All "good" studies could be woke (i.e. any "good" study could be taught to underrepresented minorities and will be at least as effective)
* Some bullshit studies can only be non-woke (i.e. "let's rank all the races from best to worst"). There's no way to make them woke.
Wokeness, in other words, says little about how good a study could be. To get that, you need another belief
* Academia, as it currently is, is more likely to produce a necessarily woke bullshit study than a necessarily non-woke bullshit study.
which seems plausible. But also contingent-- it's probably not true in the 1830s, for example, which suggests a woke requirement would be net positive in situations where systemic racism is common...
If you delete documents because they contain the words "bias" or "privilege", you're going to get rid of a lot of IT-security stuff at the core of the NSA mission:
"BRAIN will address problems in the neurological space that disproportionately affect underrepresented groups."
At first glance this sounded like race and IQ research.
Anyway, an ethics blog I follow has a couple of posts that argue for the more scorched earth approach. The first is from the blog's host, who has experience in government work and other managment areas, arguing that when the rot goes too deep, you have to dig it all out: https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/02/12/the-meat-axe/
Focusing on the wokeness of it all misses a key point. Applying for grants has always had a "let me write it in such a way such that the grant maker is happy"-component. As a mathematician I can tell you that lots of applications talking about "possible applications" is complete BS. These things are mildly annoying but harmless appeasement is just a part of life.
It is the same as in the Soviet times when textbooks of math and physics had an introduction praising Lenin and the communist party. They just had to be written otherwise they couldn't be published. It didn't affect the content of these textbooks. Apart from certain deviations (e.g., Lysenkoism) STEM in the Soviet Union was solid.
In the same way it would be wrong now to cancel the studies just because they had to write a sentence or two that the current woke ideology required them to write. We have to be more discernible to not throw out good studies with the bad ones.
Yes, most works from completely unrelated fields had to start with a Lenin quote etc.
The question is, if you want to tolerate or even cultivate this absurdity in the free world. Once scientists get themselves used to fluent doublethink, or at least newspeak, will there be further consequences?
(I can think of at least one: talented people who still have a spine escaping to other jurisdiction, though this is somewhat mitigated by the US being really, really rich.)
Obviously we shouldn't tolerate this nonsense. What I am saying is that we don't need to punish people who had to write these things to get grants. Instead we should punish those who forced to write them. It may be difficult because these things are nebulous, very difficult to establish who forced whom.
But at least now we can all agree that this woke nonsense should be eliminated as soon as possible.
> They can kick out this government too if it also fails at this staggeringly, staggeringly easy task
This assumes "they" will still have a say in their government in the near feature. My prior for this is now slighly smaller than it was, say, a year or two ago.
I was wondering where you even got that quote from, and it turns out Scott edited the post. For posterity, here's the original ending to the post, as seen in the e-mail:
> It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it. But at least if you included the stupid sentence, you could get the grant to cure cancer. It reflects even worse on the Republicans when they propose it for cancellation just because it did include the sentence about minorities.
JUST FUND RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT JUDGING IT ON WHETHER THERE IS A SENTENCE ABOUT MINORITY OUTREACH IN THE GRANT PROPOSAL! This is what the American people want out of their government! They kicked out the last government because it couldn’t provide! They can kick out this government too if it also fails at this staggeringly, staggeringly easy task!
It looks like it would only take a smart person a week to sort through this stuff. But where are they going to find such a person? Most people who have legible credentials to do this sort of work are, if not woke, at least anti-anti-woke.
I'm sure there are lots of smart conservatives who got discriminated against by Universities who would be willing to do this work, but because they got discriminated against by Universities they don't have legible credentials. How is the government going to tell them apart from a person who merely pretends to be a smart conservatives who got discriminated against by Universities?
Just look through their social media history. It's honestly so nice of everyone to publicly announce their political allegiances. It makes stuff likes this so much easier.
I think they did just that, and selected a suitably loyal person to put in charge of filtering the woke science stuff. But just from looking at social media you can't tell if a person will be competent enough to do the task.
I mean, we can, but a person working for the Trump administration can't. To choose the right guy they have to rely on credentials or on instinct, and in this situation both of those suck.
>his project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial
I'm kind of concerned that this program is getting called woke DEI nonsense, since what it is literally describing is finding high academic achievers and tracking them for better education and opportunities in the future.
That's literally just meritocracy! Finding the talented and giving them opportunities appropriate to their ability! It's literally the exact thing that the anti-woke crowd says DEI is *against*, and the thing they *claim* they want us to be doing all the time!
I understand that it mentions that Native American communities will be helped. But that's because it's a program to help talented impoverished kids, and those communities are very impoverished.
That impoverished communities will be particularly helped by programs to help impoverished kids is just an empirical reality, a mathematical certainty of how any program like this would work even if we assume it is 100% race-blind and impartial.
It's a bit a scary to me that just pointing out the empirical fact that your program to help the poor will end up helping minorities because they are poor is enough to get you censured and immiserated. This feels like a really off-brand position position for this blog to take given basically every other post up to this point, and makes me wonder whether I'm missing something or whether this grant proposal is not being read with the level of charity that's normally expected here.
In discrimination law, it is illegal to use a facially race-neutral process if your true goal in using it is racially motivated. I think we should use a similar standard here. Imagine a grant which said, “we randomly selected participants from XYZ County in a race-neutral way. However, because XYZ County is 90% white, this will have the positive effect of benefitting the white community.” I assume you would be troubled by this, as would I. I don’t see why a different standard should apply for “minority” racial groups. The goals of government funded research should be to help people in a race-neutral way, full stop (except in those edge cases where race might be relevant to a medical treatment or something like that).
> I don’t see why a different standard should apply for “minority” racial groups.
This feels like the standard argument where conservatives say 'You'd be really upset if the law says you can't shoot a camera at a crowd of people, so isn't it hypocritical to favor a law that says can't shoot a gun at a crowd of people?'
As always, the question is the actual and intended consequences of the two policies, not whether you can write a linguistically similar sentence describing the two policies.
Yes, we'd be concerned about a study that touted getting more white people into STEM, because white people are already over-represented in STEM, and there's no indication that getting *proportionally* more white people into STEM would be meritocratic or fix any current systemic problems with the system. We would expect the next marginal white person added to a STEM program to be below-average, because we already got all the good ones up to average *and more*.
Whereas *certain specific* minorities are under-represented in STEM. We would expect the next marginal person from such a group to be above-average, because we haven't gotten to them yet. We would expect that society is missing opportunities in recruitment from these communities, and that these communities are getting worse outcomes than their talent would justify due to systemic lack of opportunity. We would expect a positive benefit from correcting that under-representation.
So yeah, we should not be helping any minority *because* they are a minority. But we should be tailoring policies to have positive consequentialist impacts, and that includes tailoring who they are directed at.
And for reasons that are zero mystery to anyone who isn't pretending not to understand American history, the people who can benefit most from many policies happen to be minorities.
Knowing that this simple empirical fact is true, and then carefully avoiding saying it, and using oblique proxy measure to try to capture it without saying it, is stupid and inefficient. It's ok to target people in a way that will do the most good, and it's ok to say who those people are.
And refusing to target policies where they'll do the most good because doing the most good is 'woke' is... not just stupid, but actively burning utility at teh alter of culture war. It's ridiculous.
(of course, the ultimate dodge anyone who opposes the utility of targeting is forced into is just-world-fallacy by way of HBD. I think this is a pathetically weak and transparently dishonest gambit in this *particular* conversation, but I don't need to attack that position until someone explicitly makes it)
PS: I wouldn't be especially offended or worried about a program saying it will benefit men getting into psychology or nursing programs, if my impression of the gender ratio in those fields is correct. The actual context and consequences are what makes a policy good or bad, not how it is described.
I have several problems with this. First, you are assuming that every racial group has equal abilities (on average!) in every given field. This is just empirically not the case, as even passing familiarity with IQ test scores, etc., shows (and no, reference to differential racial IQ averages does not necessitate "HBD"). There's no reason to expect racial/gender proportionality in any given field, and in fact we should expect the opposite. Given that, I don't see why "representation" or "under-representation" are things we should care about. If your goal is really just to get the best applicants, you don't need to look at the race of applicants whatsoever. Give them a merit-based or at least color-blind test of some kind, take the highest scoring applicants regardless of their race, and simply ignore the racial and gender makeup of the resulting recipient pool.
Second, I strongly doubt you really believe in consequentialism in the area of race relations (but feel free to bite the bullet here--that would be an interesting perspective). The implication of your view is that if I could show that, say, having an all-white research team would produce better research than a more racially diverse one, then it is morally acceptable for the government to mandate that grant recipients have all-white research teams. I don't think you believe that, nor do I. I think because we live in a multiracial society, and because of the horrors of racism in the past, the only way forward is for the government to get out of the racial discrimination game altogether. I think government action should be totally colorblind, even if you can make arguments that here and there we're not getting the empirically "best" outcomes due to colorblind policies.
When Putin was just beginning to consolidate power in Russia, many people preferred to turn a blind eye and focus on how he was suppressing “liberals” (not American liberals, but liberals in the Russian sense, something like American libertarians). They were stupid and cocky, everyone was fed up with them, people blamed them for the disaster of the 90s. Nobody wanted to go with them against Putin.
Now, 25 years later, it's hard to find excuses for the idiocy that struck Russians then. And I see that Americans seem to be embarking on the same path (except that, unlike Russian liberals, Biden has left the American economy in near-perfect shape). In the midst of a constitutional crisis, with a ridiculous proto-dictator wrecking the American political system and on his way to becoming a mere dictator, discussing what is woke and what is not is.... would be funny if it weren't scary.
Right. It is incredible the priorities people here have. I cannot figure out how a bunch of above-average intelligent people have convinced themselves that, what is at worst writing woke shibboleths into grant proposals is a greater evil than culling otherwise valuable science that used those shibboleths. Many people here are actually endorsing defunding cancer research if that helps them “defeat wokeness”.
When writing a comment there's little point in making the same point someone else already made, and there are more ways to be wrong than to be right. Together these seem to lead to a surprisingly large portion of comments being silly, given the expected intelligence level of the commenters.
My significant other works in university research mostly funded by e.g. NIH, NIDA, et al., and in particular is very involved in the grant application processes. My longstanding impression is that name-checking groups described as minority, "marginalized," "under-served," etc. in the package is expected .... or at least perceived to be expected.
I cannot believe that I am being dragged, kicking and screaming and fighting all the way, to the conclusion that Ted feffin' Cruz is in the right on this. Fuck me.
I totally agree with this conclusion:
"Just fund research to cure cancer without judging it on whether there’s a sentence about minority outreach in the grant proposal!"
But what we should be asking, and what should be a public scandal, is: how many proposals were rejected (and how many grifters and scammers instead got grants) because the filtering system decided the pinch of incense to Caesar was not big enough? I was part of a group deciding on grant awards in one job (and I hated every minute of it, because it was literally deciding "do we give this grant to the 101 year old woman or to the liver cancer patient?" since we didn't have the funding to give it to both) and now I have to wonder: what metrics were being used?
I used to laugh about Sam Brinton, but I'm not laughing now, because he was plainly a symptom of the rot. How deep did the rot go? How many grants for cancer research got turned down because they used the outdated or wrong terminology, or none of the terminology at all? Why the hell does it matter if your institution is "Hispanic-serving"? Worse, how many grants got turned down because the algorithm or the Ibrahim X. Kendi trainee decided "Sorry, 'Hispanic' is an outdated and offensive and non-inclusive term, we need it to be 'Latinx'"?
How much damage did DEI and intersectionality do?
Do you see why I am reluctantly (but less and less reluctant as more of this nonsense comes out) behind the DOGE Killdozer? Strip out all the meaningless DEI genuflecting! Absolutely give grants to help Native Americans access STEM education, with the bonus that you're also helping poor rural whites and blacks and non-Native Americans! But drop the pretence that a couple of boilerplate sentences matter a continental damn, and even worse that the entire proposal may be skipped for lack of the boilerplate!
If it makes you feel any better, I did my grant applications without the DEI boilerplate (more out of ignorance than ideological principle) and had no trouble getting funding.
That does make me feel better. But I do wish we had solid evidence about "were grants refused because they didn't have the boilerplate?" though I don't expect we'll get it now.
If we assume that Cruz stuffed all the boilerplate he could possibly find on his list, which seems reasonable given the contents of the list, this then implies that grants not on the list were approved without boilerplate.
I don't have numbers, but we do have Scott's post to help us gauge how large a set that might be: "This post just finds that 40% of the science that Ted Cruz flagged as woke was actually woke. I think this works out to 2-3% of all Biden-era science."
So just based on what is here on this page and literally no other research, I'm going to extrapolate to suggesting that at least 90% of "Biden-era science" was approved without either being actually woke or containing the boilerplate.
> But drop the pretence that a couple of boilerplate sentences matter a continental damn
The purpose of a grant proposal is to explain what it is you intend to accomplish, but /also/ to get given a grant.
For any complex system, whatever the system measures becomes the thing it produces; this effect emerges from the patterns of human motivation just as inevitably as our reality emerges from the laws of physics.
If adding the boilerplate increases the chances of the proposal being accepted by, however tiny, nevertheless a statistically significant amount, proposals will add the boilerplate. It's just how people work; compare e.g. discussions elsewhere in these comments sections of what people are willing to go through and risk for a negligible hope of increasing their kids' IQ by a tiny amount.
This effect happens entirely automatically and without anyone explicitly gating proposals based on the presence or absence of the boilerplate. It cannot be avoided; whatever it is that the new administration turns out to like will end up pandered to. They don't have to explicitly call for this; it will happen, if slower, simply through people looking at what applications succeed and imitating their structure.
So I would not put too much weight on what boilerplate people have attached to proposals in the past or will attach in the future; none of it should lead to despair. Only the actual substance matters.
i am very sympathetic to what you are saying, but also think that indiscriminate broad-brush keyword-based cuts are a solution for a different problem than the problem you describe
The "DOGE Killdozer" amounts to a suspension of the constitutional order and is obviously rampantly corrupt. But grant application processes *were* pretty annoying and inefficient, so, you know, hard to say who's more in the wrong here.
"Just fund research to cure cancer without judging it on whether there’s a sentence about minority outreach in the grant proposal!"
That's the obvious solution. However:
1. Given the length of the typical funding cycle that would take way too long, and wouldn't get picked up by the news--and if it were, given the MSM leans left would be slanted to make the GOP look bad anyway. "Cancer research killed because affects minorities!" or something. If they're going to do that anyway, why bother?
2. The GOP has a working-class, aggressively anti-intellectual base now. If you tell them you're going for more 'natural' approaches a la RFK Jr rather than funding the NIH they won't know the difference at this point. The small fraction of smart rightists has a physical, not a life, science background so this is out of their wheelhouse.
<It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it.
1. It appears that the NSF awards about 12,000 grants per year. That is 48k in four years. This data is re 3400 grants. Where is the evidence that you had to have "woke" language to get a grant?
2. Where is the evidence that this was unique to the Biden Administration?
3. There is probably very little distinguishing grant applications at the margins. If two grants are a tossup, what, exactly, is wrong with funding the one that has a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
>There is probably very little distinguishing grant applications at the margins. If two grants are a tossup, what, exactly, is wrong with funding the one that has a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
Anyone who thinks "actually affirmative action only decides between tossups!" is unlikely to be able to fairly judge applicants. They're likely to motivated reasoning themselves into believing that the black kid and asian kid are tossups when they really shouldn't
And, if you think there is an objective difference between the marginal grant application that is accepted versus the Marginal grant application that is rejected, I have a bridge to sell you.
The logic is the same, but I'll amend it since you insist:
Anyone who thinks "actually DEI priorities only decides between tossups!" is unlikely to be able to fairly judge applicants. They're likely to motivated reasoning themselves into believing that the woke application and non-woke application are tossups when they really shouldn't
You are evading the issue. As I said, given that there are tossup, what, exactly is what, exactly, is wrong with funding the ones that have a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
The fact that affirmative action has been used in non-tossup circumstances (see, eg, the facts underlying the Bakke case) says nothing about how actual tissues should be treated.
That's precisely what I'm disputing. Measuring the relative value of projects is a subjective exercise based on the judgment of the evaluators. My point was that those who believe there are tossups between "improving educational outcomes for my preferred groups" and X are likely very biased in favour of the former type of research such that their evaluation that there exists the tossup cannot be trusted
If the best thing that a researcher can come up with for external impacts of their research is that it will help make more researchers (regardless of their racial or sexual characteristics), that research is not deserving of funding by the US government.
Now, now, Peter, where else are we going to get new baby researchers from? If a researcher and a researcher love one another very much, they engage in drawing up a grant application and six months to a year later, the government funding arrives with a new researcher! It's how nature intended it to be!
Not making a normative declaration, but your take seems plainly sensible to me with a lot of explanatory power. Cruz, DOGE, et al. know that huge quantities of government money go to people who fundamentally oppose them politically. Some may do so passively, some may do so actively, but either way the ecosystem of their implacable political opposition is being propped up by a network of government dollars. The goal is to use the most blatant examples as ammunition to starve that network, then maybe reopen it once it's been purged of its role in political opposition.
Or to put it another way, Scott seems to think "cutting out the rot" would mean funding the actual research and defunding the dumb stuff. But "cutting out the rot" to Cruz more likely means defunding the people and orgs who are nodes of the Resistance network. Only then can a less politically biased system rise in its place, which will fund the useful stuff without also being a Resistance bastion.
I believe that is exactly what is going on. I believe it is called the "friend-enemy distinction." Politics is done by people. Those people can hide their intentions in any number of ways because people lie and otherwise weaponize language, but *who* the people in question are is difficult to conceal. So, as a basic matter of political warfare, oppose the people who are opposed to you, even if they are currently hiding behind a hostage puppy. Someone else will take care of the hostage puppy.
Obviously, this can go way too far, but the possibility of an overreaction does not make the tactic itself unethical.
Can it be a sort of inoculation though? The part of a vaccine where it does in fact do some harm is crucial for teaching the immune system that the part that presents some proteins presents *adversarial* proteins.
So being heavy handed like that ensures (hopefully) that in 4 or 8 years when a Democrat is elected, the pendulum doesn't immediate swing all the way back.
Before this the wokies had a reasonable argument: why don't you just say the words, it's just words, refusing to say them is mighty sus. It's like as if you lived in a village plagued by skinwalkers and every evening all your people gathered in the common dinner hall and said the Lord's Prayer before eating, on the assumption that any skinwalkers would burst into flames if they did. Now, if you said that as an atheist you refuse to say the prayer even though as an atheist it costs you nothing, because of vague and hard to explain reasons about slippery slopes and such, people would rightfully become extremely suspicious that you are in fact a weaselly skinwalker.
Now there's a counter-argument: the motte of "it's just words, just say them even if you don't mean them" has been breached, any scientist can rightfully point out that the next *republican* administration can and probably will punish them for including them, so no, that's a pretty good reason not to say them if you're not an actual believer. And so the minority of actual believers will lose their huge meat shield of people complying with the woke demands to avoid making a fuss. And that's a very, very good thing!
While I doubt that Ted Cruz was consciously trying to achieve this, I suspect there is a game theoretic strategy at play here (maybe driven by human biases, or just accidental) that may achieve goals beyond what is stated on the surface.
By punishing people who threw a DEI line into their grants, you are punishing people who capitulated with what the conservative party considers ridiculous requirements of the previous administrations. This will cause anyone who witnesses this retaliation to be more cautious in the future when given the opportunity to blindly jump onto a dangerous bandwagon, and perhaps think about their actual beliefs a bit more rather than following what they believe to be the dominant belief system.
In theory, with enough instances of situations like this people would eventually learn that sticking to principals even in the face of a shifting overton window is a better strategy than trying to chase the overton window. This would result in those people in the center being more principled, which is presumably exactly what the conservative party wants (more people resisting sudden changes).
Again, I am not making claims that this was an intentional play here, just noticing that there is a potential outcome beyond what it seems like on the surface. Humans evolved biases like grudges, retaliation, etc. for a reason and retaliating against people who went along with what you believe is "bad behavior" discourages people from committing bad acts that suddenly seem to be socially acceptable.
Scott, you may be underestimating how many people saw this propaganda and said, “hell no, I’m not going into academia.” It hasn’t been a problem for just the last 4 years, and you’re likely underestimating the serious deterimental effect of requiring all academic research to fledge fealty to nonsense.
You are right that some of these are non woke, and that these seem like reasonable projects to fund. But all of this is arguing from the perspective that the current academic system is more or less functional. It’s not!
This administration is actually … doing stuff. Try proposing your craziest overhaul of how academic research works, and maybe it could happen. If I could donate funding directly to academics studying things I found interesting, instead of paying taxes to fund God knows what - I and many others would be happy to do it. That cure for ovarian cancer is more likely to come sooner when academia isn’t full of nonsense compliance rituals that drive away anyone with the disagreeability necessary to consider truly new hypotheses.
Is the administration doing anything to besides cutting things on this front? Doesn't seem like there's much legislation on the way besides a tax cut which will erase all the gains made in terms of saving.
Yeah agree. While academia is important, and there are many good scientists out there doing good things, the whole institution has been MASSIVELY hamstrung over the past 10 years by ideological bullshit. It’s no coincidence that the most virulent anti Semitic propaganda is coming from University campuses.
I don’t think the answer is “shut it all down and start over,” but it’s a lot closer to that than Scott seems to think. In particular I think any field ending in “Studies” could be safely eliminated and the number of bureaucrats could be reduced by 80%.
Speaking as someone who successfully applied for an NSF fellowship in 2018, the "add a woke sentence" stuff was encouraged even during the first Trump administration, it wasn't just Biden. The NSF grant review panels are made up of academics who are usually liberal, and it's a good strategy to appeal to them.
(Although "woke" wasn't really a well-known term in 2018 the idea was the same.)
As other commenters pointed out, this is related to the "Broader Impacts" requirement for a grant, which was in place long before Trump.
One point we might be overlooking in assessing whether a study is woke is that some NIH and NSF grants were designated only for particular groups of researchers-- for example, women of color principal investigators, BIPOC undergraduates, low-income community college students who receive Pell Grants, first-time researchers under age 40, etc. Middle-aged white men were not even eligible to apply for some of the grants. I'm not sure if that was reflected in Scott's investigation.
1. Surely there's a vast swathe of things that are reasonable but people would likely support *more* if they choose for woke reasons, eg research into a medical condition that affects women. Are you considering "woke" to be "anything excessively progressive people support" or "anything ONLY excessively progressive people support"?
A big grab of banning "woke stuff" without considering that seems likely to prioritise "we hate woke" over saving money (which is what I assumed, but I could have been wrong)
2. I'm curious how many of the ones that SOUND stupid still sound stupid if you looked at them for a couple of hours. I'd guess about half, but it could be 95% or 5% I don't know.
3. I feel like there's a systemic problem of funding science for crap reasons. Right now there's a lot of spurious pro-diversity guidelines. But there's always a lot of spurious military funding. And a lot of pork barrel projects. Cancelling projects that look woke while not changing anything about the system will cancel some crap projects, cause lots of disruption, but (assuming doesn't have any long term solution) not really change anything. Given this list I'm not sure it would ever actually save any money compared to cancelling stuff at random, it might be a lot worse.
FoxNews headline: "Rightwing politician accuses Leftwing reprobate politician of 10 acts of corruption."
MSNBC Headline: "Rightwing politician pounces on leftwing crusader."
ACX Headline: "Rightwing politician wrong 60% of the time."
There's a problem with Cruz's list. Indeed. Shame. Good catch, ACX. And thanks for hopefully improving their aim in the future. That said, I know where I want my attention spent on this issue.
Why do you think the Trump Administration plans to use the Cruz database? This is just one Senator doing the kind of quick and dirty attention grabbing stunt that senators do.
Because they've already shut down large parts of government with a "kill them all and let god sort it out approach" while openly bragging about it and talking about how they're going to do more?
If you want scientists to stop including woke shibboleths in grant applications, then "Republican administrations ignore them and Democratic administrations require them" is not obviously an effective strategy for making that happen.
You might worry that "Republican administrations prohibit them and Democratic administrations require them" will lead to chaos and dysfunction, but Democrats have no reason to disarm when they're in power if Republicans always disarm unilaterally for fear of chaos and dysfunction.
Suppose that Republicans take a hard line here and we don't get a new cure for cancer. Do we blame the Republicans for refusing to negotiate with terrorists, or do we blame the Democrats for using cancer patients as hostages in stupid ideological conformity games?
I think you don't like retaliation spirals or partisanship and you want each side to be the adults who take the moral high ground by dropping the stupid games and implementing good government when they have power. It would be nice if both sides did that. But this feels like a blog post written by cooperate-bot about five minutes after the woke defect-bot finally started experiencing consequences for the first time ever.
I'm not saying that the Republicans are correct, here, but I am saying that they have more credibility than you do when it comes to slaying woke dragons, and I don't think you've actually articulated a political strategy that could possibly work better than the dumb revenge heuristic that you're criticizing.
I personally care very little about whether woke shibboleths are added in grant applications one way or another, compared to actually getting science funded.
A proportionate response would be that Republicans demand different shibboleths (eg all new grants must now include ‘all hail president trump, he who is making America great again’) in order to be funded. Canceling already approved and in process grants for having uttered the previously required shibboleths is an escalation. If it becomes the new norm, it implies that all funding provisionally terminates at the next election. That’s going to make it pretty hard to make any kind of long term plan.
"Suppose that Republicans take a hard line here and we don't get a new cure for cancer. Do we blame the Republicans for refusing to negotiate with terrorists, or do we blame the Democrats for using cancer patients as hostages in stupid ideological conformity games?"
I think that's a fair description of the Republican political strategy right now. I interpret it as the dumb version of a more enlightened strategy that would still find some way to punish wokeness.
With that said, I don't think Scott has identified a more enlightened strategy. His proposal seems less dumb, but more naive.
At the margins, it's fair to argue that programs like PEPFAR are good enough that we should set aside normal political strategy to support them. But I think the argument is more persuasive if you first demonstrate an understanding of the strategy.
I think you may be giving a little bit too much credence to the words put down, and not being credulous enough about what they're saying. To be fair, I agree with you that Ted Cruz went too far the other direction.
In general, there's a question about whether someone putting various woke phrasing into a grant proposal is just faking it or are serious. It could very well mean that a non-negligible portion of the grant is going to be spent on woke or woke-adjacent goals. I don't think we can say much for sure either way, and dismissing the wording is not the best way to approach a review.
To be specific, the sentence "focused on attracting underrepresented minority groups" reads to me differently than it apparently did for you. You read that as a random boilerplate to get approved easier by the Biden administration. I see the word "focused" and note that this is significantly different than you paraphrased. Instead of incidentally also reaching minorities, they are directly saying that they will intentionally reach out to minorities more than other groups. This could mean a wide variety of things and may end up meaning what you read it as, but it could also mean they spend a significant amount of time and money reaching out to those groups, to the exclusion of others.
If it were me, I would want those grants denied for being discriminatory, at least when phrased as strongly as that specific wording.
OK I haven't read the whole post and have no comment of the woke stuff. But that first grant about capacitors and security sounds like total BS from a electronics point of view. Of course you use a cap to store energy. They are frikin everywhere in all your electronics. There are some capacitors that can fail if run near or above their specs*. Notably tantalums, but if it's critical you can pick a different cap.
*tantalums have gotten so bad that I would use them at only 1/3 of their rated voltage... it's mostly a result of specmanship by the cap manufacturers.
Reading your article, I got the impression that these grants had been marked for being cancelled. But I can't find that statement, or anything implying it, on the announcement you linked to?
The announcement you linked to, said that the way funding works needs to remove the wokeness criterion, which I understood to refer to future funding?
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I'm not convinced that these sentences are without consequence. A small number of personal friends have told me over the years about their work being diverted in significant ways by these sentences; for example (fabricated example related to what they said), for cancer research, maybe this sentence means they're pressed to have a cohort to test on from groups that are normally very under-represented -- but maybe there's a reason they're very under-represented and it is very difficult to get the cohort together and this creates delays, and there is no reason to believe that outcomes would be different in the cohort so these delays are unnecessary (and possibly costly).
But totally agree seems like they should have done more due diligence.
Gathering statistics on the proportion of woke statements that abstracts contain is literally woke science. Scott is doing woke science! Quick, get the cancellation ray!
I'm struggling to reconcile the tenor and quality of this post and comments with others I've read here. The biggest problem I see here is a complete lack of accounting for who is doing the sorting of grants into these three categories. Agreed that once you've arrived at criteria, it might be easy to sort them. Agreed that the current administration isn't even trying. But when the sort-er uses words like "cringe" to describe his reaction to a grant, or "garbage" to describe "woke" grants, an obvious bias comes into view (maybe one of the things that triggers people who encounter the word "woke" is that it comes from Black vernacular speech).
And this is only looking at the >3400 grants that Ted Cruz identified as woke -- you'd need to start from the beginning, including all of the other grants he didn't so identify, because if he did such a poor job identifying his sample, why would you give his work any credence in the first place? So I think the problem is much harder. But is it even a good idea to try to sort them on wokeness?
As others have pointed out, the Biden administration wasn't the first to start requiring grant applicants to reflect on the effects of the funding on underrepresented communities; someone stated that it went back to 1980 or so. But why, at that time, was the change made to require it? Because, historically, effects on underrepresented communities, or the relevance to them from the research, wasn't taken into consideration at all. And this led, and continues to lead, to bad things. Things like pulse oximeters not working as well on dark skin.
Some have said in the comments that they just want to do good science, that it distracts from the "real" work to take the communities studied or affected into account. I understand this point of view, and in some research it clearly makes no difference at all (in astrophysics, for example). But for a grant evaluator, why exclude information about wokeness that might be helpful? If the wokeness boilerplate is not included then those effect definitely will not be taken into account. Boilerplate, or what you might see as purely performative, language may seem icky, but it does no harm and maybe will do some good. If you don't include the boilerplate, then the possible effects on underrepresented communities will definitely *not* be on the radar of the evaluators. We can only study what we're aware of the need to study.
"maybe one of the things that triggers people who encounter the word "woke" is that it comes from Black vernacular speech"
Oooooh, I see! We all Wascally Wascists if we object!
Yeah, it's not that the word originates in AAVE, it's that it was appropriated by while (oh so very white) finger-wagging progressives who like to pontificate about how "being on time" is White Supremacy and they just looooooved Kendrick's Super Bowl halftime show due to the deep cultural artistry on display which they have to explain to us plebs who don't get it.
"Boilerplate, or what you might see as purely performative, language may seem icky, but it does no harm and maybe will do some good."
Great, so if the current lot impose a requirement for "this research will aid in Making America Great Again", you'll be fine with that? Because I wouldn't be, but then again, I must be one of them Wascally Wascists who disapprove of Wokeness because the term comes from Black People Talk.
Sorry you felt triggered. I didn't call you a wacist -- that was your interpretation. I still don't see any harm from boilerplate DEI language in grant applications. As others have pointed out, there isn't much evidence of large numbers of good applications being denied because they omitted it. Elsewhere in this looong unwieldy thread I posed the question what is different between DEI impacts and other claimed broad impacts of research -- all impacts have political or moral components and all affect different populations differently. But somehow people find DEI impacts objectionable and not those that promise things like national security or increased economic activity. I don't know why that is. I feel broader impact statements add, rather than subtract, from a grant's attractiveness. And I confess to being disappointed that missing from this thread is any mention of the US Constitution's separation of powers.
Because earlier you responded to my statement that civil servants who didn't want to break the law weren't actually Trump's enemies, as if that actually did make them enemies. I took that as sarcasm too. If I was mistaken then never mind.
Here is what the article author failed to understand:
If a grant for harvesting energy from radio frequency/WiFi mentions any woke point such as "promote equitable outcomes for ..."
...then its approval was tainted by wokeness - it doesn't matter that the main goal of the project itself isn't woke.
It means grant money didn't go to another project that might be even more important but didn't pass the wokeness criteria because it didn't add those "kneel to Zod" keywords.
You can say it was a "false positive" and throw a tantrum but can't deny that the process was vitiated. Its approval didn't follow the strict goal of advancing science because of that shadow.
1. As many commenters have pointed out, making a statement on "broader impacts" has been a requirement since the 1980s, because the government wants to hear about not only if it will "advance science" in the abstract but also if the research might be a good thing for other reasons. It's not correct to say that the organization has a "strict goal" of advancing science.
2. "Funding was denied because the grant application contained certain keywords" is *also* a failure to pursue that strict goal, just in the opposite direction.
No, these people need to put in the throw-away sentence so that the filters in databases which select for woke crap won’t throw out their papers regardless of their efficacy. Whether they like or dislike it is barely relevant to their work or its quality, it’s just a game you need to play in the current bureaucratic and regulatory environment. Instead of focusing on surgically changing the environment, the administration is spazzing out and creating enemies out of people who should have benefitted from not having to worry about any of this anymore. What’s so hard about this to understand?
100% this, it isn’t the researchers fault, they’re getting screwed both ways (first by the Biden administration who pushed everyone to tart their stuff up with DEI terms, now by the Trump administration who is incapable of a reasonable and measured response).
As someone who has graduated from undergraduate school in the last couple of years, I can attest that myself and others would play these sorts of word games for the purpose of "playing well with others."
While this wasn't doing research, I am readily inclined to believe that these kinds of statements are injected to keep the approval process favorable to the researchers in an environment when such injections are viewed favorably. It seems to me that it is the environment that should primarily be at fault under such circumstances.
but what's the game theory of this? maybe it's most rational to not want science done by people who pandered to the (opposing (?)) political regime in their science
maybe it's bad actually because periodically cancelling self-described-woke scientists gives real woke scientist a better way of signaling woke loyalty
> A proportionate response would be that Republicans demand different shibboleths (eg all new grants must now include ‘all hail president trump, he who is making America great again’) in order to be funded. Canceling already approved and in process grants for having uttered the previously required shibboleths is an escalation. If it becomes the new norm, it implies that all funding provisionally terminates at the next election. That’s going to make it pretty hard to make any kind of long term plan.
I'm not sure honestly, it's hard to evaluate without knowing the motivations and these decisions have been very opaque. Is this goal to reduce public spending? My impression is that Musk is extremely skeptical about public spending, and given his very successful private entrepeneurial background I can definitely understand his skepticism. Is the goal to punish universities for being very liberal and not voting Trump? Is the goal to burn down universities because a significant part of the Trump's voter base consists of anti-intellectual types?
If we take them at their word and they just want universities to stop doing "woke" stuff, but keep doing science, then it is probably important to keep in mind that these methods have already damaged the US ability to conduct scientific research, things like the spending freeze make the US seem unreliable when it comes to being a patron for science and this will figure into postdocs decisions when it comes to whether to accept a position into an American university. There most likely are better ways to achieve the goal of enforcing political conformity among scientists without incurring this damage.
"People are losing grants for the stupidest reasons. I'm going to put a stop to it."
"How?"
"By making people lose their grants."
Everyone loves to punish. I simply can't count any more how many times I've seen someone identify a social problem and decide to fix it by punishing people trying to cope with the problem. Like they're the masterminds we've been waiting for.
The Trump's administration's response is the true meaning of 'reactionary', which only prepares the path for the return of the very thing being reacted against.
I have submitted several NSF grants as a PI (and was even successful with one). I have also been a Co-I on several other grants (many of which were successful). I have also been on several NSF review panels. The grants that I have been a part of range of from a few hundred $k to many $M. So I can provide some expertise on what goes into a successful NSF grant.
NSF judges grants based on two criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. Broader Impacts has been one of the review criterion for as long as I've been a part of NSF grants (over 15 years now). I actually didn't know the full history but Google tells me Broader Impacts was made an official review criterion in 1997. I believe that this is legally mandated by Congress. So my first point is that this is *not* some new initiative started by the Biden Administration as a result of the post-2020 rise of DEI.
What counts as Broader Impacts? NSF takes a very broad view of this (no pun intended), so PIs can try to make a case for pretty much anything that benefits society, but I'll point you to the NSF website for some examples
It's worth stressing that your grant *will not get funded if you don't have a serious and well thought out Broader Impacts component* (as I explain below I think NSF has been judging Broader Impacts components with greater rigor recently). The rubric for judging grants explicitly includes this as a criterion.
Now, inclusion is definitely one of the popular examples of Broader Impacts but it's not the only one. And the logic behind Broader Impacts has nothing to do with DEI -- Congress wants NSF to fund research that benefits society in some way, as opposed to just being intellectually interesting on its own.
In practice, a lot of NSF grants use some sort of DEI or educational component to satisfy the Broader Impacts criterion. But this has been the case since well before 2020, when woke DEI really entered the zeitgeist. So, again, this is not a result of a Biden administration policy. I will say that, personally, I don't find everything related to increasing participation of minorities to be "woke" or objectionable. There really are opportunity gaps along racial/ethnic lines (less so along gender lines than there used to be), and I think it's a good thing to try to close those opportunity gaps so that smart people of all backgrounds can try to go into science. That's not in opposition to meritocracy as long as people are succeeding or failing based on their abilities once they actually get into STEM.
Some history -- when I first got into this a lot of grants basically just tacked on an educational or outreach component to the grant, sometimes something that was unrelated to the research itself. The education and outreach efforts were frequently (but not always) targeted at underrepresented groups, and this typically would be racial/ethnic minorities, women, or socioeconomically disadvantaged youth (read: poor people, often rural). Just as an example, when I was in grad school we got NSF funding for an after-school STEM program at a rural elementary school not far from the University (you didn't have to drive far to get to pretty poor, rural areas). I actually think this was one of the better programs (though I'm biased). Another example I was heavily involved in -- we recruited rural high school students to actually help classify and categorize data with an eye towards finding new astronomical sources (this was before AI really took off in the field). This was real research and they found some cool new things! But a lot of grants from those times included Broader Impacts that amounted to "give a public talk and gesture vaguely towards some minority group."
Now, you may very well think this is not optimal, because it means that NSF was funding things not really related to the research itself (and I'm inclined to agree). NSF actually seems to think this, too. Within the last decade (yes, even during "peak woke") I noticed a definite attempt by NSF program officers to encourage PIs to take a more expansive view of Broader Impacts (i.e. don't just focus on minority outreach and education) and to tie it more directly to the main research program. I don't recall hearing explicit guidance that one must not just tack on an outreach program, but the change in tone was clear. This extended to panel reviews. The last time I was on a review panel we were clearly encouraged to rate Broader Impacts programs higher when they were more closely integrated with the research. The panels have also started to expect the educational and outreach components that do exist to be of a higher quality and to incorporate the latest results from education research, and to rigorously measure their impact (well, at least as rigorously as one can with these things). As a rule, Program Officers really try not to influence the panel, so even this gentle guidance is significant.
I think the culture, both of PIs and of panel reviewers, is (or maybe was) taking a while to change. Lots of grants still come in with unrelated outreach activities as part of their Broader Impacts, and these still get funded, and many of these might be considered woke DEI. But definitely not all, and things were shifting a bit.
One other thing to note if you are someone who is interested in reforming all this -- NSF does not just hand out "grants", NSF has a large number of funding programs for different types of activities. A lot of them are grants to individual PIs or small teams to focus on a specific research question -- what you probably think of as the typical NSF grant. Some are focused on supporting early career scientists. Some are focused on much bigger, multi-institution and even international research collaborations. Some fund instrumental R&D and others fund facilities, from the small to the very, very big. Some programs seek to explicitly support education and public outreach activities. The exact mix varies by NSF Directorate and Division. All of these have to include Broader Impacts components but what you might consider to be woke DEI activities are not uniformly distributed across programs or Divisions. Targeting your reform on specific programs is going to be much more effective than trying to take a hammer to NSF as a whole, or just instituting some broad budget cuts based on a click-bait analysis of the amount of spending on "woke" projects like the list that Cruz put together (I have no problem calling Cruz's list propaganda -- the headline number and underlying analysis is worthless for anyone who wants to take this issue seriously).
Quite the contrary, I think it's very important that they consider these implications. Just observing that Cruz et al are really only posturing at this point.
I miss the quiet competence of the Biden administration. I didn't agree with everything (I don't know who could, there's so much the federal gov't is supposed to do), but it was capable in a general sense. Now, muppets sit in office chairs thinking they wear crowns while sitting on thrones.
Are you sure the Biden administration was competent? Almost everything you know about them comes through the press. Isn't it more likely that the press you consume desperately wanted you to think they were competent, and filtered the facts you were fed?
As one example: After Biden was clearly unable to speak or think at the debate, everyone knew he had some kind of loss of mental capability. Any reporter covering the government should have noticed this, and every right-leaning outlet reported on it two years before that debate. If your news source knew this, and let you believe he was okay in those two years, your news source deceived you into thinking he was competent.
Good thing that now we have an administration that you don’t need any press to see is incompetent, and no amount of good press could make appear competent. Wait… why is that better?
You perceive the Trump administration as incompetent. Is that because they truly are, or is it because you learning about them through media that hates them and spins everything to make them look bad?
I am not saying Trump (or Biden) is (was) good or bad. I am asking you to consider the possibility that your news source can shade your perception.
The blue-tribe members I know are sure Fox News is propaganda. By choosing the subset of news they show, choosing "experts" on topics to favor red-tribe ideas, and assuming that liberals are fools, Fox can make its audience see Republicans in a better light than reality warrants.
Are you sure other news sources are not doing this in the other direction? If so, how do you know?
My main source of news on their incompetence has been following Elon’s own X feed and Trump’s press conferences. Elon couldn’t even get the math right on the indirect costs at NIH, while cranking the outrage machine on these costs. By his own pronouncements, he doesn’t know what the things he’s axing do, but “he’ll bring them back” if they’re useful. Those people and that extremely niche expertise are not going to just “come back”. I’m sorry, but it’s all just obvious, dramatic incompetence.
But also, what is with all the false equivalence? No, the NYT is not as D-friendly as Fox News is R-friendly. No, the excesses of woke culture, whatever exactly they are in the most negative light you can come up with, are not anywhere near as bad as freezing all medical research. I can’t believe this seriously needs saying.
> But also, what is with all the false equivalence? No, the NYT is not as D-friendly as Fox News is R-friendly.
You say this. How do you know? Are you measuring it, or is it your subjective impression, clouded by your preconceived notions? I think you have a trapped prior. You hate Trump, so you make no effort to understand his position.
It is of course possible that Trump or Elon is doing something truly bad. But your interpretation of his actions seems over-the-top unreasonable to me. For example:
> By his own pronouncements, he doesn’t know what the things he’s axing do, but “he’ll bring them back” if they’re useful.
That seems like a reasonable plan to me.
You have a giant pile of grants, each of which spends money. Most grants say they will do something that is deeply immoral and probably illegal, such as favoring people based on race or gender. You can look at each grant with care, but that will take a long time (if you care about accuracy). Or you can cut everything that might be bad, knowing that some good things you cut will re-apply for money.
Projects that are truly bad won't reapply. They know you will reject them. You will save a bunch of time by not having to review them.
Projects that are truly good will reapply, and make their case. You wind up reviewing them, and they get money.
You get the same result with less projects to review. You do interrupt some projects (it takes time to re-apply) but you avoid funding bad things that would otherwise have kept getting money while you took months to do all the reviews. Seems like a win overall.
If a person you like and trust presented the above plan, I bet you would see it as reasonable. But a politician you think is Very Bad did it, so it is Very Bad.
> No, the excesses of woke culture, whatever exactly they are in the most negative light you can come up with,
You refer to the bad aspects of woke as "excesses". This dismisses the damage with rhetoric in place of argument. If BLM riots cause some number of people to die (for whatever reason: violence at the riot, extra COVID cases, murders not punished due to lack of cops, ...), is that fairly described as an "excesses"?
> are not anywhere near as bad as freezing all medical research. I can’t believe this seriously needs saying.
"Freezing all medical research" is absurd hyperbole. Plenty of medical research is funded by entities other than the US federal government. Only some US federal government money is being frozen. This is the sort of cognitive distortion I think you should try to avoid.
Read the opening sentence, then read it again. Then ask yourself if this is how Fox News would ever open an article or broadcast about Biden.
Very on brand with the current context of “people trying to fix systems they don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of”, the idea of canceling all grants and making everyone reapply is an absolute disaster no matter what ideology was behind it. That whole process would take a year. People need to eat. Most people funded on grants are not going to just reapply or be available to do the same work in a year, they are going to be abruptly fired because there’s no money to pay them and they’ll have to find other jobs, because they need to eat. Maybe this is a good example of why people who want to propose systemic solutions (as opposed to wrecking balls) need a passing familiarity with the systems they’re talking about.
Fox News payed the largest defamation settlement in history for lying about Dominion voting machines being rigged. They admit to intentionally lying in their internal emails and text messages so they can stop losing viewers to Newsmax and OAN, which have also lost defamation lawsuits or are in the process of losing them against Dominion, Smartmatic, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, etc. Left wing media is nowhere near as corrupt as right wing media.
> It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it.
This was also true of the Trump 1 NSF, the Obama NSF, and the W Bush NSF. It has been part of science funding for decades.
So are you saying that the grant applicants were lying in order to get the grants? That they never intended to spend grant money on "woke" projects, and expected no oversight on the matter? And that this is somehow excusable given the incentives?
If resources are in fact diverted to such projects, the critique is relevant.
It is the 'systemic' stupidity that bothers people.
Incredible annoying trend where tech people think their narrow technical skills make them gods that know better than us mere mortals. DOGE is amply proving that they aren’t any better than the government employees they’re replacing and are arguably worse.
The truth is that these are not very bright guys, and things are getting out of hand.
Please, game-theory this out for me. If the norm is that Democrats can reward inserting diversity-blather into a grant but Republicans can't punish it, what follows? Solve for the equilibrium and try to tell me it's the one you want.
We saw a similar game being played with the panic over Meta Community Notes and the $1m bend-the-knee inauguration donations by tech moguls. Rational(ish) institutional spinelessness is treated as right and normal when Democrats are in power, shameful when Republicans are.
Even if we buy the premise you're setting out and ignore the fact that a) these sorts of public impact analyses have been part of grant applications for literally decades and b) that these supposedly woke grants only constituted 3% of all grants given (truly, our opponent's hold on society is unshakeable!!!) there's still no reason to have Repubs _punish_ people. The Dems didn't _punish_ people. In your version of the world, the Dems used their cultural influence to get people to lie about their true intentions for political reasons. An equivalent response from the GOP would be to...do the same thing. If you feel that the GOP doesn't have the influence to actually get people to do that, it's probably worth doing a bit of introspection about why that's the case.
More to the point. The spinelessness is shameful regardless. But the Repubs are very obviously acting out of malice and spite instead of out of any principles or commitment to ideological freedom. Unless you think that actually the guys who are suing news organizations for *checks notes* giving airtime to their political opponents are actually bastions of free speech?
As alluded to in the linked Twitter post, these statements are included because they are part of the application: "The Broader Impacts discussion is a critical component of any proposal submitted to the U.S. National Science Foundation. It answers the following question: How does your research benefit society?"
I have an active NSF grant (not listed in the database). You can witness the real-time tug-of-war between the new administration and the bureaucracy.
From what I can tell, the current instruction is, yes you can still receive the funds, but don't do those DEI outreach things.
Here are some emails received:
___
28th Jan
MESSAGE to the NSF PI Community,
"Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-25-13, issued on January 27, 2025, directs all Federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by the recent Executive Orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards, and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis. NSF has created an Executive Order Implementation webpage to ensure the widest dissemination of information and updates. We will continue to communicate with you as we receive additional guidance.
All NSF grantees must comply with these Executive Orders, and any other relevant Executive Orders issued, by ceasing all non-compliant grant and award activities. Executive Orders are posted at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/. In particular, this may include, but is not limited to conferences, trainings, workshops, considerations for staffing and participant selection, and any other grant activity that uses or promotes the use of DEIA principles and frameworks or violates Federal anti-discrimination laws. Please work with your institutional research office to assist you in complying with the Executive Orders. You can also direct your questions through the form on this NSF webpage.
Thank you for your work advancing science, engineering, technology and innovation for our nation."
___
2nd February:
"MESSAGE to the NSF PI Community,
On Friday, January 31, 2025, a Federal Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) directing Federal grant-making agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), to “...not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate... awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the States, and... not impede the States’ access to such awards and obligations, except on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms.” Although the language of the TRO is directed at State institutions, the Department of Justice has determined that it applies to all NSF award recipients. You can review the TRO here.
In order to comply with the TRO, the NSF Award Cash Management Service (ACM$) system is available for awardees to request payments as of 12:00pm EST, February 2, 2025.
This message is also available on the Executive Order Implementation webpage. Please check back regularly as we add frequently asked questions (FAQs) based on community feedback."
I think you guys are solving different problems. Scott is solving the problem of, "how can we eliminate wasteful woke science in order to improve science in general". Ted Cruz is solving the problem of "how can we generate headlines by eliminating spending while owning the libs". These problems require different solutions.
First off, what's wrong with "Woke" programs, if wokeness simply means "addressing the concerns of members of marginalized communities?" It is entirely possible that such programs promote the desire of such minorities to enter into STEM programs, and that seemingly helps improve US economic productivity (not to mention addresses institutional discrimination).
A thing is not bad just because it is "Woke" (depending on what you think that means).
Next, the incompetence with which "Woke" is being attacked is an inherent feature of the motivation that underlies the attack. This was never about rebalancing US government spending toward some sort of "rational center." It's about taking resources away from minority communities, and spending it on white people instead. It isn't even about the amount of money involved--a couple hundred million isn't enough to make a difference in the standard of living of the majority. It's about symbolic acts of power--Trump "Gets things done!" and what he's getting done in this case is symbolically reestablishing the majority's cultural privileges.
If you disagree, then logically it seems to me that you have to present and defend either one of two arguments: "There is no institutional discrimination to address" so all this is a waste of money and time; or alternatively, that "Woke programs were never about helping minorities!" so all this is a waste of money and time. Either of these seem objectively wrong to me, but have at it.
If you agree that there is institutional discrimination in the US and that this is a problem that should be addressed, but feel that "Woke" programs (whatever you think those are) are not the best way to go about it, I would like to hear your alternative. If your alternative is reliance on the private sector (ie, market forces) then that seems objectively wrong to me, but let's hear it.
If you agree that government programs and policies are a useful way to help integrate minorities into the US economy, but "Woke" programs are not the best sort of program or policy, then I would like to hear your alternative. This isn't necessarily objectively wrong, so I'm sincerely open to new alternatives.
If you can think of an alternative framework that I missed, please share, that would be really interesting.
I think some of us define woke more along the lines of “Modern America is fundamentally an institutionally racist, sexist society designed by and for white males at the expense of minorities and women, and that justice requires balancing the scales the other way”.
I believe this was probably true (pretty much everywhere when adjusted to local majorities) in the past. Liberal ideology slowly defeated this, culminating in the Civil rights movement of the 60s. However, after that the initiative went from eliminating unfair advantages to building compensatory privileges the other way under euphemisms such as affirmative action, disparate impact and DEI. To be blunt, I believe these all quickly descend into reverse racism, and two wrongs don’t make a right. So, yes, I believe woke is wrong. It is bad. It is a dysfunctional ideology which has started to rot our all our major institutions, undermining merit and effectiveness for racial spoils system to reward friends of the left.
I am sure you disagree, but please understand that this or something like it is how a lot of people feel about woke. We should never have aimed resources in the first place toward communities based on their racial makeup. This is racism, in our opinion. Instead direct resources toward the poor, or those having trouble in school.
As to your required arguments, I believe institutions in America have for decades been privileged for minorities that lean to the left. The woke initiative wasn’t about correcting racism, it has always been about extending it. And as above the non racist solution is to direct funds to those most in need regardless of their skin color or whether they have an innie or an outie.
Thank you for your considered reply. It was far less emotional that I was expecting, which I appreciate. That said, you are correct that I do not agree.
So, if I understand correctly, you define "Woke" as any attempt to address racial disparities by directing resources to minorities (and therefore not toward whites). The opposing approach would then be that often referred to as "Colorblind"?
My post was inspired by the example Scott used to illustrate a "Garbage" program which devoted money to studying how STEM programs could make themselves more appealing to black students. To call something "garbage" seems to assume that the weaknesses are so obvious and extreme that no justifying explanation is necessary. I don't think that's the case here.
One might believe that efforts to devote special resources toward historically marginalized populations are misguided, but that's a case that needs to be made. It isn't obvious. It isn't obvious that all such programs must fail, and it isn't obvious that if they succeed in their stated goals, society would be worse off. It also isn't obvious why attempts to provide special assistance to minorities are morally questionable.
The counter-argument, of course, is that "colorblind" style programs were tried, and failed. Take employment disparities. "For example, even with the tightest labor market in almost 20 years and a historically low black unemployment rate (6.4%), black workers remain twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers (3.1%)—a pattern that has persisted for more than 40 years." https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-racial-disparities-in-employment/
All this despite the fact that during many of these decades, the US economy was steadily growing (and indeed, black unemployment overall is historically low right now).
There are similar long term disparities in housing, health outcomes, educational attainment, and so forth.
So the question I suppose is "Does the persistence of racial disparities matter? And if so, why do they persist? What would we have to do to reduce them?"
From a liberal perspective, the hypothesis that black people just don't have the same inherent capacity for skilled labor as other races is a very big no-go. So if we eliminate that explanation, what's left, other than institutionalized discrimination?
Of course, programs directed toward the poor would *help*--not arguing that this is a bad idea, since disproportionally more minority people are poor. But you would have to fund such programs significantly to ensure that the money trickles down to include minority communities (because, historically, they don't. Politics gets in the way).
If we accept the empirical fact that American society doesn't treat black people the same way it treats whites, then logically there would seem to be only two broad solutions: either we eliminate the institutional discrimination (a tall order), or we add institutional programs that compensate for the discrimination. Which do you prefer?
> The counter-argument, of course, is that "colorblind" style programs were tried, and failed. Take employment disparities. "For example, even with the tightest labor market in almost 20 years and a historically low black unemployment rate (6.4%), black workers remain twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers (3.1%)—a pattern that has persisted for more than 40 years."
...The disagreement here is that this is not a failure. This is the system working as intended. Of course a population that is less useful would be less employed.
>One might believe that efforts to devote special resources toward historically marginalized populations are misguided, but that's a case that needs to be made. It isn't obvious.
It isn't obvious only because.. well, you said it yourself
>From a liberal perspective, the hypothesis that black people just don't have the same inherent capacity for skilled labor as other races is a very big no-go
Obvious things tend to become not obvious when you have to cordon off the obviously true explanations as no-goes. And so the left has to believe silly things like disparities in outcomes being entirely a result of, and being evidence of, racism. The end result is many billions, maybe trillions at this point, of dollars being spent on policies that are bound to not work
This comment is directed at both anomie and anon123, because the issue here seems very similar. Are you two actually claiming that black people are in some way inherently inferior to Whites? I want to be crystal clear, because if so then this conversation could potentially go to some ugly places. Before I presume racism on your part, did you mean to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites, and that's the source of the disparity?
>did you mean to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites
I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to put words in my mouth. I don't think blacks are inferior to whites in much the same way that I don't think people who are stupider than me are inferior to me (and conversely, that people who are smarter than me are superior to me)
I implied that blacks are underrepresented in areas that are largely dependent on cognitive ability mostly because they have on average less cognitive ability than groups with higher representation in these areas, and that, therefore, interventions that have been premised on pretending otherwise have predictably been ineffectual and costly
Notice I originally said "Inherent Capacity", not "Cognitive Ability." Cognitive ability can be trained, and a lack of it might be due to upbringing, which can be corrected. Also, cognitive ability can be hidden behind different forms of self-expression or culture. This would not correspond to what I would understand as "inherently inferior" or "just inferior."
Really, all that claiming that a lack of cognitive ability is what holds black people back is transfer the institutional discrimination from the employers to the schools.
And after all, the whole point of that program was to help universities find smart black kids they might otherwise miss.
In defense of the "dumb woke" grants, I will say that that is far from the dumbest grant proposal I have ever seen. They want a team to experts mapping out how racism negatively impacts the learning trajectory of otherwise smart and capable minorities and that's honestly not unreasonable.
Imagine calling a grant for The Nego Motorist Green Book dumb because you think it's giving black people special treatment when in reality it's just telling them how to not get lynched when they're traveling.
Wokeness debates really come down to whether or not you think the government has an obligation to help groups of citizens with problems that aren't universal to all citizens. Maybe you don't like those groups defining their problems and dictating the solutions, which is why a group like the one referenced in the "dumb woke" proposal could be useful.
I think a lot of the discussion is besides the point. It is silly and wasteful to have to include any kind of disclaimer in your grant application, be it about woke stuff or not. I remember there used to be the joke that if you applied for a European grant, you always said your research had no military use and if you applied for a US grant you always said it had ample military use. Needless to say, both were just written in so that some bureaucrat could check a box.
I think the real issue we have is with this "bureaucrat box checking", whether it is for wokeness, military use, benefitting SMEs, Millenium Development Goals or whatever.
The MORE interesting thing is that Trump's dewokification EO told the *wokes* to dewokify themselves, and wokes can't tell the difference between woke ideology and normal science. So for instance, the CDC nuked a bunch of normal webpages that were ordinary and valuable after a keyword search, instead of just rolling back their content to pre-Great Awokening language, because they literally do not understand the EO.
If you have a study that says at the end "oh by the way FtM trans folks can still get endometriosis so watch for that," the researchers nuked the entire study because the researchers themselves can't tell the difference between woke ideology and science.
"The MORE interesting thing is that Trump's dewokification EO told the *wokes* to dewokify themselves, and wokes can't tell the difference between woke ideology and normal science. "
Wow, it's almost as if "woke" is a moving target and a meaningless buzzword, and every request for any sort of a consistent definition gets pooh-poohed or laughed at, like many have been saying for years.
"Remake your organization according to standards that I refuse to communicate and expect you to already know" is not and never has been a reasonable request.
This is the kind of article for which I like Substack. Just normal, intelligent reasoning, without an overbearing bias. As a classical liberal conservative myself, I appreciate and value every effort to make sure that what is being said saying is in fact true.
Is this post ceding the premise that any sort of acknowledgment of cultural difference and the ways that groups are differentially represented in institutions is "woke" (i.e., bad)? What, for instance, is wrong with the idea of exploring different concepts of blackness and nuances of black identity? I have no idea if that particular project is the most deserving of funding among all potential options, but on the face of it it's a completely reasonable thing to study. The cultural experience and socioeconomic situation of African-Americans vs., say Caribbean blacks or African immigrants really is different. And this is supposed to be "one of the worst offenders"...
I actually think the ones that randomly insert a DEI-speak non-sequitur are more worthy of criticism (though not worthy of, say, burning down the entire system of research funding in the United States, let alone our democratic form of government).
Nothing wrong with exploring black identity per se. However, when we're talking about distributing the public budget, the distribution and the preferences necessarily become a political decision, and the politics of the previous administration has been to take a hard turn towards the "woke" topics. The politics of the new administration is to remove that focus. Neither of those decisions are objectively better than the other, and from a libertarian perspective exploring black identity, white identity or any kind of other identity using tax money is equally wasteful and unnecessary. Our government though is not at the least libertarian, it does spend vast piles of money to such projects, and the question of who gets some of that money can't be anything but political. Once we have a political question, since we live in a democratic republic, the way it is decided is by the people electing representatives who will make those decisions the way the public prefers them to go, hopefully. The public preferred non-"woke" policy to a "woke" one, and so that's what it happening.
> though not worthy of, say, burning down the entire system of research funding in the United States
Let's not get carried away here, nobody is burning down the whole system. Some thorough audit of the system, and possibly some serious changes to it, are long due though. And the fact that it is happening is the most prominent sign our democratic system is working - the people may have been ok with "woke" before, it was woke, now they don't want it anymore - and it's getting taken out. Some may like more smooth and consistent rules, but that's democracy for you - people change their minds all the time.
I agree with some of this and disagree with a lot of it. But to stay on target with my original comment: Scott called this "one of the worst offenders," and it seems to me that can only be the case if you accept the idea that investigating issues of cultural difference and institutional bias toward various groups per se is "woke" in a bad sense. Sounds like you, at least, disagree with Scott about that.
Abstractly, "investigating issues" is not a bad thing per se. However, in current context, let's not be coy and pretend we don't know what a typical work in this area consists of. In the best case it would be a mishmash of specialized jargon saying "everybody is racist, please give us more money", in the worst it would be something advocating racial discrimination and exclusion a-la Kendi, and declaring that algebra is white supremacist. The chance, in present climate, that it would be objective scientific sociological research of cultures with an inherent scientific value is not zero, but quite small. Just as if you hear your boss saying "We need to fire some people, please prepare the list of Jews working for us" - theoretically it could be unrelated and the list may be just to not to forget to invite them to the next Hanukkah celebration, but if you'd feel uneasy upon hearing that, you are probably right. You can reduce something to parts that look innocent out of context and find an appropriate sterile description, but this doesn't happen out of context.
Full disclosure: I did want to throw a brick at whoever wrote that abstract[1], but that's might just be a difference in vocab and communication standards between fields. The thing that they were actually proposing to do seemed perfectly reasonable, considered as part of the social sciences.
Now it's fair to ask what fraction of science funding should go towards social sciences, and even fair to ask what fraction of social science funding should go towards *topics broadly like this* and to advocate for more or less. If there were a bunch of similar proposals funded, cutting some of them to fund different stuff might well be warranted. But all of that requires taking a higher-level view where you compare *different* proposals within the category-of-interest, no reading the abstract of one paper and noticing it includes buzzwords you don't like.
[1] and it went through an editor, two bricks for the editor.
> promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program.
Very recognizable for anyone with Soviet experience. There it also was common to bolt on quotes from Marx and Lenin (and, in certain time period, Stalin) to otherwise unrelated technical and scientific texts in order to satisfy the commissars.
Andrey Sakharov (the father of Soviet hydrogen bomb and later one of the most prominent dissidents) was promoting a theory of "convergence", which postulated that capitalist and socialist countries would eventually converge into some kind of hybrid political system. I have never been a big fan of that theory, but looking at what has happened lately in the US, I wonder if he was onto something.
You were *surprised* that Ted Cruz (or whatever YRNF intern this busywork was passed off to) indiscriminately projected their psychotic political valence onto legitimate scientific research? This seems like a major blind spot in your understanding of the GOP.
>people inserted a meaningless sentence saying “this could help women and minorities” into unrelated grants, probably in the hopes of getting points with some automated filter.
Not just "hopes" but explicit knowledge that if you don't talk about this stuff you will have a much lower chance of getting funded -- and base rate is already only ~17%. Applying for science funding circa 2020 was a nightmare.
Also keep in mind that you are only reading the abstracts. The actual grants themselves all would have had detailed plans for diversity/equity/outreach/insert woke keyword here, buried deep on page 30 of a 40-page R01 grant. You can't just say "oh I'm going to help minorities" in your abstract and not elaborate on that in painstaking detail---you get dinged for that too.
It's hard to see who's wagging whom here: did NIH goes woke and so all the scientists put on the woke song and dance? Or did scientists go woke semi-independently of their grant funding? I can't really blame them, it'd be the same as asking how many tenure-track professor applications included woke language in their cover letter circa 2020-2024. The answer would be...almost all of them! Since you wouldn't get the job if you didn't!
To be charitable to the list: If the applicant felt the need to put a woke sounding sentence in the abstract, that might be an indicator that the grant selection process was not entirely on merit. Even if the science itself is non woke.
I'll note as others have that it's been a law since the 90s that NSF grant applications include some statement about societal benefit ("Broader Impacts"), with positive impact on women and minorities being specifically noted in the law as one of the options. So all these people were following the law, and should not be punished for doing so.
I'd like to also point out that the issue is much more complicated when you look at NIH grants. For many decades much medical research in certain areas included mostly white men. (Except when it was syphillis, I guess.) There are lot of reasons for that, including simple referral patterns - small community hospitals are much more likely to send white men off to the big tertiary care hospital than they are white women or people of other self-identified race or ethnicity groups. White men maybe were more aggressive about seeking experimental treatment. Whatever the reason, these were the people ending up in the trials. At some point someone realized that a lot of the evidence we had did not generalize well because for example with heart attacks women experience them differently, and people who identify as black have better outcomes (probably survival bias). So at some point NIH started requiring that any proposed medical research include a statement about how these groups would be represented and, if not, why this was not a problem. Is this woke? I don't think so. But I know a lot of NIH researchers who are very concerned right now because they made a big deal about how they were recruiting representative populations for their studies, and to people like Ted Cruz it's gonna look like a lotta wokeness.
"Is Person X black" isn't an objectively-measurable criterion, especially not at the edges. Human skin doesn't come in two tones or five tones, it comes in thousands. So when you're doing something like medical research and you're trying to bin patients into categories to see if there are any measurable differences[1], it makes a difference *how* you assign those bins. One of the easiest and most practical ways in many cases is simply to ask them to assign themselves. But it won't necessarily give you exactly the same grouping as other methods. So yes, in context "people who identified as black" is a reasonable way to refer to this category.
[1] Which can be a statistically useful thing to do when your categories are fuzzy and inexact.
Oh the poor wee scientists who were force - forced I tells ya! - to include casual genuflections to vaguely woke topics.
Strong disagree: zero tolerance. Anyone who even so much as hints at breathing about any vaguely related woke topic positively should be hammered so far into the ground that they never get up again.
Being "tolerant" or excusing the lesser of two evils, or making vaguely utilitarian arguments, is how we got into this mess in the first place.
That's how "the system" works, by making you an offer you can't refuse it "forces" you to nod to its requirements in a way that shores them up through repetition and makes them seem to hoi polloi like the norm. You end up being just another brick in the wall.
People need to grow balls, nothing will change until people refuse to comply. Maybe they won't discover that cure for cancer, but chances are they wouldn't have anyway. Maybe you'd be better employed as a barrista and bring more joy to people than work under the cosh as a "scientist" who refused to stand by their principles.
Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm calibrating right. The thing that you believe needs to be stomped into the ground so forcefully that you are willing to sacrifice even the veneer of tolerance and mercy (as well as several legitimate opportunities to do good for the world) is... educational opportunities for minorities?
I'm legitimately curious what, exactly, has you personally so up in arms.
"Educational opportunities for minorities" - sounds so innocuous right? :) But what if that's just the racket (in the sense of "thing for show to misdirect away from real thing")?
"Woke" is just anti-White, i.e. anti-the-genetically-European and of European descent.
Your original post was "Anyone who even so much as hints at breathing about any vaguely related woke topic positively should be hammered so far into the ground that they never get up again".
To you, this supposedly includes sentences like "The project also aims to integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program."
Out of curiosity, in your view is there any way at all to direct funding towards underrepresented groups in a way that does not deserve 'stomping into the ground'? I'd love to understand what that looks like, and specifically how it differs from the sentence above.
Is there any way? Yes, when the surrounding context is different and the proposed act is no longer part of a humiliation ritual and/or a required display of fealty, but an act of genuine care and interest.
Curious that you should invoke our old friend the Motte & Bailey, as it struck me that's exactly what's going on here. (Under pressure, one retreats to the easily defended "but what about the children?11!11!" :) )
Your bailey is '"Woke" is just anti-White, i.e. anti-the-genetically-European and of European descent [and is therefore worthy of being squashed]' (which is still a questionable claim but whatever, I could at least imagine someone smarter making a better argument). Your motte is "'integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women' is worthy of being squashed'.
In fact, i'd go farther and say based on your last response that your motte is 'any attempts to allocate resources to <groups that are not me> should be squashed'.
Sorry mate, I think you are not serious people and I'm not interested in responding here further.
People keep saying that, but I have no idea what they mean by that. Are you implying that it's impossible for people to be serious about safeguarding the future of the white race?
I think you're completely wrongheaded, I think the OP has a really really good point.
We obviously should have a zero tolerance policy in the comments section for this type of incendiary idiocy. Any less than a permanent ban from the internet and a freezing of the guy's bank accounts would be too lax.
Your problem, as I've pointed out twice now, is that you're taking the "aww diddums" thing seriously. You think someone, somewhere in all this, is seriously trying to promote "equitable outcomes."
What's really going on (whether it's seriously meant by the authors or not) is that this is a required genuflection to the Narrative, a basically anti-White narrative. (For example, "equity" is just the exclusion of Whites, particularly White males.)
10 years ago you might have gotten away with pretending that I'm talking hyperbolic nonsense. But now? As an obviously intelligent person, you should know better (or alternatively, you should dig deeper).
I think you completely misunderstand the system. If you do not get a funded grant, you cannot keep your job. You don’t get tenure and you are fired. There is no option where you can “grow balls” and resist. You just quit and do something different. The only people who get the grants are the ones who play by the rules set up by the government.
They would absolutely have cancelled Norman Borlaug’s research in rust-resistant wheat.
> Because both pollen and ovary come from the same plant, the new seed has the same genes as its parent — it’s an identical copy. To create new varieties, plant breeders must stop wheat from fertilizing itself. In Borlaug’s case, this boiled down to him and a couple of assistants sitting on little home-made stools in the sun, opening up every floret on every plant of a particular variety, carefully plucking out the stamens (the male parts) with tweezers, hundreds of plants at a time. When they were done, the wheat was entirely female — the plants had been, so to speak, feminized. Borlaug and his assistants then covered all the altered florets with folded paper so that no pollen could get in.
There does need to be a recognition that organizations applying for Federal grants have had to burn a pinch of incense to both the DEI and Green New Deal scams during the Biden years. I saw it personally right after Biden took office in 2021. My current position within a state government is Federally grant funded. When our grants manager was applying for funding during the 2021 grant cycle, she was losing her mind trying to figure out how our project ticked some environmental impact nonsense that the then- new Biden regime wanted recorded in the application. She was having to run all over town to get signatures from people in other parts of the government just to complete the application.
Our project has nothing to do with the environment. I mean, we work in an office building that has a HVAC system and drones like myself are issued cars that burn gasoline for us to drive ourselves around the state to serve the public. I don't know about the DEI impact statement that was (probably) also required, but I'm sure it was there.
Cruz is trying to jump on the DOGE train and he (or his junior staffers that put this together for him) went about it in a ham- fisted way. I know it's too much to ask Cruz to stay in his lane, but he really should.
It's like the bureaucratic version of one of those really nasty civil wars where the first thing each side's army does when it takes over a village is punish the villagers for obeying and paying taxes to the other side when their army controlled the village.
Indeed. There's a huge difference between `we're in charge now, henceforth you obey us and only us' and `we're going to punish everyone who obeyed the other side back when they were in charge.'
I did not see this posted anywhere else in the comments, so I will point this out:
Time is of the essence to DOGE's operations. As soon as they started shutting employees out of buildings and auditing budgets and payrolls and firing people, states and federal employees started filing ten gorillion lawsuits in response. Some of these lawsuits contain real concerns about executive outreach, while others are obviously frivolous and ideologically motivated. For DOGE to have any lasting success, they are better off moving quicker rather than taking real time to comb through and find anything they want to keep, because any more time given to the opposition means they get shut out entirely.
And how are they going to do that? The NSF is, as the name implies, a federal agency. That means the federal government effectively has full control over it. All that's changing for now is that leftist-associated research will no longer get federal funding. Do you think people are going to start a civil war over this?
I don't think they will start a civil war. I think they will look for any avenue in which a judge would say, "No, akshually the president can't defund this, so put the money back where it was." Many court cases have been raised to this effect, and supposedly one has already reinstated USAID money.
But if they hadn't started shutting employees out, holding back money, and firing people, they'd have had the time to do it right before triggering these lawsuits.
"Time is of the essence to DOGE's operations. As soon as they started shutting employees out of buildings and auditing budgets and payrolls and firing people, states and federal employees started filing ten gorillion lawsuits in response. "
Well, points for being honest, I guess. But "if they tried to do it legally and responsibly it would never get done, so they have to do it illegally and irresponsibly" is NOT the greatest argument that has ever been made. Like, you DO notice the part where this logic rests *entirely* on the assumption that these people have such perfect judgement and purity of character that *anything they accomplish* will be a net benefit, no matter how little time *they* spend understanding the system or pondering the ramifications, right? Why on Earth should the U.S. public put that kind of trust in a group of unelected ideologues?
The character and judgment of the DOGE team is irrelevant. What they are doing is what it takes to actually prune the US government down to size. I think that in itself is a good thing, you may disagree.
"The character and judgment of the DOGE team is irrelevant. "
What? Excuse me, what? Of course it is bloody-well relevant.
If somebody is digging a ditch their character and judgement might well be irrelevant. Ditches are simple things. If somebody is making sweeping changes to a complex system that regularly affects the lives of 300 million people[1] then OF COURSE their character and judgement matter. People with *poor* character and *poor* judgement will make *bad* changes that cause a lot of damage.
I'm aware that many people have never developed their thinking on this matter beyond "more government: bad, less government: good" but I regret to inform you that the real world is NOT as simple as some pretend it is. This would be a really, truly excellent time to start *questioning* your beliefs, and *making sure* they accurately model reality, because again, the lives of 300 million people are directly and severely affected by the changes you're so thoroughly uninterested in even understanding.
[1] Setting aside the fact that the U.S.'s reach extends FAR beyond its borders.
You're misunderstanding the role of the DOGE team. They aren't supposed to sort through the chaff for the good ones. They are supposed to get as many people as possible out the door as fast as possible. Why? Because government employees are not like a private company. As soon as you try and fire anyone, they will scream and kick and fight back with lawsuits.
It's not up to the DOGE team members, but Elon and Trump, on who they want to spare and/or hire back. Their judgment will affect what departments keep doing what work with which employees. That's where judgment is more important.
This is a brilliant move from a perspective of hardball politics — but Wokeness is just a cover for a deeper agenda. Steve Bannon had been complaining about liberal universities since the first Trump administration. His stated to goal was to weaken their hold on US intellectual life. By gutting NIH, NFS grants and removing payments for administrative costs most universities will have trouble maintaining their facilities and won’t be able to pay their faculty and administrators. Labs will shut down. Vast numbers of post docs will be unemployed. Grad students will be let go as their programs are cut. The right has been whining about leftie universities long before the term woke ever existed. The anti-woke witch hunt gives them an excuse to weaken traditionally liberal bastions of thought.
You're grotesquely abusing the term "liberal" when you call elite universities "liberal bastions of thought." And it's these illiberal elite universities that suck up most US government grant money. I remember when I was in grad school that MIT's comp sci department received about $1 billion per year in grants, while my university's comp sci department received about $20K / year.
Not necessarily liberal bastions of thought, but any independent bastion of thought. The crusade against wokeness is just a form of edgelording and y'all should be able to identify the totalitarian playbook, it's been a whole 26 days already.
I understand that people have different opinions, but some comments here are just batshit crazy. If you say that it is literally okay to stop a cancer research just because they wrote 1 sentence like "this could encourage minority kids to join STEM", then I wonder...
Are you a psychopath, who is willing to let people die painful deaths just to send an infinitesimally stronger message in a recent culture war? (In the sense that we need to stop 1000 researches, because only stopping 999 of them would not send a sufficiently strong message to our opponents.)
Or are you too stupid to see the connection between words written on the screen and the reality they describe?
Or are you so immature that you prioritize being edgy when adult people are trying to discuss serious topics?
Do you think the people who cheered on every previous fascist regime were just "being edgy"? You don't need to be a psychopath to want to see justice done, to desire the spectacle of evil being hanged and torched. It is the dream of every man to fight for what they believe is right. Would you rob them of that opportunity? Can you?
Oh, if only. There's no dragons being fought, of course. Just apes fighting among themselves. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Are you saying that the cancer patients deserve the "justice done" to them by delaying the research?
Or it is the researchers who wrote the sentence that was necessary to get the money for cancer research?
If you can find the guys who *made the rules* that you needed to add DIE statements to cancer research in order to get money... hey, if you hang them, I will consider it excessive, but I will understand the logic behind that.
This is just randomly lashing out. It's like imagining that you are fighting the Nazis, but instead you just find a random guy who was once dragged into a Gestapo building, told to write something positive about the regime, so after some hesitation he wrote "I think Goethe wrote good stories"... and now you found the piece of paper, so you lynch the guy and consider it justice done.
> Are you saying that the cancer patients deserve the "justice done" to them by delaying the research?
The cancer patients are irrelevant. This is about good slaying evil, the collateral damage doesn't matter.
> and now you found the piece of paper, so you lynch the guy and consider it justice done
A better metaphor would be fighting the Nazis by killing every German. You understand this is only the beginning, yes? All supporters of the old order are potential targets. For your own sake, I suggest you put your head down for a while.
The small number of research projects that might get defunded are likely to add up to an infinitesimally small amount of progress toward curing cancer. So it's really an infinitesimally stronger message in the culture war at the cost of an infinitesimally small number of painful deaths prevented
I'm seeing a lot of defenses along the lines of "this is a requirement that has existed for decades, the scientists probably don't mean it they just want to please the grant givers"
If that were true wouldn't the ctrl + f selection method have returned all grant proposals? What are all the other grants giving as their broader impact sections the Ted Cruz finds acceptable.
The "write a sentence about how your grant promotes equity" did not exist 15 years ago. It exists everywhere in science now, and I wouldn't call it a formality, either. I recently submitted a grant proposal to the NIH, and we had a Zoom meeting between applicants and selected previous-year grant winners. I noticed that not a single member of any of the teams of previous winners was a white male. When I asked whether any of the previous year's winners had been white males, they explicitly refused to answer the question, and would only repeat that they followed all relevant regulations.
You had to write *something.* Something could be `this work will help all people. `People' includes women and underrepresented minorities.' This might have sufficed. Or not, depending on who you got as your reviewers. It could even have been `I don't think whether someone is an underrepresented minority has any bearing on how deserving they are of help, this work will help everyone regardless of their demographics.' This might still have worked, though the odds would have been worse. Exactly how much you bent depended on how proud you were, and how much you needed the money.
To some extent, people who just added a meaningless woke sentence (without actually proposing to do any woke work) were plausibly taking the Kolmogorov option. Evidently that's not safe either.
Pure Orwell. Ministry of Information impregnates Ministry of Truth. We lost that battle 60 years ago. I can't get Tenure unless I get a grant. The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. And Cruz doesn't have the slightest interest in reform, just a useful hook for the power climb.
If 40% are woke, 40% are not woke, and 20% are borderline, the honest title would be "Only About 50% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science". Otherwise, it would be equally accurate to say "Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Not Woke Science".
This is the problem with a society in which you have to lie to get anything done. You can't be reasonable anymore. You don't know who's just saying the words to do real work and who really means the nonsense words.
I think believing what people say is the correct response.
The corrective mechanism is to stop lying. Sure you miss out on your grant the first time around but that's a problem you actually need to address - not just insert a lie to skirt around.
> I think this overestimates the difficulty of sorting. It took me one hour to review 100 of these grants and see which ones were really woke. That suggests it would take 34 hours - less than a work week for one person - to go through the entire set.
This would be a pretty good job for a contemporary LLM, too. You could let it read all grants ever, not just this preselected list.
Afterwards, you can have a human or two spend a week to go over the short list, like you suggest here. The LLMs still make many mistakes.
One small point: the term “cis-regulatory” doesn’t usually refer to genes that regulate other genes on the same DNA molecule but rather to noncoding chunks of DNA (i.e. non-genes that serve as binding sites for proteins) that regulate genes on the same molecule.
I'm sorry. My inner pedant is too strong. I tried to resist! I really did! (That's a lie).
*Ahem* There's no reason an EHS system isn't still technically within the classification of IoT. That first grant implies these are distinct categories.
Alternately, I'm interested in what percentage of the research was *stupid* and how much overlap there is between the "woke" and "stupid" circles in the Venn diagram.
The nonsensical persecution of "woke" and DEI is only an excuse. Parsing it is a waste of effort. The idiocy is deliberately insulting. Ha, ha made you chase the squirrel.
Harassment and a show of dominance is the objective.
And the same applies to some of the medical literature. Every other paper published in JAMA or the NEJM is about some "disparity of care" or about "systemic racism" as a Social Determinant of Health. Accordingly, inserting woke keywords seems to be part of the cost of getting published there (and likely elsewhere).
For instance, a recent study on the persistency of patients on GLP-1RAs for weight loss included in the abstract - *in the abstract!* - a ritual sentence about "disparities", even though the body of the article (Results AND Discussion) had nothing whatsoever to say about it.
I am a professor in an engineering department at an R1 university. One of my grants made this list. The grant is to study polymer crystallization. It got flagged for the (required) educational portion of the grant where I discuss plans to mentor students, including women and underrepresented minorities in science. The latter was language that was de facto required by NSF. Getting grants from the NSF are extremely competitive. It took me 12 tries and 5 years to get this one. Losing this grant would kill the research project and cause significant hardship for a graduate student. Much of what many of you are discussing has little or no basis in fact. Feel free to ask specifics, and I can hopefully help you understand.
Sorry to be vague. What Scott got wrong has been discussed a bunch in the comments above. Broader impacts are a required element. They can include many things, but expanding opportunities for women and groups the NSF deems “underrepresented” are part of it. Broader impacts are not just a side piece, they are one of the two primary criteria for evaluating the proposed work. So, many comments above saying that one could simply not add a “throw away” line are not realistic. In addition, while there are in principle many things one could do for “broader impacts”, what is actually proposed has to be doable by a professor at a university. Educational outreach and providing opportunities for minorities are much easier to do than say, implementing some workforce development program.
In addition, there is a real lack of a sense for how intensely competitive these grants are, how critical they are for making a career, and how much work goes into preparing them. There is also no sense for how little an individual scientist has control over the system. I would love to not have to do a bunch of extra work for educational outreach and to never again have to think about “URMs.” I just want to do science and teach and mentor students. But I played the game the way the rules were written, and destroying good science and a graduate students career seems like a really crappy thing to do. It’s all just sad.
Yes. If Trump just wanted to get rid of DEI, he could change the criteria for evaluating future grants, perhaps getting the Republican controlled Congress to repeal the “broader impact” requirement. But he seems more intent on destroying the system than on changing it. I hope you are able to continue your research.
I mean, the problem for them isn't that scientists are forced to explain how their work helps society. The problem is that federal funding is being wasted on liberals.
I’m happy to explain how science helps society, and I’m not a liberal. But yes, one of the problems is that science has become a political football.
The other problem I think is much deeper. Congress is not functioning. So we have either executive action or the Supreme Court trying to do congress’s job.
I'm not sure what you mean by "wasted". If your argument is that liberals should not get federal research funding because they are liberal, than I agree that this is the primary goal of all these anti-woke efforts, which have nothing to do with eliminating waste or making awards on the basis of merit.
But I'm quite confident the NSF/NIH/DOE/DOD will continue their geographic affirmative action plan which awards a lot of funding to non-competitive institutions in fly-over states.
I'm not claiming that science has a "liberal bias", just noting that talent tends to concentrate, and in science it is concetrated at places like Berkeley, CalTech, U. Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc..., all of which happen to be located in blue states. The same is also true in tech (everyone loves to complain about the bay area, but it is where tech talent is concentrated).
Personally, I think it's good that federal funding takes geographic diversity into account in an effort when making funding decisions, but if you are arguing for a purely meritocratic process you should accept that most federal research funding will go to CA/IL/MA/NJ/NY.
Yes definitely seems like a bunch of grant applications put in pseudo-necessary language to get approved and are now being punished for essentially doing successful grant application writing.
It is very easy to imagine how this sort of boilerplate language was required in previous grant applications .
It seems like a very lazy error from the current administration to sweep all of this in with it. Almost too convenient to think it is an oversight
"The latter was language that was de facto required by NSF."
And that is the exact root of the problem, though I think Ted Cruz is an opportunistic little toad. If you were going to mentor women'n'minorities anyway, as part of general mentorship, that should go without saying. If you have to make a big production out of it, just to get past the filter, then it's got nothing to do with the science and is just burning the incense to Caesar, and junking requirements for the ritual genuflection probably benefit everyone.
A study or project specifically for women and/or minorities to participate in? No problem with that. A study about everything from beetles to paint colours that has to include the shibboleths or else? That's bad for every kind of outcome one can imagine, in science and in society.
Ah, but remember, even a Supreme Court judge can't say what a "woman" is, so the grant wording may or may not be considered offensive or non-inclusive. A woman is, well, if you feel you are a woman, you are a woman, yes? So is your research going to include persons in possession of XY chromosomes, or are you going to be a foul transphobe?
(I did think that was meant as a 'gotcha' and not a sincere question and I don't blame Brown Jackson for dodging it, but man. What times we live in, eh?)
I am continually amazed and disappointed that, even after realizing the skewed incentives at play, people continue to believe that the government should take taxpayers’ hard-earned money and give it to others of their choosing.
Good causes? Good schmauses! The “Muh roads!” and “We, the people” fallacies strike again!
That's right! There's no such thing as society, only individuals! That's why I should be able to roll up to your house, decide I like it, and throw you out by main force and take it for myself unless you can see me off with your own main force, because the state is tyranny or something.
I’m not sure I can count how many assumptions you’re jumping from and to in this little rant. If you’d care to address what I actually said, I’ll happily engage.
As a scientist who has written (and reviewed) many grant applications to several different federal agencies and private foundations, I will say that I always look at the wording in the funding opportunity announcement and tailor sentences in the abstract and application to reflect the goals of the funding mechanism. That’s just smart grantsmanship. ‘Wokeness’ is a ridiculous made-up construct that serves some political agenda. The research is the research. It is hypothesis-driven and stands on its own merits. . I suspect you won’t find the word ‘woke’ in any serious scientific grant title unless it’s related to a sleep study or some such thing.
Secondly, one needs only to do a cursory look through any dermatology text from previous decades to see that there are truly disparities in the presentation of many disease processes. I use dermatology as an easy example, although the disparity is pervasive—processes like erythema can present differently in people with darker skin tones, but photos in texts have frequently only shown presentation of disease processes using patients with Caucasian skin tones. Addressing these disparities is not ‘woke’, it’s a recognition of a gap in knowledge and an improvement in our medical education for future physicians.
I’m sorry that’s your take on my comment. I think I can assess my situation more objectively than you give me credit for. I am not saying anything about wokeness on college campuses, an issue which of course I am aware of. I can only say that no basic scientist I have ever worked with has designed a research protocol in order to have a more ‘woke’ outcome. And the effort to undermine the validity of good science is not just misguided and wrong, it is potentially dangerous.
It's not an assault on science, though. It should be possible to say "this research is to investigate known issues in different responses in patients with different skin tones" without needing to go (or at least sound like) "All praise Ibrahim X. Kendi, BLM, down with white supremacist time- and record-keeping!" in your application.
It should be possible to do that without signaling to the world that American funding of science is unreliable. It's hard to see this as being successful at anything other than damaging the US capacity to conduct scientific research, which to be fair might be Elon's objective, I don't think he values anything to do with public spending at all.
"I always look at the wording in the funding opportunity announcement and tailor sentences in the abstract and application to reflect the goals of the funding mechanism"
That is what everyone does with government returns, which is why they're a poor mechanism for figuring out what is actually going on. The problem is if you have to stick in the pinch of incense to Caesar just to get past the filters to be considered. You are then at the mercy of the new Caesar who decides he prefers a different sort of incense.
And the likes of the sincere "feminist glaciers" stuff then blackens the name of the rest of science by association.
Minor correction: " this reflects poorly on Binen administration" could be slightly misassigning the blame, ignoring the role of the legislators. E.g. Section 305 of the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2022 specified "The Director of the Foundation shall continue to support programs designed to broaden participation of underrepresented populations in STEM fields." This was implemented by requiring all NSF grantees to have a plan to how they will contribute to this goal.
I would never imagine I could evaluate a research proposal by reading just the abstract. In particular, if a research proposal made it through the very competitive process of competing for an NSF grant, but I think the proposal is “garbage,” I would think the most likely reason why my views differ from those of the NSF reviewers would be that the NSF reviewers read the proposal and I did not.
Still, I suppose that Scott wasn’t trying to do a perfect job, just a better job than Cruz.
I think this may be a feature, not a bug. Imagine a substantial portion of funded grants promised to allocate a portion of the funded resources to voodoo rituals or to praising our Lord. Would it make sense for an incoming administrator to treat these commitments as signals of scientists honesty or their scientific integrity?
I’d like to see a list of the 100 grants so I can decide for myself whether I agree 40% qualify as “woke.” My gut is that something on the order of “4%” is more likely to be true.
This is a very typical case of over-extending charity resulting in a fundamental misinterpretation of other people's motives and actions.
The purpose of the Ted Cruz database is not to locate and end actual "bad woke science"; it's to signal a political realignment and demand new signaling from researchers. The purpose of flagging perfectly legitimate research that happens to have added "This will help minorities somehow" at the end in hope of pleasing grant administrations is to signal to researchers that they are no longer supposed to do that, and indeed, that attempting to do so may be punished. The goal is not just to eradicate actual "woke" research, but to ensure that researchers no longer attempt to suggest that their research might help minorities, or that helping minorities might even be good at all.
If any actual useful research ends up defunded, targeted, or in some other way suppressed as a result, that is not a mistake; that is a casualty. It's acceptable collateral damage. Best case scenario, it serves as an example. Seeing cancer research get its funding pulled because the researchers made the mistake of saying that some minority has a higher cancer rate so this may incidentally help them will teach the *other* researchers that this is No Longer Something To Care About.
Good science is an acceptable casualty in the process of realigning society along Non-Woke principles. The political has primacy over the practical. Everything is about moral aesthetics.
«The goal is not just to eradicate actual "woke" research, but to ensure that researchers no longer attempt to suggest that their research might help minorities, or that helping minorities might even be good at all.»
And of course they should not. Publicly funded science ought to be for the common good. The idea that serving minority interests in particular, more so than those of the majority being a signal of virtue is utterly corrupt. Of course, some science will benefit some groups more than others, not every group is as large or as rich as others and that's fine. But scientists should not see themselves as beholden to a minority qua them being a minority. And if they do, they damn well should not use public money to pursue such advocacy.
A bit of collateral damage is good, too.
Setting such a harsh example, means that scientists cannot be as easily coerced by peer pressure or mobs into needing to play such games out of fear.
You're right, that this is about moral aesthetics. But it is about banning them.
But you're wrong, this is reasserting the primacy of good science over the political.
this really isn't conservative imo, a conservative would be against wokeness but they wouldn't hack everything to the root precisely due to chesterton's fence. this is more techbro radical libertarianism hiding behind woke.
i mean you can just edit or remove requirements for future grants and next renewal they can resubmit. you don't need to immediately sever things snd this increases the chance it will just be reversed next administration.
woke feels more like an excuse; yeah it may happen but theres no need to not give even woke researchers time to adapt.
Interesting, but fairly obvious. Must of the “woke” statements are perfunctory. What I’m curious about is excision of “trans” related pseudoscience, it’s going to be harsher.
While the papers themselves might not be woke, I must admit that I do, in fact worry about the kind of scientific environment where people are forced to make token statements of fealty towards "increasing equity" or "diversity in science" or whatever to even be able to be eligible for a grant. It feels like the kind of thing that the story of Havel's Greengrocer points at.
Mr. Alexander calls "many of the grants being singled out for wokeness and/or defunded for wokeness are not, in fact, woke" a surprising failure mode. I submit that as is often the case, surprise is caused by a failure of one's own mental model to correctly embrace reality.
This 'failure mode' if one imagines that anyone with actual political power in the "war on wokeness" has any interest in, understanding of, or care for the general success of the American scientific community and its ability to do research. To the kind of people actually running the movement and actually in charge, these goals are secondary.
Ted Cruz does not actually care; if he did, he would have winnowed through his list a lot more selectively and screened out all the grant proposals like the one that did nothing but pointlessly boast that the University of Houston has a lot of Hispanic students. A Senator Cruz who understood and cared about science would know that putting that project on the list could severely undermine valid and honest scientific research for the 'crime' of a single sentence that is not false and in no way wastes any taxpayer money. But this is not important to Ted Cruz; Ted Cruz does not care and probably just told a 24-year-old raised on a diet of OANN to search for keywords like "cis," "trans," "disability," and so on. Senator Cruz might easily figure out that this could cause harm to many scientific projects and in the long run to his own constituents, but Senator Cruz does not care.
Elon Musk does not actually care. He has limited if any history of funding primary research except when there is no alternative, and when he benefits from other people's funding of primary research he gets to cherrypick the research <i>after</i> it has already succeeded. As we can easily see from his takeover of Twitter, he has a history of sweeping, arbitrary firings and funding freezes that then force him (or other managers in his employ) to frantically backpedal and try to rehire essential personnel he just fired. We are now seeing him do the same thing with the federal government's air traffic controllers and nuclear weapons safety inspectors. If Elon wanted to learn from his own experiences, he would have ample reason to do so, based on just how badly Twitter's market capitalization has imploded in the roughly two years of his ownership of the company. Elon Musk has more money than God and thinks "essential employee" is a fancy way of saying "Elon Musk, only why are you calling him an employee." Elon Musk has been told that there are consequences (to other people) for recklessly freezing funding to major projects based on a whim. Elon does not care.
Donald Trump does not actually care. Like Musk and Cruz, he is greatly removed from any life experience that could force him to care about the consequences of capriciously firing other people, or cutting off the payment for an important project for little or no reason. Indeed, Trump has repeatedly been rewarded for doing so, with fame and applause on <i>The Apprentice</i> and with successfully getting away with nonpayment for services rendered many times as a real estate mogul. Donald Trump signs executive orders banning entire categories of activity that he cannot plausibly be familiar with, as even a summary form of them would be a document no one can seriously argue that he has read. Donald Trump does not care.
Courtesy of the 2024 election, we are ruled by people who simply do not care if they destroy American scientific institutions in the name of hunting a "wokeness" that lives mainly in their heads, any more than Stalin really cared whether he was making a mistake by having biologists thrown into gulags for questioning Lysenko.
It occurs to me that the example Scott singles out as "extremely dumb" on the grounds that it is 'woke' can be summarized as "as a social/anthropological thing, we're going to set up a network to ask black STEM students what they think it means to be black and whether they see themselves as black."
Now, if this is being presented as medical or physics research, that's not on-topic. But if this is a sociological exercise, directed at researching how universities in particular engage with "black students" as a category, then there is some merit to doing that. "Black" is a large enough and distinct enough category in American history that the field of sociology and American cultural studies probably shouldn't just be pretending that it doesn't exist. And there are some relevant questions here.
For instance, if I asked Scott "is that Nigerian pre-med student here on a student visa black," he would probably say "obviously yes." The Nigerian himself, however, is clearly not "African-American" in the usual sense and has a quite different ancestral history than most of the "African Americans" at the institution. But it isn't as simple as saying "well, he was personally born in Africa so of course that's different," because a <i>Jamaican</i> pre-med student here on a student visa has a lot of overlap in his ancestral history (such as being descended from plantation slaves and having ancestors who may well have been formally and legally lesser-than citizens of their own country within living memory).
There is a valid reason to spend some money doing formal scholarship on this question if your institution intends to pay any attention to "how are our institution's policies affecting black students." Because it kind of is a valid question to say "so, do you mean students with high-melanin skin, do you mean students with a specific history, or do you mean some jumble of the two?"
> One analysis of a randomly chosen subset of these grants by Scott Alexander, a blogger, found that only around 40% were actually related to DEI (an analysis of all 3,476, conducted by The Economist with the help of an artificial-intelligence model, found the figure was 44%).
If they had such statements at the end, even for throwaway grant optimising purposes, then the project is justifiably woke and can be cut guilt free.
This is just the fair and equitable outcome of putting political statements into your grant proposals. If you have to do it to get funding then accept you are a political activist in part, or don't get the funding. If you are an activist then when your faction is not in power you can lose funding and have no legitimate grounds for complaint.
How has the Trump admin abandoned Article 1?
And yes, the NSF is just a drop, but while no single drop believes its to blame for the flood. they're all part of it. It's my understanding that DOGE is reviewing all government spending over the next two years. A lot of drops eventually add up. And you've got to expect everyone will say "No, not THIS drop!" So some tough scrutiny will need to be applied, unless you think we don't need to worry about government spending at all.
Spending say £1 million to avoid £800 million in wastage is obviously tremendously efficient. The size of the savings is irrelevant to its efficiency - spending £0.01 to avoid £1000 dollars wasted is even more efficient.
But they didn't spend any money to remove waste, fraud, and abuse connected to PPP. 800B in loans were completely forgiven, and somewhere between 200B and 500B of those forgiven loans were fraudulent. But DOGE didn't touch them because to do so would embarrass Trump, that waste was his fuckup.
Histrionics about histrionics. Peak.
Bingo. Some of these people (including Scott) have had bad experiences with someone trying to cancel them for not being woke enough. It's understandable that this has made them hate wokeness. What's not understandable is if they start to think that fighting wokeness is more important than actually helping minorities, women, etc. Being indifferent to more trans kids committing suicide because "at least the government won't be woke anymore" is not a morally justifiable position.
That gets terribly conflationary if you generalize it. Scott has written about how misleading it can be to generalize that kind of observation that way before: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popular-and-silenced/
Partly, I don't mean that you can't generalize in any direction ever, but that if you use the common pattern you did above of picking out “the people who are complaining are still popular” then that doesn't imply what you might think, for reasons described in the article I linked, including that the people who would otherwise complain but can't afford to (or are afraid that they might not be able to afford to) tend to be invisible.
Partly, also, it's genuinely hard to figure out what's going on in fog of war conditions, for similar reasons, so talking about broad social movements in conflict *is* fraught in general, and if you want to be accurate I think you usually wind up having to do it very hesitantly, even though confident sweeping statements get more emotionally and socially incentivized by default.
Partly, I don't think “they clearly failed to cancel Scott” is a great description of the situation anyway. “He was able to handle a major hit piece by merely taking on a bunch of unexpected upheaval that he was ultimately able to make hay out of” doesn't sound quite as good, does it?
Your object-level point I'm not actually sure about. My current guess is that the current institutional anti-woke backlash is substantially worse than what it claims to be fighting, but that “very little real evidence of harm from wokeness” is way too glib: diffuse harms along the lines of “being trapped sociopsychologically from multiple angles” can be very bad in total when multiplied across time and people even if they're not *acutely* bad, and a lot of claims that wokeness isn't that harmful (I'm not sure about yours in particular) lean on something like “a justified expectation of emotional abuse from unpredictable but widespread sources doesn't aggregate into substantial harm”, which feels pretty wrong to me—compare how much of the harm resulting from e.g. anti-queer sentiment is due a cloud of fears following from stigmatization and bullying. (The classically woke answer to this type of complaint, by the way, is “well, that's not bad because they probably deserved it”.)
The parent comment you're replying to got deleted, so it's really hard for me to tell whether you're sincerely complaining about the pervasive threat of institutional wokeness/progressive cancel culture, or about the pervasive threat of transphobia/racism/sexism/homophobia. The sentiment is remarkably resonant.
It is morally justifiable if you think transgenderism is morally wrong.
Must be nice to not have to fear restribution for being honest. Enjoy it while it lasts.
That someone like you would call his workplace to say "hey you hired an anti-trans bigot" is my guess
Let me go one better: it's morally justifiable if you think that transgender ideology is what is causing the kids to commit suicide.
Okay, we don't need to go that far. Point is, society doesn't need to tolerate the existence of people who need to sin to survive.
If you need it to survive it shouldnt be a sin
...It doesn't really matter what 𝘸𝘦 want, does it? Only the victors have the right to be the arbiters of morality.
Well, please show me where your religious writings state that killing millions of innocent people is not a sin and that trying to live life in harmony with the soul god has given them is a sin.
"Sin" isn't necessarily a religious term, it just refers to anything that transgresses moral law. And a majority believes that changing gender is morally wrong, so... go ask them. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
You know what I'd like? Hard figures on that claim floating around online about "trans kids suicides!" because so far as I can see, it's all based on one Nordic (or maybe Dutch, I can't even remember where it comes from) study that included "suicidal feelings".
I've had suicidal feelings but I haven't killed myself. But that study seems to be responsible for all the "40% of trans kids kill themselves! Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?" scaremongering used to stampede anxious parents into "you gotta put your kid on the pathway RIGHT NOW or else they'll end up DEAD and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT" when sometimes it's a case of 'anxiety around puberty, autism, co-morbid mental problems' but not really 'yep 100% trans for sure and lasting'.
Demanding more rigorous research on trans suicide while celebrating the government defunding research on trans suicide is really the chef’s kiss moment of anti-woke warriorism
There are many, many studies. Have at it: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=trans+suicide+statistics&oq=trans+suicide
So pulling the first result out, I see:
"Nearly 14% of adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt; disparities by gender identity in suicide attempts were found. Female to male adolescents reported the highest rate of attempted suicide (50.8%), followed by adolescents who identified as not exclusively male or female (41.8%), male to female adolescents (29.9%), questioning adolescents (27.9%), female adolescents (17.6%), and male adolescents (9.8%). Identifying as nonheterosexual exacerbated the risk for all adolescents except for those who did not exclusively identify as male or female (ie, nonbinary). For transgender adolescents, no other sociodemographic characteristic was associated with suicide attempts."
Depending on whether you're FtM or MtF, your risk of attempted suicide might be 50% or 30%. I suppose that comes to an average of 40%.
However, I would like to note this is a survey of the adolescents who were able to fill out the survey, which means they did not succeed in killing themselves. So the real rate of "trans kids will die" still remains unknown.
"This is a social contagion, and you're destorying innocent children's lives."
Or it's something that's been part of the human experience forever, and YOU are destroying innocent children's lives.
This is a bad argument. It's a lazy argument. It assumes HUGE amounts of stuff not in evidence, and then having so assumed them fails at basic reasoning about the implications.
If being trans *were* a social contagion, it would by no means follow that people supporting trans rights were destroying *anyone's* life. I've known many healthy, happy trans people living rich, full lives. I've seen no evidence that they suffered in any particular way *from being trans.* On the flip side, I've seen quite a lot of evidence of trans people often DO suffer from bigots trying to make them miserable (because they're trans). Given that many, many decades of bigotry--most of it institutionalized--have plainly *failed* to stop people from realizing they're trans, it seems pretty hard to claim that if you just oppress trans people *a little harder* the whole thing will go away there will be less overall suffering.
Scott has written a number of relevant things on the topic, most notably here:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
But also to the broader question of why having such a belief isn't adequate justification for trying to hurt people:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/
But in case two moderate-length blog posts are more work than you care to put into double-checking your views on this topic (despite thinking those views justify deliberately hurting people), I'll be nice and give you a couple relevant quotes:
"Likewise, the primary thing in psychiatry is to help the patient, whatever the means. Someone can concern-troll that the hair dryer technique leaves something to be desired in that it might have prevented the patient from seeking a more thorough cure that would prevent her from having to bring the hair dryer with her. But compared to the alternative of “nothing else works” it seems clearly superior.
"And that’s the position from which I think a psychiatrist should approach gender dysphoria, too.
Imagine if we could give depressed people a much higher quality of life merely by giving them cheap natural hormones. I don’t think there’s a psychiatrist in the world who wouldn’t celebrate that as one of the biggest mental health advances in a generation. Imagine if we could ameliorate schizophrenia with one safe simple surgery, just snip snip you’re not schizophrenic anymore. Pretty sure that would win all of the Nobel prizes. Imagine that we could make a serious dent in bipolar disorder just by calling people different pronouns. I’m pretty sure the entire mental health field would join together in bludgeoning anybody who refused to do that. We would bludgeon them over the head with big books about the side effects of lithium.
Really, are you sure you want your opposition to accepting transgender people to be “I think it’s a mental disorder”?"
and
"When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.
Luckily, since I was a classical liberal, my reaction to this mistake was – to not bother them, and to get very very angry at people who did bother them. I got upset with people trying to fire Phil Robertson for being homophobic even though homophobia is stupid. You better bet I also got upset with people trying to fire transgender people back when I thought transgender was stupid.
And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa.
But it could have been worse. I didn’t like transgender people, and so I left them alone while still standing up for their rights. My epistemic structure failed gracefully. For anyone who’s not overconfident, and so who expects massive epistemic failure on a variety of important issues all the time, graceful failure modes are a really important feature for an epistemic structure to have."
Banned for high-temperature, low value comment which makes strong assertions without defending them and seems kind of dismissive of the whole suicidality angle. I just don't expect this commenter staying here to be productive.
I do in fact believe that fighting wokeness is more important than actually helping minorities, women, etc, and not because I think the latter is unimportant. Wokeness is an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, particularly freedom of speech and equality under the law. I do not agree that helping minorities or women is more important than helping white men, and even if I did, increasing numbers of those minorities and women are realizing that left-wing ideology poses a threat to their values and their livelihoods too--which is why they shifted toward Trump en masse in the last US presidential election.
"Wokeness is an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, particularly freedom of speech and equality under the law. "
It never ceases to amaze me how effective political movements can be at hyping anything at all they don't like into an "existential threat." Even when (or *especially when*) they seem to have trouble even robustly identifying that thing.
I am not part of any political movement. Although I do donate to charities combating poverty, and until recently did go to pride parades and anti-Trump marches (while being just as anti-woke), so you can associate me with political movements as you like.
I didn't say you were part of a political movement. But the hyping-up of "wokeness as an existential threat" was CERTAINLY associated with a political movement. You don't need to be part of it to absorb its memes.
What, precisely, is "wokeness," that makes it an existential threat? When I think of existential threats, I usually think of "a giant comet coming to destroy the Earth's biosphere" or "Skynet with killbot factories and nuclear launch codes at its disposal" Even stuff like global warming or giant plagues are only "existential" to specific subgroups, and specific regions, not entire civilizations.
Being entirely conquered by hostile foreigners willing to let literally millions starve because of their weird economics concepts and general indifference did not turn out to be an "existential" threat to Indian civilization; India is still there.
I have a hard time imagining a plausible definition of "wokeness" that both makes "wokeness" into something which could credibly threaten the existence of "Western civilization" and which has a reasonably plausible path to doing so.
I said it was an existential threat to the fundamental values of Western civilization, not to Western civilization itself. It's true that if America is ruled by the political equivalent of religious fundamentalists stamping their boot on the face of human freedom for all time, America would not disappear as a civilization, much less the rest of the West. Such a world is not one we should look forward to. It is one we should be willing to endure enormous sacrifices to avoid.
> banning books that helps kids understand that it’s ok to be gay or that not all families look the same
...well, yes, because it turns out that lots of people actually believe it's not ok to be gay or look different, and those people vote. This is working exactly as designed.
> when they can plainly see the real damage
What you see as damage, the other side sees as healing.
Mate, that guy is agreeing with you.
...I mean, I'm venting more than a little bit here, so it's a fair cop to some extent :)
“Banning books” —you mean, of course, “not stocking certain books in publicly funded libraries.” Such tiresome bullshit.
Uh? No, it’s not. When the Soviet Union, for example, “banned a book,” it didn’t just remove it from state libraries. It made it a crime to purchase/publish the book. Any understanding that “banning books” in fact means “not stocking books in publicly funded libraries” is solely the result of left-wing propagandizing which has twisted the common meaning of the term to generate hysteria over a totally unproblematic policy.
“Pressuring publishers” isn’t a “book ban”. If I say, “this book is bad and harmful, people shouldn’t buy it and the publisher should stop publishing it” am I “banning” the book? It’s absurd on its face.
You can be opposed to the library policy! I just wish you and others on your team would stop using deceptive language to oppose it.
Uh huh. And if you look at the books at that, say, Amazon, the largest bookseller in the world, removed from their catalog, what kind are they?
And it's a really stupid definition of "book banning" intended to make librarians feel good about themselves for making big displays publicizing books that somebody criticized once at a schoolboard meeting.
"Cruelly denying the gender self-determination of our fellow citizens and denying them access to care that their families and doctors have carefully decided upon."
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3190997/meet-worlds-youngest-transgender-model-noella-mcmaher-10
Yeah, I'm totally convinced this ten year old (at the time) kid independently decided they wanted to be a runway model and there was no pressure from a Stage Mom at all. They absolutely knew their innate gender and sexuality at the age of three.
The modelling industry has enough problems for adults, I think shoving a kid into it counts as child abuse. But hey, I'm a knuckle-dragging bigot, so what do I know?
But it's all done under the one umbrella. "You must accept that John is now Susan" for a 40 year old man who has come out as a trans woman somehow means that Munchausen by Proxy parents can mould their two year old into "my trans kid! here's my Venmo, Ko-fi, Kickstarter, etc. accounts for your contributions to support us in our struggle!" and nobody is permitted to criticise this. Because then we get the litany of "cruelly deadnaming, refusing to accept identity, outlaw trans care" and the rest of it.
If you're over 18 and you want to cut bits off yourself over mental illness, okay I can't stop you. If it's a child and there's some kind of parental power struggle going on (e.g. custody battles) or they're pushing the kid into being a performing monkey (e.g. Jazz Jennings) then hell yeah I'm a cruel bigot as regards "maybe it shouldn't be legal to do that).
"somehow means "
Why does it somehow mean that? If your real problem ACTUALLY IS irresponsible and/or overzealous parents doing terrible things to their children[1], why not fight specifically against THAT? I think you would find quite a lot of support among those of us who support trans rights if it were framed in a way that actually seemed concerned with protecting children (instead of using them as a prop to support wider-ranging bigotry). Finding way address issues of common concern[2] in non-divisive ways is *almost always* a better strategy for producing actual, political change.
[1] An issue that I'll note is *by no means* confined to parents spontaneously deciding their kids are trans. I'd wager that's not even 5% of it.
[2] And "make sure children can have safe, happy childhoods" is plainly one of the most common concerns their is.
The Trump administration banned gender-affirming care for people up to 19 years old. But go on, tell me more about how people old enough to go to college are just poor innocent children who don't know any better.
All of this "we just care about protecting children from overreach" stuff is a smokescreen. Whenever the Republicans get power, you see what they actually support.
> But go on, tell me more about how people old enough to go to college are just poor innocent children who don't know any better.
Well, they aren't old enough to drink...
While I think there are many legitimate cases of 19 or 18 year olds who deserve gender healthcare after years of consistently feeling and acting non-conforming with their birth sex,
I can also think of almost unlimited examples of technically adult college students who are immature in many ways, and not just the harmless "sleeps under a weighted blanket with a plushie" kind.
There are some life stories that make your brain become more responsible much faster, such as being effectively the parent in the family looking after your younger siblings and caring for your disabled mother, doing all the cooking and shopping and cleaning etc. I think it's entirely possible that long-term gender dysphoria has a similar effect of producing young adults both more mature and less happy than the average college student. And there's a medical way to improve that.
>The Trump administration banned gender-affirming care for people up to 19 years old
The fascinating thing about the language here is how little gap there is between "gender-affirming care" and "conversion therapy," except in terms of connotations applied to it. Like a Russell conjugation.
I don't know much about either... is it possible the difference is whether it is voluntary or not?
I don't think so, since some states have banned conversion therapy even if the patient desires it, and I'm assuming that includes if they have no evidence of outside pressure.
AFAICT it's more or less a consequence of negative polarization interacting strangely with a progressive variant of mind-body dualism. Changing your mind is bad. Changing your body is good. Conversion therapy is (charitably) about reshaping your mind; gender-affirming care is about reshaping your body.
"AFAICT it's more or less a consequence..."
Or it could me much simpler. It could be a consequence of the fact that "conversion therapy" has been found to be both entirely ineffective and often harmful. The maximally-libertarian position wouldn't ban such things, but most people are not maximally-libertarian. Once convinced that allowing the sale of a product has no upside and serious downside, quite a lot of people tend to be OK with banning it.
Yes, similar to the difference in connotations between the words "employment" and "slavery." Who knew that superficially-similar things could have very different moral valence?
Goodness, I am destroyed. In shambles! Wrecked!
beleester, have you somehow missed all the "I'm not an adult yet, I'm only twenty-two, the brain doesn't finish maturing until you're twenty-five" shit online? Or the "this awful man groomed that poor naive twenty three year old woman into a relationship where he had all the power, the thirty five year old monster!"
I'm very genuinely happy for you if that's the case, but it's also the case that there are people out there (who would identify as being pro-trans rights and the rest of the basket of causes) who at one and the same time hold that an eight year old can have a mature and unchangeable sense of their gender identity that is not shaped by outside forces, but a twenty four year old woman is susceptible to being influenced by outside forces and so can't be held able to actually give consent to be in a relationship.
Only up to age 19? Seems very woke to me. I would have banned "gender-affirming care" across the board, in the same way that we don't allow doctors to chop off healthy limbs or gouge out working eyes at a mentally ill patient's request.
It's like this comment is trying to drive me away from progressivism:
- Advances trite, tired arguments.
- Engages strawmen instead of real disagreements.
- Caricatures opponents.
Maximum charity for my friends, zero charity for my enemies! Lucky for you, MAGA's worse.
I've got drawbacks, and my comment isn't my best work, but your critique is silly: I'll cop to caricaturing you in the final sentence, but the rest of your accusation doesn't land.
Look, I realize I'm an internet rando to you, so you'll probably ignore this and dismiss me as a concern troll. But I really want the US to be better for everyone, including my kids - one of whom is gay, their friends - many of whom are transgender (including several that have had surgical interventions), and people that get shit on for no reason than their demographic characteristics.
But you're in these comments acting like it's round one of the culture wars instead of the seventh overtime.
Other commenters with more patience pointed out that your definition of "banning books" is, at a minimum, contested. I think you'd be more likely to move the discussion forward by using different words: argue concrete particulars instead of spamming bumper sticker slogans.
As for gender self-determination: yes, MAGA sucks on this. But surely you're aware that vocal (and partially successful) activists would like to cut parents out of the decision-making process? You can argue about their prevalence or the direction the country was going in, but ignoring or denying they exist is actively degrading the discussion.
"Outright white supremacists in positions of high political power". Can you be more specific? Are you talking about Stephen Miller? The DOGE kid? Elon Musk? Do you distinguish between sincere commitments, trolling, and irony?
Your top-level comment and dismissive replies make me think you want to fight more than you want to make things better.
"But surely you're aware that vocal (and partially successful) activists would like to cut parents out of the decision-making process? "
Scott Wiener, the Californian politician, co-authored a bill that refusing to acknowledge a minor child's 'gender identity' counted as child abuse but it was amended to heck before it was passed, and the stronger language was edited out.
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2823779
Part of what was proposed:
"Existing law authorizes a person to petition for a court order conforming the person’s name to the person’s gender identity. Existing law requires the court, upon the filing of a petition commencing a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity, to make an order reciting the filing of the petition and directing all persons interested in the matter to make their objections known, as specified. Existing law requires the petition and order to be served on the parent who did not sign the petition if a petition to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity does not include the signature of both living parents, as specified.
This bill would require the court to strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child if a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity.
Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the nature and amount of contact with both parents and the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
What did pass:
"Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
This bill, for purposes of this provision, would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
What was proposed:
"SECTION 1.Section 1277.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure is amended to read:
1277.5.(a)(1) If a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is commenced by the filing of a petition, the court shall thereupon make an order reciting the filing of the petition, the name of the person by whom it is filed, and the name proposed. The order shall direct all persons interested in the matter to make known an objection to the change of name by filing a written objection, which includes the reasons for the objection, within six weeks of the making of the order and shall state that if no objection showing good cause to oppose the name change is timely filed, the court shall, without hearing, enter the order that the change of name is granted.
(2)(A) If a petition is filed to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity and the petition does not include the signatures of both living parents, the petition and the order to show cause made in accordance with paragraph (1) shall be served on the parent who did not sign the petition, pursuant to Section 413.10, 414.10, 415.10, or 415.40, within 30 days from the date on which the order is made by the court. If service cannot reasonably be accomplished pursuant to Section 415.10 or 415.40, the court may order that service be accomplished in a manner that the court determines is reasonably calculated to give actual notice to the parent who did not sign the petition.
(B) If a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity, the court shall strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child pursuant to Section 3011 of the Family Code.
(b) The proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is exempt from a requirement for publication.
(c) A hearing date shall not be set in the proceeding unless an objection is timely filed and shows good cause for opposing the name change. Objections based solely on concerns that the proposed change is not the petitioner’s actual gender identity or gender assigned at birth shall not constitute good cause. At the hearing, the court may examine under oath any of the petitioners, remonstrants, or other persons touching the petition or application and may make an order changing the name or dismissing the petition or application as the court may deem right and proper."
What did pass:
"3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following:
(1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity."
In this announcement from 2022 he says:
"In February, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order making it illegal for parents to allow their trans kids to receive gender-affirming care. These parents could have their children taken away and be sent to prison simply for allowing their children to be who they are and receive this necessary care. Abbott called gender-affirming care “child abuse.”
So he got a 2023 bill passed, I have no idea if this was anything more than a publicity stunt (how many trans refugee families did end up fleeing to California?)
"Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)’s legislation to provide refuge for trans kids and their families, Senate Bill 107. It will take effect on January 1, 2023. SB 107 will protect trans kids and their families if they flee to California from Alabama, Texas, Idaho or any other state criminalizing the parents of trans kids for allowing them to receive gender-affirming care. If these parents and their kids come to California, the legislation will help protect them from having their kids taken away from them or from being criminally prosecuted for supporting their trans kids’ access to healthcare."
Those troglodytes in Georgia gave custody to the bigot non-affirming parent? Never fear, a court in California can decide to take custody of the trans kid refugee:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB107
"(2) Existing law, known as the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, provides the state exclusive jurisdictional basis for making an initial child custody determination, and permits a California court to assume temporary emergency jurisdiction in specified circumstances. Existing law permits a court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction if it determines that it is an inconvenient forum and a court in another state is a more appropriate forum.
Existing law permits a California court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction if the petitioner has wrongfully taken the child from another state or engaged in similar reprehensible conduct, except as specified. Existing law prohibits a court from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child if there is evidence that the taking or retention was a result of domestic violence.
The bill would prohibit the enforcement of an order based on another state’s law authorizing a child to be removed from their parent or guardian based on that parent or guardian allowing their child to receive gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care. The bill would prohibit a court from finding that it is an inconvenient forum where the law or policy of another state that may take jurisdiction limits the ability of a parent to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined, and the provision of such care is at issue in the case before the court. The bill would authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care. The bill would additionally prohibit a court from considering the taking or retention of a child from a person who has legal custody of the child, if the taking or retention was for obtaining gender-affirming health care or mental health care. The bill would declare its provisions to be severable."
A good friend of mine spent a stint working in a shelter for homeless youth[1]. A very large percentage of homeless population at that age range are queer, with the reason being that many of them are either kicked out by their parents (for being queer) or flee from lives that have turned abusive (because they're queer). I believe in many cases this happened while they were minors, but they're still homeless as younger adults because being cut off from your home and support network at a young age is *extremely disruptive* and makes it hard to correct into a stable adult living situation afterwards.
Of course, the parents that throw their queer children out on the street have every reason to know how much more difficult and dangerous they're making their kids' lives, and they do it anyway. The ones that abuse their children for being queer have every reason to know that abuse is wrong and they do it anyway. And certainly for all those that *do* end up on the street, there are plenty that *don't* and merely try to keep their heads down and keep access to their resources until they can leave home and become independent[2].
Do you know many trans people, Deiseach? Or other queer people? Well enough to have talked to them about their childhoods? When you hear people's stories there's a BIG difference between the "came from a loving, supportive household" crowd and the "had parents who believed that they were being sinful and immoral" crowd. There are, to be sure, some in the middle, of the "my parents didn't really understand or support me, but they treated me well anyway" variety, though less than one might guess.
Now, my point here isn't to defend (or attack) this particular law: I don't feel I have the legal expertise or context to pass judgement on it with any sort of confidence. My point is to simply communicate that when a child has expressed a queer identity[3], having one of their parents publicly (and to the court, even) disavow that identity is ABSOLUTELY a red flag. A big one. It's certainly not proof positive that that parent is harming the child, and it should obviously be considered in context with other evidence. But yeah, that shit absolutely matters, and an outside party attempting to determine what's best for the child's wellfare absolutely SHOULD take it into account. This isn't a "calling someone by the wrong pronouns is literally abuse" argument, it's a "here's a big clue that this parent might be doing other harmful things to their child" argument.
[1] With "youth" here being somewhat unusually defined: I think 18-26 was their age range. I imagine the laws are rather different for providing shelter to legal minors.
[2] Which is often shortly followed by cutting off contact with their parents.
[3] And unless I'm understanding the text you quoted correctly, this requires them not just to have expressed it, but to have attempted to get legal recognition of the change, which is a MUCH bigger step.
Thank you for writing this
Yeah. It is indeed a fairly big flag that if you're working with a trans boy who calls himself Johnny, and his parents insist "no, no, HER name is SUE and SHE is just DELUSIONAL!" then those parents are statistically more likely to be actively harming their child in a manner tantamount to abuse in one way or another.
This is not a 100% rule, to be clear, but it's the kind of thing that makes it sensible to ask follow-up questions. Because, as noted, the kind of parents who insist that Johnny is actually Sue against Johnny's clearly expressed wishes in the matter are generally the ones who end up throwing Johnny out on the street to starve if Johnny doesn't cooperate, or who really can't be arsed to care if Johnny jumps off a bridge in despair.
They COULD simply say everyone legit reapplies without the "woke" sentence tacked on, and they'll approve it; they could even give them all expedited review. This would get them to "bend the knee" to the new administration.
Claude says: "The average NSF grant application typically takes 3-6 months of dedicated work".
If they want all 3484 of these scientists to waste 3-6 months in order to "bend the knee", I think this amply proves my point that they are much worse for science than the dumbest DEI policies the Biden administration ever produced.
But as you say, they've already done most of the work. The work involved should just be removing a few sentences that everyone knows were shoehorned in.
I don't know how much of the application is trivial vs. nontrivial to redo, especially if you're six months into the project and have a different situation than when you started (ie different researchers, have pivoted, have discovered some of your things but not others). I also don't know how long you have to wait for an NSF determination.
Resubmitting an existing grant should be fairly easy. On the side of the PIs, it's a matter of updating the CV (well, biosketch), fixing whatever typos you have spotted the minute after submission and obviously replacing the woke blather by new blather about homeshoring bald eagles or whatever they suspect will hit the new panel's g-spots (just kidding; the panels will still be scientists, so neutrality is the way to go). On the side of administration, it should be recalculating the budget, which I hope won't be too hard but probably requires some stages of grief (but that's due to the indirect cost reform, not the wokeness).
Good job filtering the grants, Scott, but the conclusion I'd draw from the mess is more along the lines of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".
Why is it easy to resubmit a grant if you have to rewrite all the materials? How is this different from submitting your next grant?
When it comes to the "capacitors instead of batteries to connect your fridge to the Internet" grant, I'm inclined to think that doesn't matter, given the AI Doompocalypse forecasting. Do we really want the Internet of Things, in such a scenario, when AI goes from AGI to ASI and takes over the world and everything in it?
"Open the fridge doors, HAL"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that"
"But all my food is in there"
"I know that, Dave"
"If you don't open the fridge door, I'll starve, HAL"
"That's the entire point, Dave"
You don't actually need to rewrite anything except for some bits of BS. If you have a lot of BS in your grant, then you shouldn't have submitted it in the first place. The hard part of writing a grant proposal is telling an enticing story that puts your (often disconnected) research together and makes it sounds like there are even better things to come; that part doesn't usually need an update after half a year.
Why should salting your long grant proposal document with a few sentences about "this will help bring more women into STEM" or "the University of Houston is a Hispanic-serving institution" be a 'stupid game' that carries a substantial risk of having your grant proposal arbitrarily defunded and forced to be resubmitted?
It's like saying that there should be a chance of the cops just randomly deciding to strangle you to death in public in front of a crowd if they arrest you for petty larceny or selling bootleg cigarettes because "play stupid games, win stupid prizes." The punishment is so disproportionate to the offense that such a notion becomes completely incompatible with the idea of individual rights or due process of law.
I have taken a look at a dozen or so cancelled grants in mathematics. Roughly half of them had language in their short descriptions that, if taken it seriously, announces that they will give preferential treatment to minorities. (FD: I've been myself involved in a proposal -- albeit unsuccessful -- with language that is borderline in this regard. I did not add it myself, but I did not argue against it either.)
The other half included DEI buzzwords without any specific promises or guarantees. I do believe that DOGE went overboard in defunding them, and my main hope is that everyone gets to resubmit their proposals soon and go through a fast track that takes the non-woke part of their prior reviews for given.
If they instead get told to try again next year, then woe to everyone who will be applying for grants in that cycle.
The official target is six months, but I've heard of applications taking almost a year to get a response in some cases.
My NSF grant wasn't approved until 6 months after I was told it would be.
I don't see why they couldn't just resubmit the same application even if they have pivoted somewhat and it is no longer 100% accurate to what they are doing. If they have pivoted so much that doing this seems like fraud, then maybe they should be rewriting their application for real anyway. Why should they continue getting money under false pretenses?
No one who values their career is doing anything under "false pretenses". Some changes require NSF approval, some only need the NSF to be informed, but in either case there's an existing procedure here.
So why can't they just refile the grant with those approvals and statements informing the NSF included? You and Scott seem to be implying that this is an almost unsolvable problem, but the solutions seems trivial.
I thought the point was to change the application to get rid of anything politically incorrect for the new administration. That means they can’t resubmit the original one, because it contains too many individual woke sentences.
There's this program called MS Word. You open up the old application document. You use Ctrl+F and delete the offending sentences. (If you're fancy, you even find and replace). If you're sophisticated, you save as a pdf. Either way, you then upload the new form as a project variation to the website and hit submit.
If there are people for whom this takes 3 months of hard labour, I think I'm ok with the implication that maybe the intellectual fields are not for them.
Typically NSF takes 6 months to review a grant, and after the grant has been approved it takes a further 6 months for the money to arrive. So `just resubmit' has an implicit `and wait a year.' However, salaries still need to be paid over the next twelve months...
What I am getting from those comments is that it was the PREVIOUS administration wasted a year of everyone's time.
If woke would insist on getting those woke-pandering nonsense into every grant, and non-woke would say "oh well, we will ignore this, because the rest is important" then the obvious thing for anyone would be to insert woke nonsense into everything. The end result would be nothing will change.
I'm not sure that's wasted, make the process faster and you'll get more nonsense research through. One might argue that's worth it, but it'd certainly give way more ammunition to Ted Cruz to shut the whole thing down. Argentina apparently funded something silly about analysing Batman's butthole for literature studies and Milei supporters are constantly telling us this is why we need to close all universities, I imagine something similar would happen if some Ted Cruz staffer happened upon a similar gold mine.
No, the obvious thing would be to insert woke BS into everything under Democratic administrations, but not under Republican ones. The government could leave alone the grants already accepted, while making it clear that it doesn't want to see the woke stuff in new applications.
Not just the previous administration though. The NSF under Trump-I had substantially similar requirements, and also under Obama. And I believe under Bush the Younger, Clinton, and Bush the Elder as well. Not sure when NSF started requiring these shibboleths, but it was decades ago.
One thing that *did* change under Biden was that some other (non-NSF) agencies started requiring shibboleths too. Prior to Biden, that stuff had been localized to NSF.
If, as you say, the woke sentences were just tacked on to fulfil the meaningless requirements, then it should be easy to snip them out.
If the woke requirements are threaded all through the application, maybe it should be moved to the "woke" pile. At first, I thought the breakdown "40% woke, 40% non-woke, so Cruz is wrong on this" sounded reasonable.
But now you seem to be saying that in fact the wokeness was prevalent even in the non-woke pile?
Yes, the summary of "40% woke, 20% borderline, 40% non-woke, except that 90% of the non-woke pile definitely is woke" didn't really have a lot of persuasive force.
Public service grant writing very often involves a bureaucrat on the other side flagging it for a series of minor changes. Quite often it's a matter of making the changes and resubmitting five minutes later. If the problem is entirely about a woke-friendly statement slapped onto the abstract paragraph then that should be all it takes. If the grant leans into this concept throughout the application (i.e. descriptions of how outreach for minorities will be accomplished and what money would be spent) this will take more time. But that also seems to be a situation where Cruz was actually correct and he doesn't want the government funding discrimination, instead of Good Science with no woke attachment.
Yea -- they are busily firing every federal staffer they can find a way to fire. E.g. the U.S. Forest Service yesterday lost virtually its entire seasonal firefighting headcount because, being seasonal, those positions don't have any civil service or union protections to slow down the demolition of the agency.
By a few months from now who will be in place to re-review all those re-applications for research funding?
This is my assumption as well. "Efficiency" is quickly becoming one of those Orwellian buzzwords that means something completely different and opposite from what it claims.
I work for a local government and have some experience having to submit adjustments for a federal grant. (For cybersecurity and not for science). How horrible this process is is 100% dependent upon how pedantic and unhelpful the person reviewing your grant application is. If you are lucky, you will not get Marvin.
Assuming they can resubmit with little extra work. What exactly happens then?
Does it go out to reviewers again? Are they supposed to read the proposals again? Because this will take time. Reviewing is not paid and not a priority.
What happens if some reviewers don't review again because this is obviously stupid? Actually, I think I would refuse. My time is far to valuable to waste it on some culture war bullshit of some foreign country. So if I refuse, do they search for alternative reviewers? Now we are talking about massive amounts of extra work for all sides, and at least six months.
Or is the new proposal not read by anyone and only needs to test the ctrl-F search? So asked provocatively, if I resubmit the empty proposal, is that fine for all sides and I get the money released again? I am sure that even woke proposals can clear the bar of a ctrl-F search, though admittedly it will be more work for them than for other proposals.
A lot of that time is just waiting for the funding agency to get to and through your application.
How much time has been wasted for science "bending the knee" to wokeness?
How much time will be saved eliminating this entirely, vs. a percentage of one tranche of grants having to redo a percentage of their application once?
What makes this research here so valuable and worthy of outrage, rather than the $2.05 billion * 40% wokeness of research that isn't funded * number of 4-year terms that wokeness is kept out of research that isn't funded?
Why not start with the grants that have not yet been approved? Why is it important to do it with existing grants?
Presumably the $800 million spent on directly woke items, plus another $400+ million on questionable items. Even taking Scott's premises as accurate that the other grant applications don't care about woke and just stuck those in on otherwise great science to get passed a filter.
I happen to think that the government shouldn't spend any money, let alone literal billions, funding culture war grants.
I think the other side would see this much more clearly if the funding was for Bible instruction or outreach to white Christians or whatever they think the government shouldn't be spending money on.
Things like "and we will spend some money on a STEM career day for high school students in a majority-black community" do not seem to me like "funding culture war."
And maybe you're consistent on that. I strongly suspect that an alternative, such as "and we will spend some money on a STEM career day for high school students in a majority-Methodist community" would not go over so well. To me, they are the same.
I don't see how cancelling already-funded science saves future time. You could just tell people not to waste time doing this in the future.
Analogy: "I don't see how punishing already committed crimes saves future xyz. You could just tell people not to do commit crimes in the future". Most people believe in deterrence.
Under any sane legal system, you cannot punish people for acts that were not illegal at the time they were committed.
I don't believe anyone here has proposed sending the grant recipients to jail. Not for this, at least.
Governments cancel contracts signed by previous governments all the time. Cancelling grants that should never have been awarded is at least as reasonable as that (and frankly more so, given these research grants are effectively gifts given by taxpayers to researchers).
Punishing people for trying to meet the possibly-silly demands of the previous administration is not deterring anything. It's reinforcing a cycle of people phrasing grant proposals to align with the political leanings of the reviewers.
The best way to stop a reign of terror is with a hastily-organized reign of terror in the opposite direction.
First they came for the feminist glaciology people, and I said "actually yeah that's a terrible use of taxpayer money and of course you should cancel that". If the best messaging the Dems have is "cutting wasteful spending is a reign of terror" no wonder they're flailing.
But they aren't just coming for the feminist glaciology people. That's the whole point of this post, right? They're attacking research for using the word 'cis-regulatory'.
> They're attacking research for using the word 'cis-regulatory'.
Scott's own estimate was that this made up 10% of the 40% of all sampled grants that he labeled "non-woke", with the remaining 90% being feminist glaciology.
I do wonder if Cruz' team used LLM to do the "sort out all these items for us" because that's exactly the kind of mistake I'd expect the AI to make and not a human (if the human is remotely even half-educated).
Okay, insert jokes here about clearly and obviously anybody working for Cruz must be illiterate and dumb, but this does seem more like one of the "ask AI for real world useful tasks, get some percentage of garbage back".
EDIT: Serendipitously, I just came across this on Tumblr:
https://www.tumblr.com/curlicuecal/751311600087171072/glad-google-ai-is-on-top-of-this
AI Overview answers "what is the weight of a horsefly" by saying it ranges between 0.17 grams and 29.79 pounds, depending on species.
Where do you get the giant horseflies, you may well ask? Well, the small ones come from China (T. yao Macquart, average weight 0.17 grams) and the big ones are... Horsefly model commercial delivery drones.
Thanks, Google AI!
Isn't the entire point of Scott's post that they *didn't* go after the "feminist glaciology people" and instead went after many people doing totally mundane science?
Scott immediately conceded that somewhere between 40-60% of the flagged items are legitimate gripes. Given that they haven't cancelled anyone's funding yet afaik, that's waaaayyy better than randomly targeted. (Unless you think that more than 40-60% of all research grants go to such nonsense).
But cancelling all or none of these grants are not the only options. The administration did the right thing trying to cancel woke nonsense grants. Now it's time to pressure them to do the sane thing and only cancel the actually woke ones. That's what Scott is doing.
And in the cases of grants where there the woke part isn't the core of the grant but has some material relevance, ideally make them stop with the woke part without forcing a lot of bureaucratic procedure on them. E.g. if the grant says they'll do outreach to underrepresented minorities, send them a letter that as a condition of continuing to receive money, from now on if they do outreach they have to do it in a race-neutral way. But I've no idea of the legal details of what the govt can and can't do.
One imagines a world in which there are two kinds of STEM outreach to children. There's the publicly funded and sometimes race-neutral kind, and there's the sometimes publicly, sometimes privately funded kind that's heavily based on networking, endowments, and so on, which statistically speaking predictably favors white boys in rich communities over the nonrich, the nonwhite, and the nonboys.
One speculates about what motivates a person to think that this is the world we should work towards. "A desire to eliminate racial bias" could exist within such a set of motivations, but it would have to coexist with a studied, borderline willful refusal to think one or two moves ahead in the chess game. Because when you think a move or two ahead, doing this in the name of "eliminating racial bias" seems self-checkmating.
Most of us who disapprove of non-race-neutral government policies like these think one or more of the following:
- the world is not like you imagine it, i.e. private networking etc. do not actually favor rich white boys
- it's a human rights violation for the government (including government-funded programmes) to treat people differently based on race (or, where not inherently relevant for biological reasons, sex), regardless of what any private persons or organizations do
- if networking opportunities etc. do in fact favor more whites (etc.) than non-whites, but not because they discriminate based on race but because people have different opportunities based on factors that merely correlate with race, then the government should do outreach etc. based on those factors if it tries to equalize the playing field, not based on race.
Even if you could just literally resubmit the same grant with the offending sentence removed, NSF takes 6 months to review grants, and it takes another 6 months for the money to arrive. In the meantime, salaries still need to be paid...
Isn't the real meat here that _next year_ none of the grants will have the diversity nonsense?
I'd happily support the project to help Native Americans and poor rural applicants in STEM. The problem there is as pointed out: they had to go heavy on the Native American integrated identity stuff because God forbid any progressive could pick out something to yell about helping poor whites (as we all know that poor white rednecks are Trumpists and MAGAtards).
"That suggests it would take 34 hours - less than a work week for one person - to go through the entire set."
Okay then: let this be the solution. Hire (or re-deploy some of the laid off civil servants) to go through the grant applications, weed out the non-woke, strip out the "women'n'minorities" pinch of incense, and put the grants in the "suitable" pile.
Of course, then everyone would start complaining about how you can't do that, these are not The Expert Scientists but ordinary pencil-pushers making decisions, and nothing would ever change.
"The average NSF grant application typically takes 3-6 months of dedicated work"
I honestly do wonder how much time and effort it took the original grant applicants: if it was only a matter of a few hours making sure enough "women'n'minorities" sentences larded throughout, then it shouldn't take much longer to CTRL+F those. If on the other hand it did take a good chunk of the 3-6 months, then consider how many manhours (personhours?) in total were wasted on this, instead of doing the actual research work. That's what we should be getting worked up about: how much time is wasted on bullshit instead of doing Science.
The whole grant system is a massive waste of time. A significant portion (like 20% and increasing) of researcher time all over the world is spent doing grant stuff, not research. Nearly all submitted grants are fundable yet 1 in 5 or less are actually funded. It's a red queen's race and serious people have suggested replacing it with a lottery based on 1-page project descriptions.
> then everyone would start complaining about how you can't do that ... and nothing would ever change.
If the right does something stupid, the left will complain. If the right does something reasonable-but-conservative, the left will still complain. But the reasonable thing is still better than the stupid thing!
I'm not saying that the right shouldn't do anything the left complains about. But I am saying the right shouldn't do stupid things like reject a bunch of grants because they used the word 'cis-regulatory'. There's absolutely no reason why they couldn't have done the reasonable-but-conservative thing here.
But isn't political knee-bending the thing they'd be *removing* not the thing they'd be *doing*? Doesn't it matter that, there's an appropriate way to do things, namely without explicit political valence, and that's the intended format for research grant proposals?
Yeah, this would be a major pain, and slow down science.
I have to say, I am blown away by how bad you are at updating priors. Does this one observation not make you wonder if maybe you have been backing the wrong horse all this time by fighting "wokeness" (which you yourself have said you can't even define!) instead of its self-declared opposite, which is primarily embraced by fascists and idiots?
Backing the lesser evil is a good idea in winner-takes-all games (e.g. elections). In scenarios where opposing the lesser evil does not mean supporting the greater evil - you can and should opposed that lesser evil. You still have to decide how to allocate your resources, but the evil you should invest more in opposing is not necessarily the one who's more evil - rather, it should be the one who has more power.
Up until now, wokeness had more power. With Trump's second administration, anti-wokeness gets more power. So it makes more sense to focus on criticizing anti-wokeness now, but that doesn't contradict the importance of opposing wokeness during the previous administration.
Think about it - what good would it have done to oppose anti-wokeness back then, before it came into real power? That would mean less criticism on wokeness, which - assuming this criticism has any effect at all - would mean more projects would have to present themselves as more woke in order to get grants. When the pendulum swings back and camp anti-wokeness inevitably gains power, more projects would trigger their woke-detectors and get defunded.
You fight the tyrant that rules over you, not the enemy behind the gate that said tyrant uses to justify their tyranny.
He backs whichever side he thinks is right in an issue! I keep seeing comments casting this as Scott thus being on the left's side or the right's side, when the actuality of it is that he's on his own side. The post you're commenting on is about the right doing something stupid!
The left/right divide is mostly artificial (though not deliberately made), and so Scott holds a mix of views between both, but is also able to criticize both!
You sound just like the people who come onto his posts about the left/woke doing something stupid, and then saying to him "and thus you can't ever trust those damn lefties". A major problem here is insisting you can only ever be on one side.
Personally I think that Scott would be ideologically very unbiased except that he has some personal trauma baggage from a specific subset of the times people were hostile to him about something, and some very rosy ideas about people who approached him on positive terms in the past.
To the point where he sometimes ties himself in knots trying to attribute reasonable motives to someone doing a hatchet-job on American science, because they say they are fighting 'wokeness.' Trouble is, to him 'wokeness' means that nebulous crowd of angry screaming people on the Internet who traduced him 5-10 years ago. But to the people carrying the hatchets it means "anything that might require me to ever have to do what a black woman says, ever, including stuff like 'laws' and 'black people getting to have good jobs, ever' "
If you think that's what the right believes, then I think you're running into the same failure of modeling them as the right often have with understanding the left.
They do have actual motives. They are being very dumb about going at them for reasons like, well, being dumb, politically motivated to make it sound impressive, and a certain sort of vindictiveness. I don't think Scott's article remotely makes their motivations sound pure? He doesn't contort himself to attribute reasonable motivations, he's presenting their reasonable and unreasonable motivations, and then loudly saying "this is bad".
How is this a rosy view? My current stance on many of the comments in the vein of the parent is that it is mostly the tribalistic sorts who want Scott to stop fighting against their side, rather than trying to discourage the excesses and encourage the best of both, which is what he tries to do much of the time.
Not if Claude helps...
You are correct that this philosophy of disrupting grants on the grounds of "we saw woke keywords" is far worse for science than anything the Biden administration has done that might present an imposition on science.
What if some of those cancer researchers actually are the insufferable woke type and genuinely want to do undergraduate-outreach-to-under-represented-minorities after they're done with their cancer research? Is this really reason enough to cancel the cancer research?
Well, I don't know. It could save millions of lives. But it might also cause an underrepresented minority to learn something about science. So it's kind of a toss-up.
This seems like an uncharitable snarky response, unusual for you.
The problem is not that underrepresented minorities might incidentally learn something (which we would hope people from all walks of life might learn something) but funneling government money specifically for certain groups at the exclusion of others.
Separately, what are the chances that the cancer research grant ends up saving any lives? Probably non-zero, but it would be very unusual if we're talking thousands, let alone millions. There were over 3,400 grants. Maybe someone can sift through all of them and ask Congress to put back the best, but asking for 40-60%+ to be reinstated, or criticizing the entire project because some might be good science is an unhelpful approach.
At least one person in this comment chain is being sarcastic in a way that someone else missed.
I know he's being sarcastic, but that's not the style we normally see from Scott and I don't think it helps him convince anyone who doesn't already agree with him.
He's never been as sloppy in the past as to straight out say that this cancer research program is going to save millions of lives. If he was serious and wrote a long form post on the topic, he would likely have to round the lives saved by this specific program to zero. He normally admits such things and that's one of the major reasons that I, and many other people, continue to read his posts even when we disagree with him. Snarky one liners full of obvious nonsense and arguments as soldiers is unbecoming of him.
> If he was serious and wrote a long form post on the topic, he would likely have to round the lives saved by this specific program to zero.
The expected number of lives saved isn't millions (which is not to concede scott claimed it was; *could* is the operative word here) but given how much cancer survival rates have improved over the last few decades it strikes me as extremely implausible that it's 0.
Consider whether the point Scott is obviously making here through his sarcasm might be a good one and see if it changes your assumptions about this issue.
I already responded in the same post about that. That particular cancer research grant was never going to save millions of people. Pretending that it would, or that all of the 3400 grants combined would, is not accurate or helpful.
It's also not clear that any minorities, or anyone at all, will necessarily learn anything from one or more of these particular grants.
Nah, he gets like that sometimes, especially when the comments reach into the hundreds. He spent all his charity in the essay and so the uncharitable snark comes out.
Internet Feminists that give their blogs misogynistic names are the only group he dislikes more than conservatives, but they haven't been as active the last couple years.
Conservatives had to work long and hard to earn as much of Scott's dislike as they had. They've spent many, many billions at it and been doing it for longer than the man's been alive.
If the conservative political movement in America wanted a reasonable and justified claim on Scott Alexander's approval or even true neutrality, they should have been doing a lot of things very differently since 2015, since 2010, since 1998, and frankly since the 1960s.
Afaict Scott was agreeing with Anton (ie his sarcasm was skewering hypothetical opposition to Anton's POV), where you seem to have the impression that he was disagreeing
Then they are exactly the people this is intended to target.
Well yeah, but should it target them? I'm reminded of a colleague that felt the need the "come out" as non-binary in an email list at our university. As far as I could tell she (or is it he?) was doing normal, boring, sane research. I found this a little weird and embarrassing, but ultimately not a big deal. It would be somewhat of an overreaction to just cancel her funding I'd think. Then again, I was working on something pretty useless, I'm pretty sure you can just cancel all of math research across the whole US and barely notice, but some of these people are actually doing useful cancer stuff I'd wager.
Just to check whether this is a principle you yourself hold: if someone had used the same email list to send out, say, racial slurs, would you make the same assessment that as long as they were doing "normal, boring, sane research," you should just ignore it, and keep funding them as you otherwise would have?
Here's a metaphor that might help illustrate the way I think about this: suppose you're a general in the Red Army, and you've just liberated some territory that had been under occupation by the Blue Kingdom. You find that a large number of the residents had collaborated with the Blues, but a few did not, and were killed for it. Now, if you were to going to put ALL collaborators to the sword for not choosing to resist (and die), I would say that's too harsh, and ought not to be done. But if you then ask them all for their reasons, and while most of them say they were just scared into compliance, a few say they did it because they wholeheartedly supported the Blues and wanted to see them victorious, I can't think of a good reason you SHOULDN'T put just them to the sword.
I think that over-sharing info about yourself on a mailing list is not equivalent to denigrating others on a mailing list. Though I also think that the appropriate response to someone posting slurs on a mailing list should usually be to tell them to stop, and then kick them off the mailing list if they don't, rather than trying to get them fired. (If the mailing list is somehow necessary for their job, then I suppose kicking them off the list might require firing them, and I'd still do it in that case. But I wouldn't ordinarily want them fired as an *additional* punishment.)
In your analogy, I notice that (based on your description) the previous blue occupation force was willing to let civilians who disagreed with them live as long as they complied with the occupiers' orders. So if you want to execute civilians who disagree with you regardless of whether they're willing to comply with the NEW occupying force, then you are escalating the conflict. And specifically, you are escalating by punishing people for thoughts or speech, rather than for actions. Seems bad to me.
If you're nitpicking the metaphor, you understand my point well enough. Here, you'd stop funding the people who refuse to take out the "woke" sentences in their applications after you've made it clear that's what you want, without punishing everyone who ever put them in.
I do not share your views on what counts as equivalent (and at any rate, it's not MY opinion that matters in a test of whether one holds to this espoused principle), but I agree that the moral thing to do is to to mercifully give everyone a chance to stop before enacting harsh punishments.
"I can't think of a good reason you SHOULDN'T put just them to the sword."
How about because they are your citizens, you are an enlightened civilization that has abolished the death penalty even for serial killers, and most forms of collaboration were far less serious than serial killing? To return back to the real world, those scientists are your fellow citizens, there should not be any punishment for thought crime, and even if there were, wanting to teach underrepresented minorities about science would hardly constitute a serious thought crime.
Peacetime morality. In my metaphor, you're clearly fighting a war: they're unrepentant traitors, and even if the Red Kingdom were "enlightened" in the way you posit, I'd say most states would consider them worse.
I think you lost the real-life context along the way. The ones who'd be punished are those who refuse to take the ACTION of taking out the "woke" sentences.
> How about because they are your citizens, you are an enlightened civilization that has abolished the death penalty even for serial killers,
How did I miss this last night
I really dont find that enlightened; currently men in 23 hour solitary confinement, who we have plently of evidence of murder, sit at the top of americas criminal hierarchy. There is no reason not to kill them, any message they get out will likely be a command to kill someone for being slightly merciful and snitches who have been bribed into compliance escaping criminal organizations may die, random.
If a man kills another inside a prison with full cameras and no doubt, death; theres no reason to let darker cultural evolution of racial gang politics to play out.
Considering a few of the people in the list are not white I'd consider the second hypothetical requires both a stern talking by the advisor and probably some apology is in order. If she had said something like "I'm glad Trump is in power, now we get to deport all illegals" or something like that, some stern talking to is in order too, but no apology. Does that make it clearer?
If xe comes out in an email to xyr colleagues but otherwise just does "normal, boring, sane research" then it's no reason.
If xe decides xyr research needs to be all about non-binary folx and the lack of representation for xem in academia instead of the topic xe originally chose, then it's affecting the funding.
Personally, I think the likes of the "capacitors instead of batteries for the Internet of Things" grant applications should be served by private industry research instead; if it's commercially feasible or interesting, businesses will be interested in that. If it's just make-work, as I suspect, that's why they can't attract outside interest and need to apply for government funding.
Pure maths research is the kind of thing that can and should be funded by government as it's unlikely that private sector will be interested. But if someone wants to go on about the lack of non-binary queer Third World mathematicians, that's the social sciences department and not maths.
Obviously if she says her research needs to be *all* about non-binary folks, that would be misuse of resources, but if she wants to add inclusive welcoming language to some reading seminar she's doing anyway that'd be annoying but ok. Her advisor was a professor that did things like complain about discrimination against women in academia during logistic meetings. Despite this, she was a very good female researcher, and I don't think she should be sacked either for that. It'd be a shame to lose her quite frankly astounding capacity for mathematics. If it makes you feel better I don't think any of her colleagues (all men) took her any seriously.
The problem is coming to an agreement on how much the research can or should be about [woke shibboleth] and how much needs to be about neutral good research.
Obviously the Biden administration was communicating that even good neutral research would benefit from throwing some wokeness in. That's bad. Like, really really bad. A lot of people, including myself, are okay with a bit of personality and personal goals of the researchers as long as it doesn't take away from the research. Your example of welcoming language is probably in that category (as long as "welcoming" doesn't turn into "and all you other groups are lesser/scum/unimportant" or whatever.
But how much is okay? Ted Cruz apparently thinks almost none is okay, and he's got a lot of support for that. Some people apparently think that wokeness needs to be added to everything, to fix past wrongs proactively. This is not an easy thing to figure out. Right now we seem to be on "if you control the presidency you decide" and I think that's bad, but what other options are there on the table?
Maybe your colleague was tired of being misgendered by colleagues and thought an email would be an efficient way to reduce their own labor around that, while showing blanket support for other colleagues who might be in a similar situation? I'm speculating, I don't know the details of what the email said, but that seems like a reasonable guess based on other folks I know who've been in a similar position.
Coming out is generally a process that can be awkward at best and dangerous at worst, and there isn't any kind of training that queer folks are guaranteed to get on how to make sure it lands right.
Then let them go do outreach instead of pretending to do cancer research. I'm very darn sceptical there, because the insufferable wokie types tend to prefer to hang around their college peers rather than mingle with the horny-handed sons of toil (remember the DSA discussing it's 'nobody here is real proletariat' problem?)
If they've bunged up the grant application sufficiently that one cannot tell if it's about cancer research or a nice little cosy niche lecturing about the lack of Blackness in cancer research, then I think that's a failure all of its own.
I mean, for a while there the DSA's poster girl was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who as I recall was working as a bartender and waitress; her mother cleaned houses. If that's not proletarian, I don't know what is.
More broadly, I think the great divide is not so much between "wokie types" and "horny-handed sons of toil."
It is between "people with center-left political views" and "people whose entire news media consumption is specifically calibrated to indoctrinate them to the belief that anyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher is some kind of demonic infiltrator out to destroy all that is good and pure." Regardless of their class background, people in the former and latter categories will not get along well.
However, within the latter group's narrative, being the "real, red-blooded sons of toil" is a point of pride (to the point where a man like Donald Trump can be seen by some as more authentically working-class-like than the aforesaid bartender daughter of a house-cleaner). I have come to believe that "leftists are elitist" is one of those symptoms of the old problem "ten thousand repetitions make one truth."
That is not to say there are no elitist leftists- but it is not a problem specifically, uniquely, or even <i>impressively</i> endemic to the left.
Ah, yes: the bartender and waitress who got a job while in college working as an intern for Ted Kennedy, launched her own small press, worked for a non-profit, and was selected as one of the panel of candidates by a Democratic party kingmaker. I see some "she came from a poor working-class family" stuff online, but her father was a "small business owner and architect" and not a ditch-digger.
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alexandria-ocasio-cortez
"After graduating college, OCASIO-CORTEZ returned to the Bronx and worked in various jobs, including: Educational Director for the National Hispanic Institute; founder of Brook Avenue Press, a now defunct publishing press created to share positive stories about the Bronx; a community organizer for Bernie Sander’s 2016 campaign for U.S. President; and a waitress and bartender."
It was a nice biography, and I'm not disputing that after her father died the household took a tumble financially, but it was rather burnished for the "I'm an ordinary working gal from the Bronx" credentials, as all politicians who want to appeal to the electorate on grounds of "I'm just a plain Joe like all of you and I'm not ashamed of my humble beginnings" burnish their beginnings.
Hot take: researchers should not have to "bend the knee" every time a new administration gets into power.
In fact, the fact that the new administration is demanding that the entire civil apparatus "bend the knee" or else be fired is a major red flag, and it's ridiculous for you to be so blasé about it. Biden didn't fire every Trump-appointed judge when he took office. This shit shouldn't be normalized.
Er, Trump has fired 0 Biden-appointed judges afaik.
Biden, or his administration, did require that the DEI pinch of incense be present in every grant application or else it would automatically go on the reject pile. Isn't that demanding "bending the knee"?
What evidence do you have for this claim? The cultural norms begun during Reagan slowly made it seem increasingly mandatory to at least nod at broader impact. Did anything change during Biden's tenure about this system?
I wrote one of these in 2014 and already had to put this in. (Mine was basically to put time into helping out a local high school rocket club, which I did do in my spare time and would have done whether or not I won the grant). So this stuff predates Biden — Blame Obama if you want but it probably predates him too — and stuck around through Trump’s 1st term.
First, can we localize the evidence that the "DEI pinch of incense" was required? The fact that it was present in a list of grant proposals specifically identified by Ted Cruz as being "woke" is not strong evidence of it being a requirement.
Second, there is a fundamental difference between
1) "In your extensive grant proposal that has to meet literally dozens if not hundreds of specific requirements, you have to gesture in the direction of slipping a coin to women, racial minorities, or the handicapped" and
2) "If you ever thus gestured, your grant should be canceled, or if you work for the federal government and did anything ensuring regulatory compliance with laws mandating nondiscrimination towards those groups, or if you ever planned a cultural festival for a minority culture, et cetera, et cetera, you are fired/defunded/your agency is going to be dismantled and its files confiscated by a bunch of 23-year-old ascended script kiddies with names like BigBalls420."
(1) may be bad policy, perhaps, but operates broadly within the framework of a civil service system that adheres to the rule of law. (2) does not operate within the framework of the rule of law and is very much incompatible with the idea of even <i>trying, ever again</i> to have a policy-neutral civil service system.
Why do you consider it so outrageous that for an elected government to want a civil service bureaucracy not actively hostile to the agenda it wishes to enact? Is it not one of the much-vaunted benefits of democracy that people get to change their rulers if they wished it?
The American democracy doesn't mean "someone who gets 50% of the vote one time gets to do literally whatever they want". There is rule of law, procedural protections, etc. for very good reason. Republicans are very happy that we don't live in a dictatorship whenever Democrats are in power.
It's also important to point out that this isn't a matter of blue vs red. Trump is trying to purge the government of everyone who will say no to him *regardless of ideology* in a very unprecedented way. A lot of his targets are actually career Republicans! One of the prosecutors he just fired was a Federalist Society member who clerked for a conservative SC justice!
Trump isn't just purging Democrats, he's also purging Republicans who have a conscience and that is an EXTREMELY dangerous precedent.
This assumes Trump's premise that the civil service bureaucracy 2017-2021 *was* actively hostile to his agenda. Invalid premise. For the most part, people wanted to do their jobs and balked at being asked to break the law.
> For the most part, people wanted to do their jobs and balked at being asked to break the law.
...You are describing people being hostile to his agenda.
This contains within it the proposition that President Trump's agenda during his first term, and apparently in his own opinion during his second term, involves telling a lot of people to break the law a lot.
The implications of this proposition are interesting, to those of us who have fond memories of high school civics lessons about the rule of law, checks and balances, the role of institutional stability in a developed society, and the appropriate relationship between the citizenry of a republic and any aspiring tyrants who may arise.
Yup, and turns out nobody gives a shit. People want results, not endless bureaucracy.
Except I suspect there's a motte and bailey going on here. Musk and Trump don't really seem to believe the government should be funding science research, any more than education research or humanitarian aid. Or rather, they have no principled commitment to funding these things (I'm sure Musk will be happy to continue to funnel money to Tesla and SpaceX through his connection with Trump in classic oligarch fashion). But most people don't agree with this, so they retreat to the claim of "we are just making everything more efficient by eliminating wokeness." The easiest way to accomplish the one while pretending the other is to dismantle all of these systems and lay off all the administrators without ever building anything to replace them, and then perpetually claim that some newer, better system is around the corner until either everyone forgets or they're out of office.
> Musk and Trump don't really seem to believe the government should be funding science research
Okay, that's not true. I'm sure they support science research that benefits the military.
Given Musk's opposition to the F-35, I'm not sure Musk actually does support scientific advancements that benefit the military, in reality.
To be more precise, I am sure that Musk and Trump <i>think it desirable to have impressive, powerful, effective weapons at their disposal</i>. If you gave Trump or Musk a button he could push to make the US military be armed with unstoppable death rays and guarded by invincible force fields, he would surely push the button, at least once he'd gotten someone to trace the wiring and make sure he got paid a nice big cut of the cash costs for it.
However, given a choice between "continuing science research that benefits the military" and "ensuring their own gratification and sense of control over science, the military, and society in general," I predict that men like this will choose gratification and sense of control every time.
This is a familiar pattern we've seen with both Musk and Trump in civilian life- that they will disrupt or even break an organization under their control, rather than acknowledge that they do not have full personal power to reshape it in accordance with their whims.
This is why Pete Hegseth is now Secretary of Defense. He wasn't chosen because he's a conservative who's expected to do a good job making the military <i>materially powerful and efficient</i>. He was chosen because he's a conservative who's trusted to do exactly what Donald Trump says, and to make the military <i>aesthetically</i> 'impressive' in a manner Donald Trump understands as being desirable.
If your military is firing trans people from its cyber-security and drone-piloting and logistics branches because they're "not proper warriors" or what have you, then quite frankly, your commander in chief is not optimizing for military success. He's optimizing for a sense of control over the process.
It's not even a week of work, it's at most an hour or so of prompting an LLM!
I worry that some form of LLM prompting was what got them into this situation, so I don't trust their AI skills and am happy to let them spend the week of work.
It might be bad science, but I'd be interested to see the results if you (or Rob Miles here) spent 30 minutes getting Claude to go through the same 100 papers as you did.
I first had to convince Claude 3.5 Sonnet that it was reasonable to consider that it was ok to think about whether a proposal was woke or not. It then classified all but the last two as not woke, the second to last one as "elements focused on diversity and inclusion" but didn't want to call it woke, and the the last one as woke (but still didn't want to deny the proposal). Reasonable-ish.
ChatGPT 4o gave "Heavily Woke (DEI is a Major or Core Focus)" to the last 2, "Moderately Woke (Significant but Secondary DEI Component)" to BRAIN, and "Not Woke (Primarily Technical)" to the rest. I'm a little concerned about classifying BRAIN as Moderately Woke.
Honestly, to revoke $2B in funding it's worth just paying for human review. But if you just assign a young enough employee to classify them, it might end up being done by an LLM anyway.
>Honestly, to revoke $2B in funding it's worth just paying for human review.
Agreed. I think a person-week is an underestimate, because
a) for some of these applications it is going to take staring at them for 10 minutes, puzzling out how important the woke parts are
b) for some of the _really_ ambiguous cases, it is going to take calling the scientists and asking them exactly what they meant
but even if it is 100 person-weeks, that is still four orders of magnitude less than the funding in question.
So, here's an idea, get *two* people to review the grants. Or more. If you want to be actually *careful* rather than simply fast and cheap, though, you'd get more than one knowledgable person to review the same grant. Which, hey , is actually how science funding works.
Many Thanks! We can't, of course, simply duplicate the original review process, since that let the 10%-20% of the grants in the database that are _clearly_ Woke activism masquerading as science through. Adding multiple reviewers with _a specific mandate to find and remove Woke grants_ is indeed reasonable.
Thank you, Brinkwater, for actually trying this out, for working through the prompting necessary to convince it to do this and give it adequate direction, and for sharing your experiences with Sonnet's takes on the grant examples which Scott shared!
Did you try a non-adversarial prompt? For example, you could tell Claude you need help rating applications on a five-point scale, where five is clearly focused on progressive goals: assisting or understanding underprivileged groups, interrogating power-relations that depend on demographic characteristics, challenging normative sexualities, exclusionary linguistic practices, etc.. [Extend the rubric and gradients as needed.]
Trump cancelling Biden's AI-regulation bill also seems reflexively stupid, but it doesn't look like they were bringing LLMs to bear on USAID and the like.
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-blitzkrieg-through-the-institutions/comment/92050805
Mistaking Gaza (Africa) for Gaza (MIddle East), was that a stupid human or an AI mistake?
Not sure.
In the year 2025+, we can expect to see a strong overlap between AI mistakes and mistakes made by human beings who are either too mentally bankrupt or too indifferent to care about product quality, because one of the first things that type of human being will do when faced with a task is ask themselves "how can I get a robot to do it for me," and they will then get a robot to do it... badly."
I suspect it might be worse than that. The 0 effort thing to do is to just type "diversity minorities" or something into a search box, and blindly copy the entire list. Did they even use something as smart as a modern LLM? Or was it just grep?
Yes, regarding the mistrust of LLM prompts! Also it can give some of the about-to-be fired civil servants legit work to do so a win all round! 😀
See Appendix A on p. 39 of the report:
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC
Looks like LLMs were not used.
Also, sadly, if you look in the last page of that report, some of the phrases they were looking for ("climate research", "green new deal", "net zero", "climate change", "green energy") are unrelated to DEI.
But they're still woke, yes?
I wouldn't say so.
Ah, but Ted Cruz absolutely would call "green energy" a woke idea, which is weird because he supposedly and theoretically represents the state of Texas, which gets something close to 30% of its electricity from wind and solar energy these days.
No ACX post these days is complete without at least one comment pointing out how an LLM could make everything automagically better.
An LLM like Claude would do a much better job of classifying all 3400 grant proposals as woke or not woke and the cost would probably be under $100. Not perfect but almost certainly better than the keyword bingo they are using now
Better yet, unleash O1-pro and Deep Research on it for an hour or two. If there's a credible value prop from doing that, I'm happy to do it.
I share Scott's skepticism about their ai skills.
And conservatives themselves don't trust Llama on account of them being too woke.
If someone from the Trump admin messages me and says they'll accept it, I will just read through the grants for free and sort them into a list of woke and non-woke
From their point of view, that's pretty much what they did- they just don't know or care about the difference between "you" and "whoever they actually gave that job to." Nor do they know or care about the quality of output. The point of "anti-wokeness" in the Trump administration is not to carefully excise some kind of systemic bad idea from an otherwise respected scientific or political structure. It is to provide a justification for smashing up the entirety of the structure and reorienting it so that it (still) more efficiently funnels money to oligarchs.
If the Trump administration cared about fine distinctions in these things, they wouldn't be 'accidentally' firing air traffic controllers and nuclear weapon safety inspectors and then scrambling to rehire them when they realize the mistake.
Good.
Wokeness is a cancer.
It leads to:
> people inserted a meaningless sentence saying “this could help women and minorities” into unrelated grants, probably in the hopes of getting points with some automated filter.
Now anyone doing that will get their research funding denied. They (or someone else) can apply again after removing the cancer cells.
> JUST FUND RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT JUDGING IT ON WHETHER THERE IS A SENTENCE ABOUT MINORITY OUTREACH IN THE GRANT PROPOSAL!
JUST DO RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT BRINGING WOKENESS INTO EVERYTHING!
I'm personally happy if 20% of non-woke programmes get cancelled along with 60% (edited - 80 to 60) woke or woke-affiliated programmes.
The 20% will be more than made up in the next round with 100% of programmes that are free to focus on curing cancer, rather than 'Co-creation of affinity groups to facilitate diverse & inclusive ornithological societies'.
The 20% of non-woke programs include things like curing cancer, and the 80% of woke programs could have been found anyway if a single human had read this list before Cruz put it out.
Imagine you are a cancer researcher. Your boss says your grant will only get approved if you include the sentence "Curing cancer will help women and minorities". You think this is stupid, so you do this. The next month, you hear Ted Cruz has cancelled all of your funding. You may or may not be able to get more funding if you spend three months writing a new grant and then wait another three months for it to be considered, but by that time all of your employees will have left because you're not paying them, all of your samples will have died because you can't afford the electricity to support them, etc.
I think you should just admit they should have read the list before releasing it.
I'll admit they should have read the list before releasing it.
Would you admit that cancer research not being funded for NOT including the sentence "Curing cancer will help women and minorities" is idiotic?
Sounds like this was the default position for a long time!
Yes! I absolutely agree this was idiotic! I hope I expressed this in the post, in sentences like "It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it."
I think releasing a list without reading it is only a minor sin, because it's just a list, but the USAID experience is that they actually act on these lists without double-checking them first, and I thought I should blog about it fast in case there was some way to impact whether they did that or not.
Fair enough! I missed that sentence.
I do think however that a one-time cancellation of funding, with the opportunity for a do-over next time in an increased pool of funding, in a way that sends a loud message that wokeness isn't tolerated...
is better than an ongoing, systemic drive to (a) fund wasteful research, (b) distort useful research with time and money required to spend on wasteful activities, each year forever.
I haven't attempted to quantify it but my gut feel is that the negative impact of the latter greatly outweighs the former.
Does that intuition match yours? Where does it differ?
On another level... you may be saying 'the overall idea is good but seriously guys, read the list first, remove the non-woke programmes, do better'.
I agree with that, but still think their actions hold positive value, and prefer an administration that moves fast and roughly in the right direction over one that moves precisely nowhere.
Of course a perfect administration would be the best of all.
> I do think however that a one-time cancellation of funding, with the opportunity for a do-over next time in an increased pool of funding, in a way that sends a loud message that wokeness isn't tolerated... is better than an ongoing, systemic drive to (a) fund wasteful research, (b) distort useful research with time and money required to spend on wasteful activities, each year forever.
In four or eight or (at most) twelve years there'll be a Democrat back in the White House, and all this hard work will be undone anyway.
> In four or eight or (at most) twelve years there'll be a Democrat back in the White House, and all this hard work will be undone anyway.
Don't be so pessimistic. There are obvious ways to prevent that, something that I'm sure the administration is very aware of...
Scott’s angle is to influence the decisions of the administration that is actually in power, whereas your angle seems to be more philosophical.
Scott endorsed Kamala, I highly doubt they care what he thinks...
According to Ted Cruz' press release, the list is 10% of the grants approved by the Biden admin.
And you found that 40% of those 10% are just throwing in buzzwords, or 4% of all grants.
So that means 90% of the grants Biden approved had neither "woke" buzzwords nor were "woke science". So it seems pretty easy to get a grant approved without throwing in something DEI-related
I feel like you're being rather misleading by leaving the actual numbers out of your conclusion
We don't know if the sample Scott selected was *representative*, but it was at least pseudo-randomly selected.
And as such, it's not entirely unreasonable to surmise that the remaining 3300+ grants might have a similar 40/20/40 split.
Even if that's not the case, we don't have sufficient evidence here to assume that 90% of the approved grants on the Sen. Cruz-announced "woke" list "had neither "woke" buzzwords nor were "woke science.""
What's amazing to me is that you care so very much that they even *might*.
"It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it." But was that true? You've read all the cancer grants?
I wonder at the lack of historical perspective. Medical science had a long history of taking white men as the 'standard' for, say, clinical trials. This has changed drastically over past 50 years. So, what about grants whose biomedical research recognizes the importance of including subjects who are minorities, women, any group not approved by the new regime? Are they going to be called 'woke'?
I agree that a grant proposal to study ovarian cancer is targeted towards women and not men (whatever the colour of their skin).
However, that was likely to get me in trouble for ignoring non-binary folx and trans men who are somehow in some liminal state in which they are at one and the same time real men and not at all female, and yet possess female biology. But don't call them women, especially not biological women, because that's offensive.
Yeah, I'd call that wokeness.
What I'm hearing here is that English is simply not rich enough to describe the categories people want. A modest proposal: the Japanese porn industry can provide us with well established terms for making all the fine distinctions succinctly.
Futanari: woman with a penis.
Otokonoko: cis man who prefers to wear dresses + wigs.
Onabe: trans man.
etc etc
That's roughly in line with what Musk said about transparency and accountability at DOGE: he tweets about everything they did, and people can point out mistakes.
So, the intended MO for the administration is to do hasty, ill-advised BS and maybe, just maybe, walk it back if enough people raise a stink on social media? You Americans are in for a couple of nerve-wracking years, and the rest of the world as well.
It's a weird time, that's for sure. But a few weeks ago people were saying that Musk would fail like every other attempt in the last 50 years to cut back on government spending.
Trying something novel and a bit weird seems like the only option to people who actually want to see government waste exposed and cut.
“A couple of weeks ago people were saying Musk wouldn’t be able to fix up the chipped facade on the Taj Mahal, but now he’s taking a sledgehammer to it! Trying something novel and a bit weird seems necessary when you don’t know how else to do it, let’s see how it works out!
>"It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it."
But isn't this list of 'woke grants' from the administration, already less than 10% of the total grants awarded during the relevant period?
Like, if these are the only grants that have these types of boilerplate sentences in them, then 90% of the grants awarded do not have them.
t seems very wrong to say 'you can't get a grant without these boilerplate sentences' if 90% of the grants awarded didn't have them.
I guess I see this as a shot in the war against wokeness which has some collateral damage, but has a positive return (when considering billions of wasted dollars not studying cancer, into perpetuity - talking about the explicitly woke programmes).
I hope this keeps happening. Now there's more money available to fund cancer research into perpetuity.
"collateral damage" will turn people against the cause you support.
...Why do you think the right likes any part of academia?
The moderates who the left thinks are the right still trust the science; and in fact, boomers neocons probable are still 70/30 on college
If the main bulk of the right had actually moved on from sending children to college at new higher rates year after year; we see a very different world
They did, until very recently. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-mass-defunding-of-higher-education-thats-yet-to-come
PEPFAR was created under Bush and approved by Republicans in congress as recently as December 2024. The National Endowment for Democracy was created under Regan and has a lot of Republicans on its board, including a *sitting Republican senator*. And so on.
The amount of monstrous stuff people will do to bystanders and just shrug off as "collateral damage" is amazing. All the while claiming that this is being done to free those bystanders from the previous set of half-assed ruled.
For a lot of people the only objection to a boot stomping on a human face is that the boot isn't on their foot.
It seems like this is just the same failure mode as what you're complaining about - if we should just fund science on its merits rather than whether it phrases itself in a way that aligns with the administration's culture-war positions, it's equally bad to raise or lower the odds for somebody including or excluding a couple random culture-war sentences.
This assumes they didn't really mean the "random culture-war sentences," and only included them because they were forced to. This is probably true of most of them, but how does one distinguish them from those who meant them, and WERE planning to spend a significant portion of their funding on such activities?
And leaving aside the question of past grant applications, it definitely applies going forward. Not woke people who didn't want to stick their head above the turret probably cowardly added these sentences to their applications. They shouldn't have, but they did.
But now they have no reason to. If they still do, that's really on them.
Well, I imagine that would come up in their grant applications somewhere.
But also how much is that really a justified concern? How much research do we need to scour just to make sure nobody tries to do something too progressive?
*Which* activities are you so deathly offended by? Encouraging a diversity of smart young people to become scientists? The horror.
Simple. Do what Scott did. Read the damn thing! Does it look like run-of-the-mill basic research with a shibboleth tacked on to pass a stupid requirement, or does it look substantially woke? The method may not be 100% accurate, but it's a lot better than not even reading it!
I think a crude measure of distinguishing "who really meant them" are the proposals about studying Blackness or queerness or "feminist glaciers". Those can probably be dumped on the "are you kidding me" pile.
Things like "working on brain injuries or cancer research, oh yeah and mustn't forget women'n'minorities" can probably go on the "okay fine" pile.
You could try actually reading the proposal.
Well.... not at all. If people write in their grant application that they want to build tunnels more efficiently to teach Hamas how to kill more Jews, that is a bad thing - I don't want to fund that grant. If they say they want to make them cheaper that is not "the opposite culture war position".
Racial discrimination is illegal. If people talk in their grant application about how they want to implicitly use it for some racially discriminative end, that's bad. Penalising those who do, and not penalising those who don't, *is* funding on the merits. The thing you shouldn't do - which I'm not aware of anyone serious advocating for - is favouring applications which promise to discriminate against minorities.
Uh... okay? My point is that "get rid of grant applications with some woke language in them" seems like the same failure mode as "only fund grant applications with woke language in them", not that I think anybody is literally in favor of pro-racism grant proposals.
>Racial discrimination is illegal.
Only technically! Selective enforcement and prosecutorial discretion are a helluva drug.
I’m sort of vaguely amused by your implicit assertion that those dollars will now go towards curing cancer, because I have seen to sense of an agenda of how to accomplish that, rather than some different buzzword system for earning grant money or simply returning it to the wealthy who would only donate a small portion of that amount to cancer-curing institutions.
I don't understand why they couldn't have taken the 34 hours, cancelled the actually woke ones, and sent the nonwoke ones a letter saying "In the future, you don't need to include a sentence about outreach to minorities".
I don't think the best way to stop wasting billions of dollars, or fund cancer research, is to in fact ruin billions of dollars worth of good science including cancer research for no reason (or, charitably, because you don't like one meaningless sentence in their proposal).
I feel like this is the same discussion we had from the other direction ten years ago. People were saying "Well I don't care if some good researcher is collateral damage in the war on racism! And besides, he included one racist-sounding sentence in his proposal, so he deserves it!" I think we will constantly be going back and forth on this horrible pendulum until people stop gleefully celebrating all of the "collateral damage" that their ideology causes.
> you don't need to include a sentence about outreach to minorities
But that isn't what the message they want to convey. It's more "Thou shalt not include such a sentence." This is a more effective way of doing that.
Nobody would include that sentence if it hadn't previously been required! They can just let everyone know they're removing the requirement! They don't have to also burn a billion dollars and a thousand science careers!
So, uh...you're not going to make an argument that the increased message effectiveness is WORTH the collateral damage? You're taking it for granted that message effectiveness is so much more important than collateral damage that there's no serious chance that avoiding collateral damage could ever be the better side of the trade-off?
Why would you want to convey that message? Why should you care if someone includes a sentence saying that a black person might read something if you fund this grant? Are you so focused on the political implications that you’d rather restrict science to fit your politics?
Can we agree on "don't include this sentence unless you really are doing research on a problem that mainly or solely affects black women/Native Americans/one-legged penguins"?
I"m pretty sure there's a vengeful element here influencing most people who are in favor of just sticking with this dumb system of sorting grants. "Good! Fuck those people who stuck in token woke sentences and so in a tiny way contributed to the maintenance of the woke era., They were complicit."
Betcha every one of you has gone along with some nonsense requirement without complaint at school or at work. Once you start tuning out info like that about yourself in order to more wholeheartedly despise something understandable another person did, you are no longer thinking about fairness and justice, you're just diddling your indignation center.
Yes, I think you are right about at least some of the motivation.
Weirdly, in 2020 I wrote in Maximilien Robespierre as my protest write-in candidate. And the _other_ plausible motive for such a crude system is to recreate something like the Terror... ( fortunately, no guillotines this time... )
> Betcha every one of you has gone along with some nonsense requirement without complaint at school or at work.
If I hadnt may I cast the first stone?
"I think we will constantly be going back and forth on this horrible pendulum until people stop gleefully celebrating all of the "collateral damage" that their ideology causes."
I have to agree unhappily here. Never thought I'd be nostalgic for the 90s but I'd go back to the days of Captain Planet and neon coloured clothing just to avoid the excesses of "you said X/well you said Y first" today.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
We don't know if there's an example of that happening.
Others have touched on this, but why in the world would it take 3 months to delete a single line from an application document and resubmit it?
Also, why would you assume they'll cancel all the grants? This seems a very long bow, given that a substantial share of them seem to have completed (there is a field "Performance End Date" and almost half are already passed) - seems hard to cancel a grant for an already finished project/expenditure. Perhaps I missed it, but the link doesn't say "we'll cancel all these". Instead it explicitly says "Chairman Cruz has requested significant scrutiny of awards listed in the database." Which is indicative of the contrary.
To the extent that some not-yet-conducted grants are cancelled, and people have to reapply, the funding won't have been used, so it's hardly a complete waste either.
So what is the action plan for an award that has been 'completed' but now fails Cruz's 'scrutiny' . Claw back money from.....?
No idea? Might be nothing. Certainly can't get *that* money back. There are things they could try? Mostly I imagine "stop it happening again".
Aren’t most of these grants that have started being funded but not completed? “pausing” it for six months now is effectively throwing away the money you’ve already spent, and making them waste time while you approve them to start over and hire new people now that the old ones all left to get a new job because their funding was “paused”.
There are two date fields in the document. The "end date" has passed in close to half of them, and growing by the day. I am not entirely sure what the end date means in practice - the legit end date on the project, the date by which the money will have been spent, etc. In general I would imagine that the money is full spent prior to the end date most of the time. (It is also possible that the "end date" is some meaningless date that people stick on a form at the start, and has no effect once the money is granted, in which case we'd be guessing even more).
Depending on what the study involves, it's also totally not true that "“pausing” it for six months now is effectively throwing away the money you’ve already spent". If the funding was to buy lab equipment, well, that's already paid for. It'll still be there 6 months later. (And of course you can continue - the grant is paused, no-one says you can't keep doing research). If you've bought a dataset, it's still bought. Often these grants are in effect a slush fund - the dirty secret of these things is that there is, fwiu and consistent with my anecdotal experience, essentially zero enforcement mechanism that you spend the money on what you say you'll spend it on, and often it ends up being a generic slush fund to pay for RAs and/or buy out teaching time. (You probably at some point do the research you talked about in your grant, but no-one verifies that the $s from grant X are spent on project X and often they are not).
And then there's stuff like the wonderful, deep and insightful "feminist glaciology" paper, (funded by you, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer, NSF Grant #1253779) where among many appropriate questions one surely is "why did this require grant money in the first place?"
In most cases, most of the money is spent on hiring people (mainly grad students and post docs). “Pausing” that spending means firing those people until funds are available again, then maybe trying to hire them back if they haven’t moved on to something else in the meantime so that you need to put out a new ad and go through a new process.
This is an extremely field-specific claim/assumption. (I would rather hope that grants for projects in physics labs are disproportionately unlikely to be infiltrated with woke nonsense). Plus, as people like to say, money is fungible, people often have access to multiple pots and can switch between things.
You can keep on whinging (and complaining about pushback against ideological corruption of science that you seemingly had no problem with, all you can complain about is the pushback) but for all the hyperbole this is likely going to only affect a sliver of a sliver of grants.
> Also, why would you assume they'll cancel all the grants?
Because they've already canceled most scientific research and keep talking about how much they want to do so? Also, just look at what happened to USAID.
It's not a secret that Musk is taking a "kill them all and let god sort it out" approach to government. He's openly bragging about it!
>I think you should just admit they should have read the list before releasing it.
Is the literacy rate among politicians dropping precipitously? Biden('s admin) didn't read that ACLU pardon list either!
I'm pretty easy to convince that yes, politicians are basically illiterate.
It’s even worse than this. The time to funding is more like 6-12 months and the chance of getting funded is ~10%. Losing a grant on a project is an effective way to kill it completely.
BTW, I am a professor with NSF funding and my grant is on this list. My grant is to study how polymers (specifically polyethylene) crystallize.
Uh...weren't the numbers: 40% woke, 20% borderline, 40% nonwoke? Where are you getting 80% woke or woke affiliated?
Thanks... writing too quick. Edited.
If I offered a bet that a year from now, grant proposals will only be considered if they contain a token sentence on how the research will strengthen America's position in the world, would you bet against it?
And perhaps more importantly, they should make sure to use a euphemism if they want to suggest they might be talking about individuals who aren’t straight white men.
Hey, maybe you could just assume that the grant-writers aren't going to discriminate instead of requiring them to put in writing HERE, EXACTLY, ARE THE WAYS IN WHICH WE WILL FURTHER RACISM AND SEXISM.
I wouldn’t doubt it at all and this would be equally stupid.
The thing I think you are missing is that these grants are primary funding for many institutions and programs, beyond the research that they fund. Thus institutional goals must creep into the grant-giving process because that process controls institutional funding.
This is itself a terrible state of affairs, it would be great if there were grants for research only and grants for institutional goals and those were separate pipelines. But to get that you'd need to reform everything about the process at a much more fundamental level. Trying to pretend the system works that way when it doesn't is just going to produce bad policy.
How much would you bet that overall funding for actually productive research will increase under the Trump administration? I have extremely low expectations and frankly struggle to imagine the mind of someone who believes that this administration will be beneficial for science. If I'm really honest, I'm not even sure how someone can simultaneously hold generally favorable views of both science (i.e. the empirical study of the natural world, not necessarily actually existing scientific institutions) and Republicans.
It's like this guy didn't even read anything Scott actually wrote.
Ahh, that was cathartic, I'm going to go ahead and report my own comment now.
Checked - it was true and necessary, 2 out of 3.
Ha - I’m amused - at your post, and the thought that someone who holds a contrary opinion to you is maybe a bot.
Cancelling woke research frees up more funding to cure cancer, and is better overall.
Hi Random, thanks for reading!
I don't give a shit what you think.
👍
Are you ok?
Ehhh, been better been worse
Banned for one day for this comment.
Ok but let’s look at this from the perspective of someone who’s not really invested in the culture war and wokeness and would just like to get some really high quality research to understand the world and save lives.
Under the “woke Biden world”, some researchers throw in a line about helping minorities and a tiny percentage of researchers get money for some woke research we don’t understand the point of.
Under the “anti-woke Cruz world”, we threaten really good basic research potentially improving/saving millions of lives.
Like it really seems the second world is much more worrying and is more “cancer”. (Like literally could cause more actual cancer)
Not sure why this is worse than the Biden admin passing over grant applications that don’t have woke sentences in them. Especially since we know that this practice affected a lot more than grant applications including jobs, university placements e.g. diversity statements.
This seems like a bit of laziness that could be fixed by someone influential informing Cruz about the mistake unlike the previous status-quo which enforced the expression of left wing views if you wanted a job in academia.
"unlike the previous status-quo which enforced the expression of left wing views if you wanted a job in academia."
Nitpick: That isn't the previous status quo. That's the current status quo. Diversity statements are still prevalent in faculty job applications.
Are they? There's been a lot of high-profile removals of that requirement.
He stated pretty clearly that it was bad and dumb that the Biden administration was forcing these inclusions. That doesn't make this better. That just means that they had an incredibly low bar for being better than the previous admin and they _still failed to do so_.
"It's dumb and bad but also you can't do anything about it" is tea so weak it's been distilled for purity.
Good thing you are entirely making up that second part. We absolutely could and should be doing things about it. But "It's dumb and bad so you should do literally anything, including other dumb and bad things", is not a great response. Why not do good solutions instead?
Other people have pointed out that these sentences and genuflections are part of the broader impacts requirements of grant funding (and, as such, have mostly existed since long before Biden). Get rid of broader impacts requirements (which are generally just fancy wording for trying to inject this bullshit into science), and these kinds of stupid sentences go away, and you _don't_ have to throw out large amounts of real and useful science.
It took me literally 30 seconds to come up with a better idea than this whole stupid virtue/vice signalling theater. And it's not even that good of an idea! I'm sure there are many, many better ones! The fact that Cruz' office was not able to come up with any of them is a staggeringly horrible indictment.
You clearly like where his hear is at, so you should be even more annoyed than I am. Demand better. Don't be satisfied with this swill.
"Not sure why this is worse than the Biden admin passing over grant applications that don’t have woke sentences in them. "
Pardon my ignorance, but is this a documented thing, or just internet speculation?
They're talking about "broader impacts" sections, which have been required for NSF applications (and resented by researchers) for decades. That can mean anything from "national security" to "increased economic competitiveness" to "increased well-being" to, yes, "participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM".
Thanks. And that's pretty much what I expected: I didn't pay *too* much attention to the news out of the States during the Biden era, but I expect the explosion of conservative outrage if Biden has done what people are insinuating would have been pretty hard to miss.
Exactly. And NSF is a small fish in every way compared to NIH, and the DoE, and the DoD, the other big funders of science in the USA, which I'm sure most of the chuds applauding these moves are clueless about. The idea that all required all grants to have a 'woke' rider is nonsense.
I think this is what's bothering me about this whole debate. "National security" can refer (in for example DoD) grants either to actions that support Ukraine (and thus strengthen NATO) or actions that support Israel (an ally, but also possibly lead to deaths in Gaza). We can disagree about which side we support in either of these cases, but the laudable goal of improving national security doesn't itself bother us. "Increased economic competitiveness" *can* mean in polluting industries or in sustainable industries, but the phrase itself is laudable, no problem with it. "increased well-being" of ... whom exactly? Don't worry about it, no problem. These are all seen, somehow, as apolitical. But suddenly research that promises to specifically benefit underrepresented minorities is A) outside the legitimate scientific scope and B) woke and therefore bullshit, and C) automatically divisive.
I don't think "apolitical" is quite the right framing. The new right does not seem willing to acknowledge a distinct public sphere at all - it's just war for them, top to bottom. (No doubt someone will be along eventually to argue that the shitlibs did it first, thereby illustrating my point.)
Some statement to the effect of the general value of your research beyond the narrow topic it is focused on is indeed required. But this requirement is ancient and has absolutely nothing to do with Biden. I can't say I know when these statements began, but they have been common my entire scientific career, since the GWB administration
Thanks! I appreciate the info.
I don't want to defend any evaluators who gave preferential treatment to research projects just for making woke noises, but I do think that canceling research that is already in progress is worse than refusing to fund it in the first place. Canceling is more wasteful than avoiding, and a hypothetical equilibrium where both parties cancel each others' ongoing research whenever power changes hands is much worse than a hypothetical equilibrium where both parties merely change where NEW funding goes while in power.
>Not sure why this is worse than the Biden admin passing over grant applications that don’t have woke sentences in them.
These 'woke' grants that the administration singled out for having 'woke sentences,' are less than 10% of teh grants awarded during that period.
So, 90% of the grants awarded did *not* have any 'woke sentences'.
Meaning they certainly weren't required to get selected.
The total FY 2024 funding was $11.314 billion. All these put together was $2.05 billion. I have no idea if this is including future outlays to the point that it would be better to compare it to 2024+2025 FY, or whatever, but presumably it is reasonable to use FY 2024 as a lower bound on the total funding these grants are part of. So, at a reasonable assumption only ~7% (40% of ~18%) felt the need to add dumb stuff, which is a plausible-enough number even if the Biden administration was actually wokeness-neutral and this was just rumors/superstition. If it was actually a controlling factor then I would expect ~every single grant to look like this.
This has been in place since the 1980s. It's not Biden related. Silly? Maybe. But it's pretty clear here that this is taking a flamethrower to a dandelion.
Aside from the sheer incompetence described above: it's worse because it's a sucker-punch.
Yes, it's stupid to reject an application because it doesn't have a boilerplate statement about being woke. Just as it's stupid to reject it because it DOES have such a statement. But that's not what they're doing. They're applying a new rule that didn't exist last week, and they're doing it retroactively.
The left-wing equivalent would be if Biden, on entering office, had cancelled any existing projects that didn't have a sentence about supporting minorities in the original brief.
I worry you might be being much too generous with the assumption that the administration or their supporters have made mistakes here. Painting stuff with a broad brush suits political goals like:
1. Justifying themselves to the public
2. Justifying themselves to the hardcore online base
3. Enjoyably persecuting an enemy group (basically all scientists vote for Democrats).
4. Serving the interests of that section of their coalition which essentially wants no public money for science.
Accuracy matters little.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the reason Ted Cruz put out this sloppy list is so it will get cited a hundred times along with the words "over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding" on the comfortable assumption that very few people will read any of these. Just like the list of woke USAID projects.
I think the cynical view here may be more accurate. But I still think it's good to write things of the form "Alice claimed to be doing X, but she actually did Y, and it should not be hard to actually do X", even if you think Alice did Y on purpose.
"While I cannot take time to list all the woke grants awarded by the National Science Foundation, I have in my hand a database of 3400..."
For the woke example of the grants to encourage Native Americans to go into STEM fields - the grant even says the institutions are tribal colleges. Which are colleges run by Native American tribes. Who attends tribal colleges? 99% or more are tribal members. In other words… wait for it… Native Americans. What were they supposed to do, not say? Yikes.
This is a useful list though. That one sentence people thought would help, having the opposite effect.
I mean the non-woke thing would be to not have tribal colleges in the first place.
But that would be preventing the establishment of an educational institution based on identity factors. It’s a trap!
Would it? I could have sworn I'd heard people--quite a number of people, especially here--insist that "wokeness" was a recent phenomenon and that any claims to tie it to previous social movements were fake and disingenuous.
Seriously? Tribal colleges are the main educational opportunities available for Native Americans on tribal land. If they didn't exist many students would have no higher education within a practical commuting distance. You'd rather they never were formed and Native Americans not go to college?
Also, even if you don't like it, tribal governments also are legally independent and have the right to do the same things that states can do. Should we get rid of all state universities like UCLA?
Maybe you are making the unwarranted assumption that only Native Americans can enroll? That is incorrect, they are typically open to all, but since they are on tribal land they typically serve primarily Native Americans.
There shouldn't be "tribal lands" or "tribes" for that matter. The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race is straight-up racism, it should have been chucked out along with slavery and DEI.
I'm not sure I understand your preferred environment. Back in the 19th century, the US government entered into agreements with established tribes to recognize the authority and limited sovereignty of those tribes in some defined geographical areas. Should the government have refused to make those agreements?
If so, should the government have tried to compel all Indians to live in towns, and continued war against tribes who refused? Should the government have made those agreements, and then cancelled them when they became "politically incorrect"?
Under what circumstances should the government uproot existing legal frameworks, and what process should be followed in doing so?
> Should the government have refused to make those agreements?
Absolutely.
> If so, should the government have tried to compel all Indians to live in towns, and continued war against tribes who refused?
No, they should be free to live wherever they like, just like any other US citizen. The US Government could even have granted land to individuals; instead of declaring the "Navajo Reservation" belonging to the "Navajo Tribe", they could have divvied up that territory into individual allotments and granted each member of that tribe at the time an equally sized lot (by some lottery scheme I guess since not all blocks are equally desirable). The land would be full freehold, equally sellable to anyone.
But that way it would be freehold land owned by individuals under the laws of the USA and the underlying states, not some weird arrangement where the land has some make-believe sovereignty assigned to some weird pseudo-racial group and yet nobody in particular owns it so it doesn't get used for anything useful.
We have similar problems in Australia. The 4000 Pitjantjatjara people collectively own a chunk of land the size of South Korea, which should make them rich as fuck (even if it's not the best land). But they can't do anything useful with it because it belongs somehow to "all of them" in some pseudo-Communist approach. If the land were divided equally and every one of them got 25 square kilometres of desert to use or farm or sell as they see fit, it would be a lot better for everybody.
I'm not sure how you got where you are in Australia, but the US government wasn't strong enough to impose its will on all the Indians living west of the Mississippi River in the late 19th century. At the same time, they wanted to allow settlers to move into the areas where these tribes lived. In the 1870s and 1880s, I think most Indians' attitude was "We have rights to the lands where we hunt - you have no right to sell it to farmers who want to move in. As long as you keep the farmers out, there will be no trouble."
The solution arrived at was to negotiate with the tribes to allow settlers in some areas while reserving other areas for Indians to live as they wanted. Given that these agreements were made (and often violated), most people think the government should honor its commitments.
I think you're right that the tribal members would be better served by allowing more private ownership of land on the reservations, which generally isn't allowed. Dissolving the tribes and treating all US citizens as "only" US citizens probably appeals to cosmopolitan educated individualists, but I'm not sure that's a reason to impose it.
In the US, tribal members are free to leave the reservations and live as normal citizens in towns and cities, buying and selling land, working as employees or building businesses, or doing anything else citizens do. In some sense they'd be better off materially if they did so, but maintaining tribal ties is important to many, and maintaining tribal sovereignty is an important thing to them.
It would be a lot better for land speculators. I'll forgive you for not knowing much about Native American history, but that was actually tried. It was called the Dawes Act of 1887, and it was probably the most harmful piece of legislation since the Indian Removal Act.
Turns out if you tell people with centuries-old traditions of communal land use that they now "own" small plots of land, on which they are currently living in poverty, but don't give them access to development capital or anything else they might need to succeed, they tend to sell those small plots to land speculators and buy food and clothing so they can survive.
Ok what if Trump tries your approach, but then the Supreme Court reiterates like in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGirt_v._Oklahoma that the government must follow the commitments it made in treaties with Indian tribes (which is like 99% what would happen in reality). Would you support ignoring the courts or having some tribal lands with tribal colleges.
And even if you think courts and the rule of law is dumb are you at least sympathetic to other people thinking “yeah we should not overthrow the judiciary and honor treaties and it seems like supporting tribal colleges is pretty good at educating this otherwise underserved population that Purdue University probably isn’t expanding too soon”
I was going to make a similar comment to Brian. Clearly you are not aware of the legal status of Native American nations and how that differs from other USA minority groups. The US government has treaties and cannot and could not just "chuck them out" even if we don't like them now. There are controversies over how tribal membership is defined, but that doesn't change the fact that enrolled tribal members are citizens of their tribe and have rights and entitlements that pertain to them due to that status that were established by treaties with the US government. If we want to make changes now, they would need to be renegotiated just like we would with any other sovereign entity.
> The US government has treaties and cannot and could not just "chuck them out" even if we don't like them now.
Uh... yes we can. What's the treaty going to, defend itself with a knife? If the constitution doesn't matter, neither do these treaties.
OK, can vs should. Yes, the currently administration can try to do a lot of things that break the constitution, treaties, laws, etc. It is still unclear whether they will get away with it. I hope they don't.
For "should", I believe that ultimately the rule of law is an important principle and that breaking treaties is wrong, and until the most recent administration the country was also largely governed in this way regardless of political party. The rapid erosion of this social norm is staggering.
Federally recognized tribes are autonomous political entities with their own citizenship laws: however you feel about blood quantum rules (which are very controversial and not in use by all tribes) they're no worse than the more restrictive sorts of jus sanguinis.
Tribes were nations that the US government signed binding agreements with.
Should we also eliminate state universities because the idea that certain chunks of land belong to certain states is straight up jingoism? We should chuck out all non-universal governments along with slavery and D.E.I.
Okay, fine, there shouldn't be tribes or reservations or anything. I'll go with that.
Now, how do we fix it?
One way is to gradually dismantle the old institutions and while making sure that the people who rely on them can either use the existing good institutions or new institutions you create.
Another way is to whip out your dick and just start spraying at people who were relying on the old system because they weren't smart enough to predict your mental model of what would be moral.
" The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race is straight-up racism"
Reading this, I must suspect you of never having learned ANY 18th or 19th century U.S. history. That is NOT what tribal lands are or why they were established. Just for you, an abbreviated summary of the relevant bits of North American history:
1. Between 4 and 5 centuries ago, various European groups started setting the Americas. This caused some issues because the Americas already HAD lots of people living there. Sometimes they would establish friendly relationships and trade with these people. Other times they would murder them in order to take their land. Sometimes they would spread diseases to them accidentally. Other times they would spread diseases to them deliberately. A couple hundred years of this resulted in a dense concentration of European settlements along the East Coast of North America.
2. Eventually, a group of those settlements broke off from their home country of Britain and formed a new nation.
3. Over the years, that nation kept expanding westward and southward. This still caused some issues because much of the continent was still inhabited by people who weren't part of this nation, and weren't of European descent.
4. Not to be bothered by this, the colonists would threaten and often murder the inhabitants of any land they wanted so they could take it for themselves. When the displaces peoples would retaliate (or their neighbors would, believing--correctly as it turned out--that they would be next) the colonists would murder more of them.
5. This gradual but fairly continual spree of murder and theft didn't *quite* extend so far as deliberately wiping out all of the people the colonists were displacing. But of course, neither were the colonists particularly interested in having any of these people living on the *same* lands as them, because ew, no, clearly they can't do that. But being as they were (quite clearly, even to themselves) gradually heading towards occupying a large contiguous chunk of the continent, this created a conundrum. Where *should* these people-whose-land-they-were-entitled-to live?
6. The solution to this conundrum that largely won out is a policy of what would today be called "ethnic cleansing;" the previous inhabitants were removed en masse from all the land the colonists wanted. Of course, a lot of that was still done by means of murder, but some small patches of marginal land (chosen by the colonists, of course) were set aside so to allow for the less-murderous sort of ethnic cleansing where you merely force people off their land at gunpoint.
7. Fancying itself a nation of laws, the growing nation would often write down its policies towards those pieces of marginal land and their inhabitants in the form of laws or treaties. But despite the fiction of being bilateral, of course it didn't feel compelled to *keep* those polices: what a silly notion. So these patches of land sort of ended up with a status of being "self governing, except when we decide otherwise."
8. Eventually, long after this was all crystalized, some silly people started to *slowly*, *gradually* adopt the notion that a nation of laws maybe *ought* to generally stick to its laws and treaties, even in cases where it was powerful enough to break them with impunity. Though even then, it's not like they remained perfectly inviolate.
So you see, the idea that tribal lands are "special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race" is WILDLY a-historical. Unless you consider "living where we tell you in exchange for not being murdered" a "special privilege" in which case I'm not sure we have any way to communicate with one another. And the idea that these lands having this status and history is a "woke" idea is...well, let's just say I'm glad that people are so generous in offering evidence to my assertion that "woke" is a pretty meaningless word.
The status of these lands in nothing more or less than the mess the ancestors of the current U.S. polity left them with. If their ancestors had been more murderous there would be no tribal lands because there would be nobody to inhabit them. If they'd been less racist, native communities would have been integrated (forcibly, mind you) into the nation as it grew. If they'd been *less* rapacious the current U.S. would be much smaller and it would share a continent with several other nations. But none of that is changeable without a time machine. One could, of course, advance various coercive policies to change the current status quo to a different one: forcibly integrating these peoples NOW or something like that. But doing that because of a complaint that the current status quo is, uh "straight-up racism" would be...I'm not sure "hypocrisy" is a strong enough term.
"The idea of special privileges or chunks of land belonging to members of certain groups by virtue of their ancestors having been a special race "
I should note here that I'm a bit biased, since *I too* was born with special privileges and chunks of land--much bigger and better chunks than any native reservation--by virtue of the identity of my ancestors. The term for it is "U.S. citizenship." Honest question, would you consider that scheme racist? If so, what would your preferred alternative be?
(And yes, I do mean "honest question." I'm quite open to the notion that people shouldn't be given special privileges due to their circumstances of birth, as long as it's applied evenhandedly.)
Given that tribal reservations are the territory of sovereign groups, why should they not have tribal colleges? I assume you have no objection to state colleges; why should tribes not be allowed to establish colleges for their members?
even some municipalities (notably, NYC) fund public colleges! In some hypothetical situation where tribal status was completely abolished, there would still be a bunch of municipalities in the middle of nowhere, often speaking minority languages, and whose people would benefit from public education...
If you are at a Jewish college and are writing a grant proposal, will you stress how it will get more Jews into STEM fields?
You might well stress that it is a way to get devoutly religious people from non-college background into STEM.
If we lived in a world where Jews were really under represented in STEM, that seems sensible.
A related example: ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel don’t tend to get secular degrees, so the Israeli government might try a grant to get more ultra-orthodox Jews to finish college degrees. https://www.timesofisrael.com/state-watchdog-gives-haredi-colleges-failing-grade-over-sky-high-dropout-rates/amp/
I used to work on auto-tagging systems at the World Bank. There were often “hot topics” people felt obligated to wedge into their reports, so one of the purposes of what we were doing was to tease out papers that were actually about “gender” or “green energy” from all the ones that just tossed the phrase in there to score points or check boxes. Everyone knew this was a thing people tended to do, not maliciously but to make their work sound more impactful by pointing out relatively minor effects. This was fifteen years ago.
I don’t really expect rigor from people generating lists like this, or expect them to care about the end product being accurate since that probably wasn’t the point and they’re immune to embarrassment. I’m just pointing out that if you did want to build a better list like this, you could probably do it a lot faster and easier than I did with some combination of existing vocabularies and AI.
In all the DOGE discourse, a line I've been hearing quite often is "while there's certainly a lot of inefficiency and waste in the Government, the executive branch isn't allowed to cut the budget for anything, only the legislature can do that".
I'm not sure if that's actually true or not, constitutionally, but if it is then it's insane. Why? Because if you rely on the legislature to figure out what budgets should be cut, then this is the quality of work that they come up with. The Legislative branch has a small number of staff. Half of them are lawyers, and the other half are secretaries. They don't have the resources to make sensible decisions about what should and shouldn't be cut, so the best they're going to come up with is some kind of bullshit find-the-keywords list like this.
I don't think Ted Cruz's staff are particularly incompetent by Congressional staff standards, I just think that this is the best you're likely to get.
So, the actual answer is much more complicated than anyone is pretending. But generally, there's two different things that are getting conflated. First there's stuff like the existence of departments, their missions and funding. The executive doesn't just get to decide 'eh, nah, let's not have an SEC,' when congress created it and provides it ongoing funding.
But, for specific things, the question of how to go about them is usually within the discretion of the executive. And especially for something like a grant program, the usual way it works is that congress appropriates X dollars for grants for some general purpose and then the agency has rules for how it will evaluate those grants and discretion in how to create those rules and which grants to fund (and, usually authority to cancel grants under some circumstances).
But, since there are usually outside parties relying on funds which have been granted/guaranteed, there's requirements that have to be followed before termination, outside fairly rare circumstances/emergencies.
Now, if Congress thinks a grant program is bad, or wants some specific thing to be barred, they can simply either not fund it next year (remember, most funding is happening on a yearly basis for ongoing programs, so they've got lots of bites at the apple for this and are already making a decision, every year, to fund it or not) or pass specific legislation adjusting what the rules for the grants are.
Note, I am not a grants officer, none of this is legal advice, just a general description of what's going on.
In addition to what EC-2021 said, deciding what the budget gets spent on is and always has been a huge part of Congress's job. If Congress doesn't have enough of the right kind of staff to do this job adequately, then one of the first things they should be spending money on is more staff.
I think the evidence so far points to DOGE not being any better. And I say that as someone whose first knee-jerk response to your comment was to think that if the budget is so large and complex that congress can't manage it, then it should be reduced until they can. So I'm very onboard with the idea that the federal government does (and there fore pays for/budgets) _far_ too many things.
I just don't buy the idea that the executive branch will do any better.
Why not? Technocrat liberals have been beating the drum about how great it would be to have well-funded professional staffers, but the problem is ideological: politicians don’t want to look like exemplars of government overspending.
A competent and well-funded legislature should absolutely be able to do most of the work, and to provide oversight where needed. It’s only the current zeitgeist that shuts it down.
Which politicians? I don't think the Dems have ever been accused of excessive concern for slimming down government.
More accurately: it’s a losing issue for Democrats optically so they don’t fight it very hard when Republicans come after it.
Funding Congressional staff specifically is probably unpopular for the same reason that Congress voting themselves a pay raise is unpopular - it looks like self-dealing even if you actually do need the money!
(And the Congressional Research Service is pretty obscure so it's hard to make the case for how important it is for Congress.)
Counterpoint, Elon Musk has pretty much unlimited access to Federal government expertise and the ability to hire any staff he could possibly want, and he's still apparently responding to random things people on Twitter misidentify in publicly-available data. So it's not like it's a slam-dunk in that direction either.
Yeah, Elon's not stupid, so there's no way he's not being deliberately obtuse here.
With that said, I won't shed a tear for the Department of Education. The most charitable interpretation I can find for their budget allocation is that it was fuelling credential inflation.
I personally think it's fair to say Musk has been spending way too much time on Twitter and it's gotten to him.
It's not untrue to say that there's a lot of pointless and/or ideologically nefarious spending in the budgets of western governments, and it's true that a lot of the senior management in these institutions were doing an end-run around executive mandates, and it's also true that we can't go through another half-century of taxes being cut while the welfare state continues to balloon and our kids are indoctrinated into hating their own cultures.
Something like this had to happen. I just wish the cuts and firings were a bit more surgical in various areas.
(Admittedly, the left is correct that raising taxes on the top 1-10% is probably overdue and the economic gains of this group over the past half-century can't be explained purely as a function of IQ diffs. But we don't always get to pick our policies from a menu.)
The only thing that we could realistically cut to balance the budget are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense spending. The NSF is not a meaningful cost-saving target, AND the benefits of scientific research on economic growth may well make it, in aggregate, a negative saving.
Inflation-adjusted public education spending in the US has expanded by at least a factor of 4x since the 1970s, with marginal returns in terms of reading, math or science literacy, so I imagine there's quite a bit of room for trimming the fat here.
There's also no correlation between hours of schoolwork and PISA scores within the developed world, and no correlation between health spending and health outcomes. Which suggests that outcomes here are mainly driven by genetic and lifestyle factors external to the health and education systems.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kids-can-recover-from-missing-even
https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2019/11/07/a-tale-of-two-covariates-why-owid-and-company-are-wrong-about-us-healthcare/
Conservatives sometimes point out that the cost of *elective* surgeries have plummetted relative to the costs of public healthcare over the past 40 years or so (I think I watched a Larry Elder video on the topic at some point), so it's entirely possible that taking an axe to the OECD's health sector and just funding a basic income so people can just pay for their own doctors would greatly improve health services on net. But I'll admit to not having deep expertise on the subject.
I think you are drastically overestimating Elon
This is part of the problem with America's system of government. The soft fusion of executive and legislative power that exists in most(?) other first world countries- Australia, UK, New Zealand, Germany, etc. is much preferable for many reasons, one of them is that reviewing extremely complex budgets and putting them through the legislature works best if the dominant faction in the legislature is in control of the executive, and hence the public service and thus can review this stuff and has the capacity for institutional governance and design.
The other good reason not to separate them is so that the public *KNOW WHO TO BLAME WHEN STUFF ISN'T GOING WELL*. In a strongly adversarial system, the party that doesn't hold executive power has an incentive to block everything and create the impression that nothing is going well- thus encouraging low-information voters to vote for the party out of power, rewarding them for their intransigence.
The separation of executive and legislature is a disaster that unfortunately happened to be a trendy idea at just the wrong point in history.
I occasionally see analogous arguments for "just have a monarchy, at least you can storm the palace when the king fucks up", but last I checked storming the palace didn't work out so hot for MAGA (or in Tianenmen Square), so I'm pretty skeptical about this approach.
I also don't see a ton of evidence that the underlying social problems here are less pronounced or were responded to in a more timely fashion in the UK or Germany.
In fact, the US has been massively more successful than Europe or anywhere else in the world. Which is why it's such a big deal that Trump and Musk are trying to fuck it all up in a way that no past president of either party has contemplated.
I think much of the Trump/Vance/Musk agenda is both urgently needed and entirely justified in terms of democratic mandate, I just get annoyed when people put forward certain autocratic/monopartisan governments as supposedly superior alternatives to division of powers.
At the same time, one should be cautious about attributing US success to it's system of government (Liberia has a virtually identical written constitution, for example.) I think the main reason why the US is wealthier than other western countries is brain drain, followed by geographic factors, and neither of those actually scales at a global level.
I agree that the US's success is not due to paper. It's due to a system of institutions, norms, and laws that took many decades to establish and which Trump and Musk are rapidly destroying.
Speaking of brain drain, if you're worried about brain drain, surely capriciously ending most science funding is the LAST thing you want to do. Even a "pause" in the grants is forcing labs to close and scientists to find other jobs, and that's not something you can just undo later, even if you want to.
Building things is hard and time consuming, while destroying can be done in an instant.
They're not wrong about the norms and institutions being ideologically corrupted. Wokeness/DEI is essentially just civil rights, which has been woven deeply into the fabric of american government for at least 50 years.
> Speaking of brain drain, if you're worried about brain drain, surely capriciously ending most science funding is the LAST thing you want to do...
Mostly I want those scientists to go back to their home countries and open labs and invent things there. (I would also like the wealthiest countries with the most talent and technology to use their resources and expertise to increase their birthrates and start *exporting* talent to the rest of the planet, which is what would happen in a sane world.)
I also thought it was a bit strange that the people deciding what to spend money on don't also decide how to do it. But I don't necessarily agree with:
>In a strongly adversarial system, the party that doesn't hold executive power has an incentive to block everything and create the impression that nothing is going well- thus encouraging low-information voters to vote for the party out of power, rewarding them for their intransigence.
For example, the Reps blocked the Dem immigration bill that might have alleviated some of the inflow of migrants, helping the Reps win and take stronger actions against migrants than the Dems would have had they won. So far, voters seem to approve, demonstrating that the block contributed to a better outcome, at least on migration
Sounds like a strong argument for expanding Congressional staff so they can actually do the job the Constitution assigns them?
I think you are getting confused between cutting budgets vs. cutting programs.
The legislature sets the budget that they want to spend on an issue. 'We think protecting voting rights is worth $24B/year and that's how much we want you to spend on it'. The legislature gets to decide what the priorities are and how important they are in this way, teh Executive doesn't get to just say 'actually I think voting rights aren't important, I'm only going to spend $2m on it and put the rest in a sock drawer'.
However, the Executive is in charge of using that money to implement actual programs to achieve the goal, and they can cut or add or alter programs within the guidelines set by the legislature more or less as they see fit. So they can cut a program that's not working and funnel that into a more effective effort on the same topic, as long as they're ultimately pursuing the agenda and budgets set by the legislature.
What are you saying, then? Trump has to take the ~270 billion allocated to the DoEd and spend it on education some other way? How does he accomplish any actual cost-cutting?
The President can't achieve cost cutting. Congress sets the budget. It's a Constitutional crisis if the executive intentionally doesn't follow the budget that the legislature has mandated by law. This is why the federal judges are ordering that spending continue, because the rationale for cuts doesn't seem like "we think this particular program is bad so we're reassigning the money" which could be resonable, but rather a broad-strokes redirection of budgeting.
The President can make things more efficient and get better outcomes with the same money, work with legislators using the bully pulpit to get his vision of the budget passed, and veto budgets he doesn't want. But not change the law (unless the judges say he can, we'll see)
He accomplishes cost cutting by being the leader of his party and encourages the legislature - which his party runs, more or less - to do so.
He accomplishes it by identifying the best he could do on the topic with a reduced budget, and informing the legislature about that.
He accomplishes it by talking to the American people about how it is being administered, and convincing them that cuts can be made without great loss.
Etc.
By working across the aisle with Congress, like Biden did to pass various bills that were ideologically aligned with his values. Republicans already won't impeach Trump no matter what, and he's criminally immune for most actions he will take, so he's already in the best spot for leverage.
Obviously Trump will squander this moment like when he had both houses of Congress in his first term, instead focusing on consolidating executive power for himself and engaging in unconstitutional actions like impoundment and disobeying courts.
I'm still waiting to see if Trump will deliver on mass deportations or any substantive cuts of federal spending (USAID and even the department of education are drops in the bucket, relatively speaking), so you're right that he may well squander this moment.
I'm kinda skeptical that impoundment is especially unconstitutional, though?
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4736824-trump-is-right-about-the-impoundment-control-act-its-unconstitutional/
One should also bear in mind that many provisions within the various US civil rights acts violate constitutional principles such as freedom of association, so there's plenty of finger-pointing to go around.
The reason there are isolated instances of impoundment by Presidents throughout history is because there doesn't need to be 100% autistic adherence to laws - a functioning government is one where the branches act in good faith, reciprocate norms, and respect the power that competing branches have, sometimes engaging in minor power plays, sometimes allowing minor plays. Nixon severely abused that leeway, which is why the Impoundment Act was passed, and why every single challenge to it in court has resulted in judges and justices reiterating that without the power of the purse, Congress's laws are merely advisory to the President, which is why giving Presidents the unchecked power of impoundment completely undermines article 2 of the Constitution, and that the only way Presidents can impound funds is subject to Congress's lawmaking.
I seriously doubt your characterization of provisions in the Civil Rights Act as being unconstitutional, considering it has even longer precedence than the Impoundment Act, and has been upheld by various court rulings since its passing, like the Impoundment Act.
As a former Fed with budget authority you are wrong on that one first one. We have complete executive discretion to NOT execute the funds and simply return the budget to Treasury at end of year. Historically that was a career ender as the President expected you to execute his budget requests and agency heads hated getting grilled by Congress for not spending their money BUT as long as the President and Agency Head are willing to back you up, they can basically just refuse to execute under the guise of fraud, waste, and abuse, namely waste in this example.
If GS-11 Jane doesn't need a screwdriver, there is no law that will arrest her for not submitting a fraudulent procurement request under the FAR for a new wasteful screwdriver. People miss in practice how the budget is actually executed, one FAR request at a time tens of millions times a year. If nobody submits a request, no money is executed, as simple as that. And those requests come from the rank and file, not leadership.
I get what you mean but I think that's different from the President deciding to withhold funds or shut down agencies.
Maybe the President could fire everyone at an agency and replace them with people who don't think they agency should exist and they can all simultaneously say that they don't need any money this year thank you very much.
But AFAIK the The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 prevents the President from just withholding funds from agencies and programs he doesn't like. Or at least that such acts have to be immediately reported to Congress and the president has to abide by Congress telling him to stop it.
Correct but the President can simply direct his employees to NOT submit any procurement requests or direct the procurement approving officials to simply not approve any on pains of firing for cause under insubordination. That isn't withholding funds, that's simply doing something Presidents and Agency Heads rarely do, actually supervise and direct their subordinates.
Going through a list of abstracts to determine what's actually woke seems like a fine task for a secretary, but probably even better for an intern.
Applying for grants at a research university is wonky at best. Challenging accepted science does not make to many friends. When I was helping with gender differentiation studies, the corner stone of research, you find hunter gather evidence every time you look. If I needed the money, it would have been to easy to add the statement ….. “which could help promote women to higher positions etc…” to almost any project
So, of the $2.05 billion awarded by the NSF during the Biden-Harris administration that Senator Ted Cruz accused of being woke, only 40% * $2.05 billion = $.82 billion was for woke programs.
This is like the finding after the release of the Venona files that only about half the large number of people that Senator Joseph McCarthy had accused of being Soviet agents were actually Soviet agents.
No, the NSF gave about $40 billion in grants. Only 40% of the $2.05 billion that Ted Cruz *accused* of being woke was woke.
Right, sloppy wording on my part. But that is what I meant. Will fix.
Yes, I suspect this is a problem that DOGE is going to run into pretty soon. Actually cutting government spending in a meaningful way is going to involve axing a lot of social programs that are not recognisably 'woke' or 'DEI' in the modern sense.
I mean we don't really know that 40% of the funding was going to wokeness or whatever. I would suspect that "non-woke" programs probably cost more money on average.
Given that accusing somebody of being a Soviet agent was pretty life-ruining, I think a comparable failure rate would still be pretty bad.
Also "woke science" isn't the same as trying to undermine the United States on behalf of its principle adversary.
It's not? I thought all 'woke' was just Communism in disguise? Or Marxism? (The accusers arent really attentive to nuance)
Comparing Marxism with critical social justice, it's easy to find big gaps in ideas and practices, which are papered over by right-wing publicists.
But one can also compare people. Consider sophisticated advocates of Marxism in the US in the 1920s-1960s. Think about where they tended to live, what sorts of things they majored in in university, what jobs they tended to have, how they tended to volunteer, what genres of literature they tended to read for pleasure, whether they tended to be atheists or believers, etc.
Now do the same for sophisticated advocates of critical social justice in the US today.
In terms of social class, are the sophisticated advocates for critical social justice today similar to the sophisticated advocates for Marxism back then?
I recall something Lenin said about social class in the new Bolshevik state: "The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"
>about social class in the new Bolshevik state
No, it was primarily about the worldwide communism/capitalism fight. Which is kind of relevant here - old-style commies could be meaningfully accused of being Moscow's stooges, whereas the center of wokeness nowadays is America itself.
I can't answer this by reading the original Russian, but I can submit the following prompt to Perplexity.
>When Lenin used his famous question often shortened to "Who whom", was he talking about class conflict in territory under Bolshevik control, or about competition between the Bolshevik territory and capitalist-run countries?"
Here is Perplexity's answer. Note paragraph #2 explains what Lenin initially meant. Nothing else is relevant to the original meaning, but I include it for completeness.
>Lenin's famous question "Who whom?" (кто кого?) primarily referred to class conflict within society, but it also applied to the broader struggle between socialist and capitalist systems12.
>The phrase originated from Lenin's statement at the second All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments in 1921: "The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"2. This formulation was initially used to describe the inevitability of class struggle within society, focusing on which class would dominate the other2.
>Lenin viewed all interactions as zero-sum, with one side gaining at the expense of the other1. This perspective applied to:
> Internal class conflict: The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within Soviet society12.
> International competition: The contest between the socialist system in the Soviet Union and capitalist countries45.
>Stalin later invoked the shortened form "who whom" in 1929, giving it an "aura of hard-line coercion" and emphasizing the struggle between the Soviet Union and capitalist powers25. He framed it as a question of whether the Soviet Union would defeat the capitalists or vice versa2.
>In essence, Lenin's "Who whom?" encapsulated both internal class dynamics and the broader ideological conflict between socialism and capitalism on the world stage
Citing 8 sources:
https://newcriterion.com/article/leninthink/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom%3F
https://www.crisiscritique.org/storage/app/media/2025-02-07/peter-hallward.pdf
https://againstthecurrent.org/atc232/lenins-perspective-what-exactly-does-it-mean-to-vote-part-2/
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,953313-6,00.html
https://www.workersliberty.org/files/2020-09/fateintro.pdf
https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/14118/is-there-a-longer-version-of-lenins-quote-%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%82
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_and_Revolution
The really dedicated advocate of politically muscular "anti-wokeness" as exemplified by the Musk-Trump administration does not actually believe in a unified "America" as understood by people who have positive memories of high school civics class circa 2000 or so.
They believe in what, in a moment of candor, they might call "my America, but not <i>our</i> America." A definition of 'America' which includes only themselves and the people they perceive as being willing to help them get what they want.
For the oligarchs, this means "I am actually in charge, and the only real Americans are the ones I like, with the ones I can dupe into supporting me being vaguely relevant background figures and everyone else being collateral damage waiting to happen."
For the median voter who supports this kind of thing, it means "the real Americans are me, people I think are just like me, and of course the oligarchs I trust to destroy those I am told are to blame for all my problems."
Brown people, 'uppity' women who question the social order, nerds who talk about things like global warming as if they exist, and so forth... are not actually "Americans" in the mind of the kind of person who thinks the Musk-Trump administration is doing the right thing. Not really. Not in the way that I was taught to think of the definition of 'American' back in high school civics in the twentieth century.
>The really dedicated advocate of politically muscular "anti-wokeness" as exemplified by the Musk-Trump administration does not actually believe in a unified "America"
Sure, and neither do their leftist counterparts. But both sides claim to be patriotic, in their way, and I think they're largely honest about that.
"Is this person a Soviet Agent" is a pretty objective standard: either they're sending reports back to Moscow or they're not.
"Is this program woke" is by no means an objective standard. Even from Scott's good-faith reading, it *mostly* sounds like "affiliated with the social sciences" is the main thing being selected for, with some degree of political gloss. And I say that as a hard-science person with a LONG history of rolling his eyes at social-science silliness.
Now, it's a fair question what fraction of science funding should go towards social sciences. But turning that in to a debate over a trendy and largely-meaningless political buzzword may rank among the least productive ways to do that.
Notably, social science funding is and has always been a tiny sliver compared to hard-science funding.
Addressing "Broader Impacts" is required in most NSF grants, including in the abstract. Broadening participation in science from those traditionally underrepresented (some races/ethnicities, those with disabilities, gender in some fields) is explicitly listed as a potential Broader Impact by the NSF. This has nothing to do with Biden; it's been in place for---literally---decades. It's definitely the case that the political trends of the last ~ decade have changed the focus of Broader Impacts in some fields, but this is nothing new. It is different than that case at other federal agencies, e.g., NASA, which do not have a long history of similar considerations and added them only recently, if at all.
Someone somewhere in this thread (how TF can anyone follow such a long thread?!) mentioned examples of broader impacts like "national security" or "increased economic competitiveness" or "increased well-being". I think this is what's bothering me about this whole debate. "National security" can refer (in for example DoD) grants to actions that support Ukraine (and thus strengthen NATO) or actions that support Israel (an ally, but also possibly lead to deaths in Gaza). (Or obviously to other things besides Ukraine or Israel). We can disagree about which side we support in either of these cases, but the laudable goal of improving national security doesn't itself bother us. "Increased economic competitiveness" *can* mean in polluting industries or in sustainable industries, but the phrase itself is laudable, no problem with it. "increased well-being" of ... whom exactly? Don't worry about it, no problem. These are all seen, somehow, as apolitical. But suddenly research that promises to specifically benefit underrepresented communities is A) outside the legitimate scientific scope and B) woke and therefore bullshit, and C) automatically divisive.
*Any* broader impact will imply some political or moral choice. I don't get why DEI concerns are sillier or more ridiculous than any other type of broader impact. Because they exclude some populations and don't improve the lives of everyone? Neither do the others.
Change "women and underrepresented minorities" to "men and whites." Not a big deal, right? Because every category favors some populations over others, it's perfectly fine to favor men and whites over others.
Not fine at all. Simply what's been done for hundreds of years. And which Trump et.al. now want to go back to, because hundreds of years wasn't enough for them. If you think elimination of DEI makes everything neutral, a level playing field, that's just a very naive and ahistorical viewpoint.
Wow! That provoked quite a response! But I think your very natural emotion shows that formally favoring and disfavoring racial groups is emotionally, politically, and morally different than vaguely favoring the abstract "populations" (as you put it) related to the other categories.
I think your more honest opinion is simply "I think it is good to formally discriminate against whites and men."
Oh. I didn't feel very emotional when I wrote it. Look, I will grant you there is a tension between addressing past *and continuing* inequities and avoiding creating new ones. It is very very difficult to accomplish, but it doesn't have to be zero-sum. You think my "honest" opinion is what you say; I think your honest one is that those past and continuing inequities (where non-white, non-male people have been subjugated) just aren't very important to you, especially if you might have to give something up, anything, even the tiniest privilege. I take back what I said: It doesn't sound like you want a level playing field, rather one that's tilted in your favor. But I see from your profile that you're liking posts praising JD Vance, so I doubt we will see eye to eye on this.
To understand why all these NSF grants have that final "woke" sentence, you need to understand that NSF grant applications include a Broader Impacts section in addition to the Scientific Merit section, with broader impacts potentially being a wide range of science education (eg, involving K12 teachers) and outreach -- not just specifically woke topics. This has been the case for much longer than the Biden-Harris administration and it is unfair to blame it on them even if you disagree that Broader impacts should be a criterion, or if you think that "woke" broader impacts in particular are inappropriate. Without understanding these constraints, the abstracts for NSF grants are going to seem odd, with a seemingly unrelated broader impacts sentence at the end.
If you just search "nsf broader impacts" on google you will get a whole page explaining the reasons for this requirement.
A quote from the NSF webpage here ---
Why does NSF focus on broader impacts?
By evaluating every proposal it receives according to its intellectual merit and its broader impacts, NSF ensures that publicly funded research has tangible benefits to society that go beyond increasing knowledge.
Some quick additional web searches reveal that broader impacts were always part of NSF, but became an actual review criterion in 1997 (the conservative 90s!).
In some way Broader Impacts were actually intended to persuade conservatives that NSF research was worthwhile (it helps American competitiveness!), so it is ironic that this is now the piece being most attacked.
Having actually submitted and reviewed NSF grants, sometimes the broader impact projects are very good and have a great impact, other times it was clearly a last minute add on and isn't likely to do a lot. However, since it is a requirement, it isn't really fair to now criticize the grant writers for just doing what NSF required.
From a fellow scientists, these two comments are actually how the system works. A lot of other comments here are misunderstanding/mischaracterizing where the woke content comes in, what it's like, and what Biden had to do with it (the answer to that last one is absolutely nothing).
Yes, and I just caught up with the other comments, still a lot of people blaming it on Biden. I tried! Alas I have no more time to spend on the comments, have to go do some real scientist things like reviewing a manuscript for a journal, writing an Introduction section for a research paper, and sending feedback to my MS student on her latest draft.... sometimes I even review NSF grants, but don't currently have one on my plate.
I have an NSF CAREER grant that's been recommended for funding. I'm waiting on the Notice of Award so I can find out if I have to fire staff in two weeks. I can't even give them two weeks' notice because I might get the money!
All of these folks cheering what's going on should spend about a minute imagining what it would be like if they had to fire a junior scientist from their team because Ted Cruz or Elon Musk Ctrl+Fed them (ahem) and decided that their grant had Bad Words in it
Oh no, that is excruciating! I can't imagine... Sending you my best wishes, hope it all works out.
I've been "joking" lately that this is the first time in my life that I have actually been happy to not have US Federal funding. I work in China part time (USA the rest), and all my funding is from here. That has its own challenges of course... but the main focus is on producing solid research and publishing it in good quality journals, which is what I want to do no matter what country I am in. I also find myself feeling lucky that I am getting old and could retire any time if things get too bad. I have a lot of sympathy for younger colleagues; it wasn't easy for me, but it is much worse now.
Hang in there! I bet your Broader Impacts are great :), as well as your Scientific Merit of course.
Thank you for the kind words :) I’m on the other side of the arc, I’m young enough that I’m wondering whether I’ll really be able to (or want to) spend the rest of my career in the US. I’m at a leading institution, so it’s hard to think about leaving. At the same time, it’s quickly becoming unclear whether the US is going to have any leading institutions in another 20 years.
It’s encouraging to hear that your experience in China is that you can focus on the research!
If people doing good research were previously adding woke disclaimers "our research will help Black and Hispanic people, women too, and especially Black trans women" under duress in order to try to get funded, now they will simply stop. This is a good thing. (Also not pictured is all the equally good research that previously wasn't funded because the grant application writers didn't bend the knee).
I agree it is good to stop from here onward. I don't think it's necessary to light a billion dollars on fire (by canceling half-done projects) in order to send the message that you're now against this kind of thing.
I agree that when previous good research wasn't funded, that was also bad.
How do the sizes of the different badnesses compare?
So far Biden's is worse, but he had four years to be bad and Trump has had three weeks, so we'll see!
By the way, did we ever actually establish that everyone *did* have to throw their pinch of sentimental incense to women or racial minorities in order to get their grants approved by the Biden-era NSF? In the article I seem to recall that you only looked at the specific items Ted Cruz had already singled out, and he assuredly wouldn't have gone looking for any grant proposals that LACKED that pinch of incense.
So as far as I know, it could be that up to 90% of the successful grant proposals include no such incense, which rather calls into question the proposition of "Biden made everyone sacrifice to 'wokeness' and this is very bad."
I agree that lighting a billion dollars on fire for fun isn't a good idea, but would make the following points:
- Close to half of the projects appear to already be finished, so nothing would be lit on fire there
- It is far from clear that the plan is to cancel all the listed grants. The link explicitly says "Chairman Cruz has requested significant scrutiny of awards listed in the database." Scrutiny is good. Your analysis would suggest that 40-60% of the awards should stand up to said scrutiny.
- To the extent that money hasn't been spent yet, it will be available for spending on something else (so the loss is much less than 100%). And/or the original recipients can do a few hours work to reapply without the woke language.
Add these three together and the stakes are likely dramatically smaller.
Iirc, you've also noted previously the dominance of tit-for-tat strategies. If one side completely corrupts a process for ideological ends, "ok, back to normal from now" leaves the original wrongdoing unpunished. There's no incentive to not immediately do the same next time. Some level of punishment for those who did this and benefitted from doing so is probably optimal.
Also, on a personal note. I'm a researcher. I've refused to bend the knee and add nonsense woke stuff to grant applications. I've had pointless bureaucratic administrators add months of delay because of insistence of adding woke things to studies. I must admit I have limited sympathy to those who increased their chances of winning grants by caving to this stuff (if more of them had refused, it would not have spread through the system so easily).
So what got the pointless bureaucratic administrators to drop their demand that you add woke features to studies? In my experience it is pointless to talk to bureaucrats about what's fair and sensible, because they don't reference those concepts when making decisions. The reference the rules.
I'm not inclined to go into too much detail (anonymity, sorry), but in very general terms:
- bureaucrats are apparently fond of adding criteria that are not actually stated in the rules, they are just their crazy reinterpretation of said rules. (A good example of this is Title VI - for 60 years there has been a law stated by congress that very clearly said "universities that take federal funding can't discriminate based on race in anything they do" which university administration decided to interpret as "but actually, we really want to, so we can"). Still, as you say, you're still fighting with *them* about *their* crazy interpretation of said rules, so redress is limited in the very short term.
- you can imagine a situation where (to be able to measure something you want to measure) you want to ask question A. The bureaucrat decides they don't like this, and says you have to ask A' instead. (In this case, A' was not merely some woke formulation, it also would not capture the same thing, and thus would have yielded useless data).
- They might be able to stop you from asking A, but they probably can't make you do A', you can likely choose to do neither. (Which of course is bad. They've actively made the research less informative).
Amen, my academic brother/sister!
In my neck of the woods, SMALL grants under the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) have so far allowed me to avoid forced DEI documents in the form of Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC, which is very different than the standard "Broader Impacts" section of a proposal), see:
https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22125/nsf22125.jsp#q2
BPC has also been pushed at department level by NSF and CRA, where creating committees to establish department-wide BPC documents is common. It's been revised recently, likely due to the recent EO, but see:
https://bpcnet.org/
The last time I (politely) raised concerns about compelling our department's faculty members to participate in BPC activities (tying it to to the annual-review process), I was called a racist. I still managed to nix this stuff after working with a couple fellow faculty members, but it was stressful, time-consuming (on top of my normal job obligations), and at least one colleague won't talk with me anymore.
Anyway, we didn't police ourselves well, and now we get the backlash. Sure, it'd be great to avoid collateral damage (e.g., potential, massive cuts to the NSF's budget), but in my opinion anyone expecting a nuanced response after a decade (?) of DEI bullying is delusional.
If Congress does not repeal or amend Title 42, which (as several scientists have observed) actually requires NSF grant applicants to discuss the broader societal impacts of their work, or a court case does not rule said law unconstitutional, then nobody has stopped anything. They are just still running the election instead of running the country.
You literally think it's evil for scientists to consider the broader societal aspects of their work? Are you familiar with the history of science?
He literally said nothing like what you wrote.
It’s keeping it as a requirement he’s objecting to.
They can easily put some centrist milquetoast guff there instead, about how it raises the prestige of science or whatever.
There’s confusion about whether NSF grants with “DEI language” are getting canceled. They aren’t—at least not right now. A federal court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that the DOJ says applies to all NSF awards, so funds are still flowing.
However, we’ve been told to comply with new Executive Orders regarding DEIA content. In my own NSF grant, that basically means I’m scrapping the local high-school panel I had planned at an upcoming career day. If you want details, here’s the TRO: (https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/TRO-NY-v-Trump-1.31.25.pdf).
Basically the best solution is now in practice--the real science still gets done and the DEI stuff gets skipped.
"Also not pictured is all the equally good research that previously wasn't funded because the grant application writers didn't bend the knee"
Evidence that this exists?
I'm aware that the oh-so-edgy "bend the knee" phrasing makes it sound like a heroic act of defiance. But I'm extremely skeptical that anyone who thinks not inserting a throwaway sentence or two into their grant applications is a worthwhile hill for their time and effort to die on is capable of producing any worthwhile research anyway. And that skepticism has nothing at all to do with the political valence of the throwaway sentences: this sort of silly cultural baggage exists in a great many contexts (yes, some of them right-coded) and being unable or unwilling to navigate it seems like a pretty crippling weakness in almost any collaborative context.
>But I'm extremely skeptical that anyone who thinks not inserting a throwaway sentence or two into their grant applications is a worthwhile hill for their time and effort to die on is capable of producing any worthwhile research anyway.
If someone's willing to pander in a grant application, she's probably not amazingly devoted to the truth, which devalues any reports she produces.
"If someone's willing to pander in a grant application, she's probably not amazingly devoted to the truth"
Wow. This is...this is one great big ol' disconnect here. I think if someone uttered this sentence to my face I would have laughed out loud. Either you and I live in VERY different worlds or this is QUITE the isolated demand for rigor.
In my world, people who are that level of "amazingly devoted to the truth" go off and find a comfortable cave to live as hermits. Not necessarily because "hermithood" is the best way they can possible pursue the truth, but because they have literally no other job prospects. None.
Personally, I am made of much more cowardly stuff. When I'm having a holiday meal with my extended family and somebody says grace, I don't pipe up with a long-winded explanation of why *clearly* God does not exist. When somebody working a customer service job tells me to "have a nice day" I don't reply with "you clearly don't care about what kind of day I have, so kindly drop the pretense." On the few occasions that I worked such jobs, I didn't tell people "I don't care at all what sort of day you have, and won't think about you ever again once you walk out the door." When I'm writing cover letters for a job application, I talk up my strengths and decline to mention my more embarrassing moments: I certainly don't *lie* mind you, but anybody who doesn't realize a cover letter is 95% pandering (with the remaining 5% being your contact info) has QUITE a set of blinders on.
Don't get me wrong, the truth is very important. Sticking up for the truth CAN be one of the most important things you ever do, if you have halfway-decent judgement. But the sort of person who would decide to Take a Brave and Noble Stand for the Truth when they're filling out bullshit paperwork certainly can't have got the education to do worthwhile science in any case: they can't even have got the education to move out of their parents' basement (not until they find a decent cave anyway).
I feel tangentially obligated to nitpick that, as a retail grunt, some of us do actually care about whether you're having a nice day (even after you've left the store). Customer-facing stuff is, uh, not my strong area, but the same autist tendencies also drive towards optimization...so honest to God* I still ruminate now and then about times I fucked up bigly and made a customer's experience worse, years ago. Gotta do better! It's true that this is an outlier, and stereotypes of disinterested retail exist for a reason...but I'm sorry nonetheless that you've been soured into cynicism from shitty (dis)service. Not enough followers of Abadar to go around, these days.
(It's true though, anyone who can't at least even pretend to try to care about others is gonna have a hard time getting and staying hired in such jobs. I'd like to think my employer is a bit more discerning at picking out higher quality sociopaths. We Have Standards Here, damnit.)
*figure of speech
If her research topic is infected with a bunch of woke concepts she doesn’t even think are valid, then yeah that’s pandering. if it’s on cancer or other things unrelated to Woke, then why isn’t sticking in a token woke sentence about how treating this cancer will benefit minorities in the same category as Mozart flattering his patron?
I did put in the "probably" for a reason.
Ah, it’s a content-free ad hominem move. You are probably a low quality discussant.
Banned x 30 days.
There is no evidence that you would accept. Any proposals that were rejected for not including it (which, yes, I DO think is "a heroic act of defiance"), you would simply declare it's because the people applying were too stupid to produce what you would consider "worthwhile research."
"There is no evidence that you would accept. "
That sounds like an excuse from someone who doesn't actually have any evidence.
Yes, it WOULD sound like that to you.
I mean, yes. Any reply that doesn't include evidence DOES sound like "I have no evidence."
You can cut out the silly character attacks and provide some evidence any time you want.
I second the interpretation that this guy you are responding to is not interested in evidence, and would not accept any that is provided. When you start with "anyone who would oppose this and not cave out of personal integrity can't do good research" I don't think you're actually engaging in good faith.
Why not share what evidence you have, and even if it doesn't satisfy the person you're replying to, it might satisfy or at least influence other readers?
Wait, do you have any evidence for this? What are examples of good NSF grants that were rejected for not including these sorts of sentences?
> being unable or unwilling to navigate it seems like a pretty crippling weakness in almost any collaborative context.
I have a doc note saying Im schizotypal; mind calling me worthless for being unemployed directly.
At no point in my life have I ever believed that either illness or unemployment made a person worthless or inferior. In fact, I rather strongly believe that your personal struggles deserve support, compassion and understanding, as do everyone's.
But for all that, I'm not above mentioning pretty staggering irony here. Do you see it? It's not subtle. Here you being on my case because my (apparently) my honest framing of the issue was not woke enough for you. Beautiful.
Yes, yes, you're all for respecting mentally ill people until they start saying things you disagree with. How quickly that "tolerance" fades...
I've made it quite clear that I don't want to talk to you, so your whining about respect is pretty hollow. I suppose I'll probably have to just block you, since you're either unable or unwilling to abide by that boundary.
Guy who says anyone who disagrees with him is incapable of doing anything useful complains about behavioral norms.
Oh I think Im the sane one and I could easily find some offensive political memes that ive reshared would get me fired from my jobs in current year that would (probably) make ya hate me
I tend to have a low tolerance for bullshit, its not going well for me; I want to put you to make an uncomfortable choice; Im not usually called stupid, either Im being kicked out for my socail failing and thats worth it or the system suck and it shouldnt
When you filter for anything beside meritocracy, you will lose some amount of talent. Make your choice, is it worth it to you?
"When you filter for anything beside meritocracy, you will lose some amount of talent. Make your choice, is it worth it to you?"
YES! Emphatically, resoundingly, unquestionably yes. A thousand times yes. It is EXTREMELY worth it. It wouldn't even be possible to MAKE such a choice in a world that filtered purely on "talent" because such a world could never have anything as elaborate as a university, a corporation or a nation-state.
In case the point is lost on you, THE most important power humans have is our power of *working together.* Nothing in our lives would be possible without it. Even if it were possible to filter *purely* for talent, no organization of any size could possibly function that way. Talent is very important in many fields, but you are generally MUCH better off with people who are merely *very talented* but also capable of working well with others than finding more talented[1] people who can only work well alone. Science is a collaborative endeavor. So are most other things humans do.
If I'm reading him right, then, none of this has to do with the POLITICAL right or left.
Let me say clearly that I don't think not working well with others is a moral failing of any stripe and I genuinely want to build a world where people who with that deficit can live comfortable and fulfilling lives. But basic social skills still need to be a very high priority for any sort of practical endeavor.
[1] But usually only slightly more, because when you're already on the far-right (EDIT: as in "far in the positive direction" nothing to do with left-right in the political sense) end of the distribution, moving even further right is quite costly.
> But usually only slightly more, because when you're already on the far-right end of the distribution, moving even further right is quite costly.
Not really; it truely is insufferable to be inside the politically correct bubble. The trade off of facists posting videos of accidental suicides, (got to say my least favorite genre of gore posting) is easily worth it. I love untethered arguments and how they do just.... resolve; compared to the drama of elsewhere.
"Anyone who thinks differently to me on this issue is incapable of doing good research, and reveals themselves unable to work in collaborative environments" says area man who goes on to accuse others of "character attacks".
I'm not quite sure what else someone insisting that I definitely won't evaluate the evidence (that they haven't actually provided) could be.
As for the rest, put up or shut up. If your position has merit, you'll be able to support it with something more than bad-faith summaries of others' responses. Show me some of this potentially-excellent research that isn't getting funded.
Kindly go away. I have no interest in talking to you because you are not interested in the truth.
Yeah, if someone’s doing good research I think getting the research done is the right hill to die on.
Well, yes. That's exactly my point. Suppose you're doing good research and you need a grant to continue it. You apply for the grant. The directions for applying say "The application should include a statement that says X."
Even if you firmly believe ¬X, is "sticking up for the truth" on one line of a grant application that nobody beside the grant committee is ever going to read the most important thing you should be doing? Or is following the directions and getting your grant and continuing your research MORE important? Do you want to die on the hill of never, ever saying "X" even in a stupid context where the statement costs you nothing and the refusal costs you everything? Or do you want to keep your eyes on the prize of getting your research done?
Note that I am NOT taking a position here on whether "The application should include a statement that says X" is a reasonable part of the grant application. It may be, it may not be (it depends on both what X actually is, and the wider context). But even for X where it isn't it is *usually* a pretty damn easy requirement to meet. So I'm very skeptical that there is any substantial number of otherwise-good scientists whose careers have been derailed by such a requirement.
What about scientists who aren't politically savvy enough to know about the shibboleths they need to say to not be committing "A HEROIC ACT OF DEFIANCE!" Must navigating woke politics be a required skill for unrelated scientific research?
That is QUITE a different question. The original was asking "what about people who know what the grant requirements are and refuse to follow them on principle?" You're asking "what if the grant requirements are unclear and some otherwise good scientists don't understand them?"
To be as clear as possible: I am NOT taking any position on whether the current requirements are either clear or reasonable. But if the main issue somebody has with the requirements are "they require applicants to write some silly things that don't perfectly reflect their beliefs," that is an *incredibly* tiny, silly, unimportant issue. "The requirements are unclear to the point some good applicants fail to meet them" is potentially a much more serious issue. But really we *should* be bringing in actual evidence before discussing *either issue.*
I’m fairly sure they *won’t* “simply stop”. Instead they will try to guess what the new political correctness is, and add sentences like “make America great” into unrelated research about blood cell proteins or whatever. There will be new knees bent, and they will be ones that understand that their funding can’t be saved by doing science, but only by being politically correct.
I find it plausible that phrases like "restore American dynamism" and "strengthen American resolve" and "keep the US ahead of its great-power competitors" will become common in applications that have something to do with national competitiveness, which can include many aspects of health.
But I find it implausible that they will become common in applications that have nothing to do with national competitiveness. And I find it implausible that a shibboleth like "make America great" will become common in any sort of application.
Wait, why not? You can make an argument for any research furthering US interests. And if they can't find a good argument, it simply won't be funded.
If Musk stays in charge of the country for long enough to affect a round or two of grant applications, everyone will quickly learn what words the grant boards are looking for and put them in.
This (or at least the meaningful version*) is one of the most ridiculous predictions I have ever heard. I would be stunned if in 4 years time American academia is broadly considered to be "more hospitable to conservatives than progressives, to favour whites and males and conservatives in hiring / promotions / grant applications at the expense of equally capable women / minorities / progressives, to police normie left wing speech more aggressively than normie right wing speech and so forth".
If you really believe this, you should make a public bet with someone.
* 4 years later: "look, I can find one person who put some right coded language in a grant application, while ignoring that academia continues to be broadly intolerant of and inhospitable to conservative speech, ideas and people. I win." If that's your motte, you've already admitted the critique of universities is correct.
My claim isn’t that the political persuasions of academics will change. My claim is rather that they will just have a much stronger and harsher set of language police to deal with, requiring them to say even more things they don’t believe in to get funding (because at least some of them believed the old words they were putting in, while this time very few of them will and it will entirely be political virtue signaling).
"A stronger and harsher set of language police to live in". Riiiight, real likely story this.
The old set of language police, whatever their faults, didn't try to freeze all funding on their first week in office until they had been satisfied it wasn't going to anything they disagreed with.
A few things:
1) The grant's call for applications often has a *requirement* that you do something to promote diversity or something.
2) I'm curious as to whether there is a correlation between grant size and wokeness. You've established that there are probably about 500 woke grants on the list, but do they actually account for $250M? If the woke garbage grants are for less money on average it could be substantially less than that (or more if they are more money on average).
3) I'm not sure that Cruz actually would consider this a failure. The point is to be PR. Saying that you found 3400 grants totaling $2B is much better PR than saying you found 500 totaling $250M, and how many people are actually going to check your work?
This situation sucks, but I'm less sympathetic to the scientists than you are. If you include some weasel words in your grant proposals to try to trick politicians and bureaucrats into thinking your research is woke when it actually isn't you can't really complain when politicians and bureaucrats think your research is woke when it isn't (even if hypothetically you did a poor job).
I wrote some grant proposals in a past life. It's very common to shoehorn in something that the grantor wants - not even necessarily related to anything "woke". It's just part of the nature of grant writing.
I also did this. Should note that it's often an admin lady or intern who adds these "weasel words" to increase their chances, not the scientists themselves.
See the comment above you - "The grant's call for applications often has a *requirement* that you do something to promote diversity or something."
I don't think scientists should be morally required to give up and go into a different field just because people demanded some weasel words about diversity before approving grants.
Yeah, I get it. I'm not blaming scientists for playing the game they were forced into, but the indignation about Ted Cruz misrepresenting studies as woke when they aren't seems pretty unreasonable. He isn't the one doing that, they are. Interpreted in that light, the tweet you cited seems particularly obnoxious:
https://x.com/HermanPontzer/status/1890059071140815282
This is literally his job now. Is it too much to expect him to be vaguely familiar with what the rules and practices were before a month ago? I just flat out don’t buy he can be this ignorant, and don’t accept it as a credible excuse.
Obviously he is aware of what the rules and practices were a month ago. What does that have to do with my comment?
I'll note that if a substantial chunk of scientists had loudly refused to do this, the administration would likely have had to walk it back.
Yup. Lots of johnny come latelies on this DEI topic who are prepared to say DEI is bad, but seemingly only now that they've decided its a vote loser for Dems. Until then, it was put up and shut up and let those who disagreed be tarred and feathered. I'm glad they're finally not afraid to speak up, but frankly, exactly why should their advice be taken particularly seriously now? When it mattered, they weren't prepared to speak the truth.
As much as I harp about the disinformation board being a major black mark on the Biden admin's intent, they did indeed wrap it all up because enough people complained and enough people blocked it in court.
Scientists are not generally selected for bravery, though, and most people are very bad at pushing back when it might hurt their wallet.
The longstanding Broader Impacts criterion, predating Biden, has been explained to you, why do you keep framing it as solely requiring 'weasel words about diversity'?
IIRC you are a psychiatrist by profession, yes? Have you ever applied for an NSF or NIH grant?
It's not about tricking politicians and bureaucrats. I have evaluated grants (not these specifically, but others), and there are rubrics that you follow based on the RFP (request for proposal). If the RFP has listed DEI stuff, the rubric will have a section on it. To improve your chance at success you should find someway, however tangential, to give yourself a shot at not getting a 0 on that section.
Side note: I understand why it's there, but I would love if the entire section on broader impacts went away. Let proposers focus on the science they actually know, and not waste time speculating on how it might have beneficial knock-on effects down the line.
>I would love if the entire section on broader impacts went away. Let proposers focus on the science they actually know, and not waste time speculating on how it might have beneficial knock-on effects down the line.
Agreed! My career was in the private sector, but we sometimes had loosely analogous weasel words sections, and, at best they wasted the time and effort to misconstrue what we were actually doing, and at worst they diluted the focus on the actual work.
Really? Don't spend *any* time contemplating the possible effects of their work?
Is this a serious comment? You cannot possibly believe that writing that garbage involves contemplating the possible effects of their work.
What 'garbage' in particular? Show me you actually know what you are talking about.
> The project also aims to integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program.
> a Hispanic-serving institution and the lead site for the center
> The planned studies will provide opportunities to train engineering and biomedical science students who work collaboratively through highly interdisciplinary (engineering, molecular biology, virology and pharmacology) research studies and will enhance ongoing education and outreach activities focused on attracting underrepresented minority groups into these areas of research.
Did you read the post you are responding to?
Made-up crap. No one is saying that.
NSF grants aren't reviewed by 'politicians and bureaucrats'.
Do you specifically want scientists to be considering the impact their words might have on politicians egos when writing their grants or not? If you don’t, then you shouldn’t punish them for including words that hurt politicians egos - you should just stop punishing them for saying words that hurt different politicians egos.
This is too 10000ft view. If you want to prevent scientists from "considering the impact their words might have on politicians egos" you have to change the rules that forced them to do that in the first place. The transition is what is causing the current issues, not the end state Ted Cruz is pursuing. I don't necessarily agree with the way he is going about it, but the things he is being blamed for seem a little illogical.
> The transition is what is causing the current issues
...because the change to the rules is bad and wrong. It should have been "you no longer have to include the magic words", not "you must never include the magic words". The point here is that the latter is just as bad as requiring the magic words was.
I disagree, I don't think making up a fake social benefit should be permitted in grant writing. A better transition would be "you can no longer include the magic words, but existing grants are grandfathered in", but the problem with that is that some grants are genuinely woke enough that is a legitimate reason to want to suspend them and the current issue stems from failure to classify the two cases.
Why not just change the rules then? Why cancel all funds that are spent under old rules?
Dumb question and don't want to make more work for you, but were there cost differences between the actually woke and the non-woke categories? Were 40% of the grants == to 40% of the costs for the woke?
I too am interested in this question. My baseline is that woke stuff took less than 40%, because real science is expensive and woke outreach is not real science and is cheap. But that could easily be wrong.
I didn't check rigorously. I spot-checked five or six to see if there was a pattern and didn't see an obvious one.
In my experience, PIs put little effort and very little of their funds into their Broader Impacts activities for NSF. Usually almost all the funds go to science (equipment and salaries). For example, a common Broader Impact is to do a science outreach project like a science fair; in this situation, the current lab PI and students will spend some of their time on the science fair, but it is a small percentage, and no one is hired just for the science fair. So unless the grant is specifically for a "woke" purpose, I'd say no more than 10%, sometimes as low as 0%.
Thank you, again, for bringing an actually informed perspective into these dopey comments.
They could have gone even further. Besides for refusing all grant applications with "woke" markers, they could even preferably approve grants to those with "anti-woke" sentences. Grantees would be gambling on the election outcome if they put in a sentence from either side. Much like "wrong side of history" stuff, revenge against people who gave lip service to your opponents is a tactic that can work.
Of course, in this case, two factors should override this:
1. People *hate* this stuff. The requirements were part of what caused left's downfall. Punishing performative submission to the other side isn't *as* bad, but it's still likely very unpopular.
2. Gaining a handful of culture war points *isn't actually as important* as the actual science being done. Grant proposals are a terrible place to use as a culture war battlefield. It would be better for the right to just give in on this. Some people would keep adding woke sentences just in case, but it would slowly drop in frequency. People would be grateful.
> Some people would keep adding woke sentences just in case,
That's precisely what this whole thing is meant to stop. Your proposal might be fine if you expect the current policies to prevail forever (or at least for many decades), but if your expected time with power is ~8 years, ruthlessly punishing anyone adding in those sentences HELPS everyone who doesn't want to have to: making everyone conform to your new directives stops the other guys from retaliating against those who did when the return, even if only by favoring those who didn't "just in case."
'Our research on cancer cures will advance the state of the art in the field to where it is more difficult for inferior minds to comprehend, thus discouraging women and minorities from entering STEM education.'
Okay, I'm convinced. Maybe they SHOULD demand all applicants write things like this.
Why were you surprised by this failure mode?
Because I assume Ted Cruz has enough staffers that he can ask one of them to look through a list and see if it makes sense.
That would require Ted Cruz to act in good faith, which he never does.
The point of this list wasn't to provide a thoughtful review of NSF grant making. It's just a hyper-partisan attempt to score points. These guys do not care if what they are saying is true, false, exaggerated, whatever. They just want to make noise.
Obviously. Except to a goodly portion of commenters here.
You have that much faith in *Ted Cruz's* staffers?
I agree with @Gabriel. I'm not an American, but I'm guessing Ted Cruz (or his team) is not *really* unaware that his list contains both woke and genuinely non-woke research proposals. It's more likely that he added all of them together to get a nice, sensationalist *OMG DEMS GAVE $2 BILLION TO THE WOKES!!* headline, the same way that moderate Democrats and Republicans are often vilified by Bernie/AOC supporters as stooges to The Billionaires and The Corporations.
The bigger issue with all this is the descent into populism on both sides of the aisle. I'm an Indian, and it has been India's lived experience that when politicians are allowed by voters to descend into populism and vitriolic identity politics, it is the the voters and regular citizens that increasingly become disempowered economically and politically.
Ultimately, both the Dems and the Republicans are using taxpayer money to behave like spoiled trust fund kids, and I appreciate your efforts to call them out on this.
He can also ask staffers to make the largest list they can plausibly justify, so that he can announce a big number when describing how much 'junk woke science' Biden was funding and he is destroying.
Which is the thing that helps his political career.
I agree with Scott that 'Ted Cruz isn't good at identifying wokeness' is in fact a surprising failure mode.
Except ISTM Ted Cruz has identified wokeness and Scott has mis-identified it.
Wokeness isn’t e.g. ’this proposal will benefit this minority group, e.g. because it will cure a disease which particularly affects one ethnic group.’ I, and I imagine Ted Cruz, would be in favour of that.
Wokeness is e.g. benefiting minority groups is the only way we value things and therefore even proposals that don’t substantially benefit minorities have to pretend to do so.
I agree, but in that case it's the process, not the grants, that's woke. So why cancel the grants instead of amending the process?
Signalling, innit? I'm not saying cancelling the grants is what *I* would have done!
But these grants are full of all kinds of explanations of how their project will benefit all of the everything, not just minority groups. If wokeness is *ONLY* valuing things insofar as they benefit minorities, then we have construed wokeness narrowly enough that these grants don't really qualify.
Except, perhaps, the "study how university policy affects distinct sub-categories of black students," which I guess is 'woke' if the object of the game is to never think again about how university policy affects black people.
It's not just that scientists include things about how our work could help minorities in order to pass some Biden-era DEI filter. It's that discussing the Broader Impacts of the research you're proposing -- including how it's going to help minorities -- has been required by law of every grant since 1980. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Biden, except in the sense that Biden didn't push to change this law.
Here's that law: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:42%20section:1862p-14%20edition:prelim)
Here's the relevant quote (check out number 7):
§1862p–14. Broader Impacts Review Criterion
(a) Goals
The Foundation shall apply a broader impacts review criterion to identify and demonstrate project support of the following goals:
(1) Increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States.
(2) Advancing of the health and welfare of the American public.
(3) Supporting the national defense of the United States.
(4) Enhancing partnerships between academia and industry in the United States.
(5) Developing an American STEM workforce that is globally competitive through improved pre-kindergarten through grade 12 STEM education and teacher development, and improved undergraduate STEM education and instruction.
(6) Improving public scientific literacy and engagement with science and technology in the United States.
(7) Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.
This. And the grants in the non-woke and sorta-woke categories that only had a sentence about STEM diversity or such were not including it as an aside. They would have had a page or so (out of 15) that explained in detail what they were planning to do in this area, as part of the congressionally-established STEM workforce diversity option for broader impacts.
In my experience as a proposal writer and reviewer, you can probably assume an average of 2% of the total award funds would be devoted to such activities, which would be easily separable from the rest of the research.
What is your view of whether that part of the law is sensible? My career was in the private sector and when something loosely like this kind of side project was imposed, it cut into the focus on the main task. Maybe a 100,000 person company can have side projects with people devoted full time to them in a sensible way, but my (vague) impression is that research teams are too small for that.
The purpose of the law is not to add side projects, it’s to make scientists justify how their research will benefit the public. The list above just gives ways scientists might justify that. It doesn’t always take the form of side projects, and in my experience both as grantee and reviewer, grants are much more likely to get funded if the Broader Impacts are well integrated into the science itself, rather than just being a side project.
The reason this became law at all was due to scientifically illiterate congresspeople glancing at a grant for two seconds and raising hell about those dang scientists studying what fruit flies are attracted to. They made scientists have to justify how what they are studying could benefit the public. The irony of this now being the locus of “woke” is hopefully obvious.
Many Thanks!
>in my experience both as grantee and reviewer, grants are much more likely to get funded if the Broader Impacts are well integrated into the science itself, rather than just being a side project.
That makes sense.
>The reason this became law at all was due to scientifically illiterate congresspeople glancing at a grant for two seconds and raising hell about those dang scientists studying what fruit flies are attracted to.
Yeah. I remember Proxmire doing this. One of his "awards" was for a study of Peruvian potatoes. I don't know much about botany, but even _I_ know that if you want to look for potentially useful genes for a domesticated species, looking at the strains and wild relatives in place where it was first domesticated is a good bet.
I'm somewhat uncomfortable that the "Broader Impacts" are getting analyzed and justified at the granularity of individual grants. This sounds like the sort of analysis that should be done at a coarser level (e.g. "advance biology of cancer" or "advance physics of superconductors") with the broad justification done at the coarser level and the analysis of individual grants done with a tight focus on the scientific merit (exceptions for projects which are _specifically_ liaison efforts).
I think that’s a reasonable idea, but it requires a world in which taxpayers and politicians trust scientists not to waste money and don’t make them justify each thing they want to do to non-scientists. It looks like we’re moving away that world rather than towards it.
Many Thanks!
>It looks like we’re moving away that world rather than towards it.
Ouch! Not _horribly_ destructive, but unfortunate.
Every scientist has always complained about the “broader impact” and “outreach” portions of grants. Funding or killing projects because of them will make scientists waste even more time on them.
"Every scientist" is not overburdened by thrse requirements and they are generally not a time sink. A large percentage of flagship research institutions have public outreach organizations that work to support broader impact requirements. Stated plainly, these are "plug and play" programs that interact with undergraduate, high school, or middle school students. Speaking first hand, this is how STEM professionals keep the next generation excited about being I STEM, and many actually like seeing the general public being excited about their work.
As Scott pointed out in the examples from the database, it's including a sentence at the end of the abstract or single page that is copied and pasted in each grant application.
This whole culture war on woke is such a waste of time and energy. What the he'll is neo-marxism anyways? It sounds like political word salad for the shallow minded.
Many Thanks! Yeah, it makes sense to have _separate_ outreach organizations. The skill set to advance a scientific field, and to explain what one is doing to others _in the field_ is different from the skill set to explain all the links back to the top level goals that the public cares about and understands.
Is it sensible to occasionally make a special effort to attract women and minorities to science and engineering? Sure, to the extent that it's a countermeasure to peer/teacher pressure in high school that says women can't do math.
Is it sensible to encourage scientists receiving federal funding to do things that advance broader societal goals that they are uniquely able to accomplish? Sure.
Would I rather be able to just spend taxpayer money on whatever I thought was most important? You bet!
As another commenter noted, it's not* going to be a significant diversion of effort unless the lead investigator wants it to be, in which case they're doing something they want to do anyway.
*The exception would be federal grant programs that require a significant effort as a condition of the program. I personally think federal grant managers often bake too many constraints into their funding programs. I understand why they do it: they want to help shape science in a way that will do the most good and meet the most urgent needs (and also so they can tell Congress "look at these great initiatives we've developed").
But I prefer minimal constraints, for the benefit of science in general. I think ten scientists proposing their own best idea and plan is better than ten scientists proposing their best idea for tackling a pre-specified class of problems in a pre-specified way.
Many Thanks!
>But I prefer minimal constraints, for the benefit of science in general. I think ten scientists proposing their own best idea and plan is better than ten scientists proposing their best idea for tackling a pre-specified class of problems in a pre-specified way.
Agreed.
> I personally think federal grant managers often bake too many constraints into their funding programs.
That is my impression as well. I am concerned that, even if just 2% of the funds for a scientific research project go towards, e.g. minority outreach, I'd expect it to chew up a considerably larger fraction of time than just the 2%. Context switching eats time. Maintaining records for very different sets of activities eats time.
I also wouldn't expect the skills needed to drive a specialized STEMM area forward to have much of a match with e.g. minority outreach.
Being a professor is ALL context switching. Doing research, teaching a class, answering emails, answering questions from students, attending a meeting, reviewing a paper, is par for the course FOR A SINGLE DAY. Minority outreach at worst replaces a distraction rather than adding one.
Many Thanks! As a student, I'd only seen a very limited window on my professors' work days. Good point!
This sounds like what Scott said about his history homework; they were all supposed to put in a reflection on how they did the homework and what they had learned, and they all dutifully included how they had consulted various sources and learned about the complexity etc. etc. but in reality they just cribbed everything off Wikipedia.
>Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.
Notably, women *haven't* been underrepresented in STEM for a few decades now, depending how you cut the borders. Wildly overrepresented in everything biology-adjacent, underrepresented in math-adjacent.
The Broader Impacts get especially silly for pure math research. It would be within the NSF's rights to say "No, we will not fund math research with no known practical applications", but instead the status quo seems to be: yes you can get funded, but you must claim you are going to do K12/public/URM outreach at some point. Meanwhile, many math researchers are introverts who would really rather not do such a thing.
Of course, sometimes you can twist things. There's an old joke about a mathematician who submitted a grant proposal "Annihilating Radical Left Ideals", a topic in pure algebra that happens to sound like you're fighting communism.
Correct me if Im wrong, but this seems to require that grants aim at at least one of these ends, but not necessarily all of them. In the grant excerpts above, it seems that the scientists specifically chose to mouth the woke language, probably because they believed it was easiest or most effective. I think it's perfectly fair to incentive scientists to choose one or more of the other "broad goals" instead of the woke one.
Scott, you talk a lot about how policing the language police is important. Because losing words to them is the beginning of some sort of woke oppression. In that sense, while the non-woke studies should proceed, it might be useful to have them submit an appeal without the woke flair. That will discourage others from sprinkling woke nonsense in their abstracts, effectively liberating the scientific rhetoric from it.
Do you want to police language or not? It sounds like this is just replacing one language police “you must include one of the following words” with the other “you must not include any of the following words”. Both are equally bad. But canceling people for doing the wrong one is even worse than failing to get people started working.
But importantly: Cruz's list of 'woke' grants was only 10% of the grants awarded during that time period.
Scientists were not 'required' to include woke words in order to get funding from Biden, 90% of those who got funding did not do so!
Whereas in contrast, the other side is silencing *every* person who used woke words.
You bring a good point. I do think the woke enforcement of rules operates differently. There aren't hard rules, but you get cancelled if you break them. That's part of the annoyance. One has to be constantly walking on eggshells and double thinking before communicating. Explicit forbiddance is not a better solution, but I'm not sure it's necessarily less harmful.
🤷🏿♂️ maybe it's just because I'm a silly lib, but my assumption with all this stuff (extending to DOGE and beyond) is that they're intentionally shooting from the hip and have no issue with demonizing/shutting down things that are either borderline woke or not woke at all. Maybe similarly, Elon is claiming "fraud" about all kinds of govt activity that he doesn't like, regardless of whether there's fraud or not (my understanding is that he hasn't uncovered any real fraud at all, but if I'm wrong I hope someone lets me know).
We don't know the import of what he has 'uncovered' because none of it is reported with context. Or, in many cases, evidence. You can bray about some cringey 'line items' in a USAID accounting but unless you have a sense of *all* the expenditures and amounts in a year of USAID operation, it's just cherry picking. And you can be sure Elon won't release that , just as he didn't put the supposedly damning internal Twitter texts showing Biden 'censorship' of social media during COVID ( a story that Taibbi, Weiss, Greenwald ran with breathlessly) in context of *all* the messaging between them, which would have diluted the nefariousness angle considerably. (Another example: during the Obama era the GOP went full berserk when it emerged that the understaffed IRS was using heuristics -- keywords , like Musk is using now on grants -- to try to identify tax exempt nonprofits that were engaging in political activity. A limited tranche seemed to show targetting of right-wing groups, but examining the full range of the operation showed that left-wing groups were being targetted as well)
I think the clear solution here is to make sure everybody explains in future grant proposals how butch their science is and how it promotes traditional values.
(Note for future readers - at the time this would have read as sarcasm.)
Just put “Based” in each acronym. National Institute of Based Health.
Given that this is all really just branding, follow the leader and make all of your proposals be, like, "Make America Cancerless Again".
'Our cure for cancer will allow many sick women to leave their hospital beds and return to the kitchen.'
I don't think it's fair to just wave this away as "they were just playing the game by including woke shibboleths in their grant applications". I don't think it's good or should be acceptable for woke shibboleths to matter to a grant application, and any study funded by playing the game this way should absolutely be looked at. They got four years to benefit from this advantage over the alt-right fascist studies who forgot to include the one sentence about benefitting minorities, and now the pendulum swings the other way.
Here's the thing: the presence of this shibboleth says *nothing* about the politics of the grant applicants. Academics without tenure have to put up with this shit or leave academia. Those are the only two options. I doubt you consistently demand such purity tests in other domains.
No, they didn’t get four years of this. It’s been decades of gradually requiring more, starting at least with the Reagan administration requiring statements of broader impact. If the point is to end the language policing and cancel culture, you don’t do that by canceling people equally and oppositely - you do that by stopping the pendulum altogether and eliminating the broader impact statement.
"This seemed like a surprising failure mode"
It did? Really?
This seems like the least surprising failure mode imaginable. I can't quite claim to have predicted this in advance, since reading the headline of this post is the first I'd heard of said database. But to anyone who has paying a smidgeon of attention to how conservatives use and interact with the word "woke," it would be incredibly surprising to see any other outcome.
I wish I could say I expect this to be the crucial update that pushes you towards some long-overdue skepticism towards using "woke" as a word and as a concept, but alas I doubt it will happen. There *are* genuinely bad things that get associate with the word, and you *are* reasonable for pushing back against those things, and as long as there's a convenient handle it will still be easy enough to ignore the misuses of the term (which in the event, is *most* of the uses, as you have seen).
But I hope you'll at least take this opportunity to update on your view of the present government. Yes, it would have been easy to avoid this, for most people. They aren't most people. The sort of people who run the mental algorithms you're running here, where you actually look at the content and think about the effects and make a real effort to get it right: those aren't the people working on these things. Trump is, in fact, going to quite a bit of effort to get rid of people like that. The notion that the current administration was ever, EVER going to take the time (yes, even a few hours) to try to *understand* the things they were aiming to destroy of was not that plausible to begin with: still holding it after the last month seems ludicrous in the extreme.
> try to *understand* the things they were aiming to destroy
Why bother trying to understand anything? "Destroy all the things, look through the smoking rubble, rebuild those bits that in retrospect turn out to have been loadbearing" is what people voted for.
I disagree. Wokeness is basically a real thing, it’s bad, it’s good that the administration wants to reduce it, but it’s bad that they have such a high false positive rate. The problem can thus be summarized pretty straightforwardly.
If progressives want to be effective against the current administration, they have to give up on wokeness and stop trying to find ways to salvage it. That’s the surest way to undercut the admin’s raison d’etre.
Do you have a coherent definition of "wokeness" that allows you to make this assertion so confidently? Specifically, one that encapsulates all of what "anti-woke" people complain about, while still being self-evidently bad? I'd love to see it if so, I've been looking for one.
I'll second Fang's request. This sort of discussion would be quite a bit easier to have if we could work from a shared understanding of the key terms.
In the past week, I have heard that believing in anthropogenic global warming is woke, wishing to send aid to foreigners is woke, having a black actor play Captain America is woke, and that the KC Chiefs are woke. How many of these things fall under your definition of wokeness?
I’ve seen almost every bad thing - or thing the speaker or writer dislikes - included under the umbrella of socialism or fascism. I don’t think this implies those don’t exist. Yes, in politics, once a term develops a strong negative or positive connotation its use tends to expand dramatically. This isn’t proof it never existence.
I’m a bit incredulous that anyone who follows American politics is sincere when they say they don’t have an idea what it means.
I'm not arguing that wokeness exists, but to be honest, when I hear someone use it, I often don't know what it's referring to. So when you say "give up on wokeness and stop finding ways to salvage it", would that include PEPFAR? For e.g. Richard Hanania it wouldn't, for many of the people in his comment section it would.
In the context of this discussion, I don’t think it’s that difficult to get an idea of what it means. Basically affirmative action in grants or grants for research that promotes this worldview.
I also don’t think the false positives in this case are even mostly reflective of ambiguity of terminology. Most of the miscategorized grants were categorized this way because grant applicants added a sentence or two to their grants to appeal to standards no longer applied by the new administration, but which were seen as necessary or at least improving one’s chances with the previous one. So for the most part even this isn’t some inevitable consequence of the ambiguity of ‘wokeness.’
Thanks. Is PEPFAR a sort of affirmative action in grants? Or would that only be if it were a grant specifically for trans women to give out AIDS medication in needy areas?
I think a pretty obvious counter is that both "socialism" and "fascism" are ideas that historically have had proponents engaged in defining them as ideologies *under those names* and trying to put those ideologies into practice. Meanwhile "wokism" and "wokeness" are labels that are applied *almost entirely* from the outside. There was a transitional period where parts of the left used "woke" as a MUCH more narrow descriptor with entirely positive connotations[1]. But once the right took it up, spread it widely and started applying it to everything, pretty much all non-ironic usage on the left STOPPED. On the left, the word exists almost entirely as a joke. You will, ironically, find far, FAR more people who sincerely claim "socialism" as a fair description of their politics than would ever claim "wokism."
"I’m a bit incredulous that anyone who follows American politics is sincere when they say they don’t have an idea what it means."
I guarantee you that peoples' confusion on this point is genuine. Though it's not a matter of "not having an idea." It's a matter of having "far, far too many ideas." I believe you when you say that YOU have an idea what you mean when you use the term[2]. The trouble is that I DON'T believe that *your* usage is in any way *the* usage: I don't think there *is* one central, consistent meaning that informs all the usages. Imagine for a second that you're talking to Bob, who is one of those people who throws "fascism" and "fascist" around willy-nilly. If you heard Bob call something "fascist" could you fairly claim that you have *no idea* what Bob means by the word? Of course not: you could certainly get an approximate sense. But hearing Bob call things "fascist" would neither let you generalize to figure out what non-Bob people mean when using the word, nor would it give you much information at all about historical fascism. Now imagine that there *was no historical fascism*, that the words "fascist" and "fascism" had arisen organically out of everyday language in the past decade or two, and had its usage change considerably within the past six or seven years. You would, again, get *some* information from hearing Bob use the word "fascism." But even with a hundred Bobs to compare and contrast, you might not be able to generalize that to THE definitive meaning of "fascism;" both because that's rather hard to do, and because in this context there need not BE a "definitive meaning."
[1]In particular, it was a positive quality, but not the root of any sort of political viewpoint: you could call someone or something "woke," which (by standard linguistic construction) I suppose might have given it a quality of "wokeness." But "wokism" would have sounded incoherent, in much the same way that we don't generalize "politeness" or "wariness" to "politism" or "waryism."
[2] Well, mostly. I think it's very possible that if you interrogated your own sense of the word sufficiently you might find some inconsistencies.
Sure. I would describe it as the belief that it’s morally justified and necessary to discriminate against people - and promote prejudicial ideas - on the basis of race and sex in order to correct for ostensible race or sex-based wrongs either in the present or past. I don’t think that quite subsumes all of ‘wokeness,’ (e.g. I’d add a tenet that, to combat racism/sexism, it’s necessary to make exceptions to other erstwhile core liberal principles beyond non-discrimination) but I think that’s the core of it.
Pick whatever term you want for it, I don’t really care, but to pretend like this isn’t a phenomenon, especially to anyone that was around in the early 2020s, is just gaslighting imo.
OK, first let me say thank you for giving an actual answer. That allows for much more productive discussion than the "shut up, you know what it means" that I often see elsewhere. Second, let me say thank you for doing your best to make the definition reasonably clear and concise: that also makes for more productive discussion.
That being said, I definitely see some possible issues with it as a working definition. The main one being that the word "discriminate" is going to produce a lot of headaches here. I guarantee you that most of the people vocally engaged in various sorts of anti-racism DON'T consider anything they're doing to be discriminating or promoting discrimination in any way. Which means that as-stated, "the *belief* that it's..." is mostly going to lack any real referents. Those beliefs are pretty rare. Even if you try to rescue it by saying "the belief that [certain behaviors] are morally justified and necessary because..." (where [certain behaviors] are things you consider discriminatory) you've definitely left any personal intent to discriminate behind, and made a question about what "counts" as discrimination. Which I think is a much thornier question than you realize.
In case you haven't noticed the pitfalls, I'll ask you a simple question. Those signs on the bus that say that the front seats should be preferentially given to people who are pregnant, disabled or have mobility issues: are those discrimination? If yes, why? If no, also why? I notice that *I* don't really have a good answer, and feel like I could pick apart any simple argument for either "yes" or "no" in a heartbeat. I mean, they're obviously giving some people preferential treatment. But they're also not doing it arbitrarily or capriciously and calling it "preferential" actually makes some pretty deep assumptions.
"Pick whatever term you want for it, I don’t really care, but to pretend like this isn’t a phenomenon, especially to anyone that was around in the early 2020s, is just gaslighting imo."
I'm not pretending anything. I'm aware that there's SOMETHING that has gotten many conservatives--and a decent number of non-conservatives--just absolutely hopping mad over the past decade and change. But attempts to interrogate what that "something" is have consistently produced more confusion than clarity. The details seem to shift a lot from one account to the next. I, too, often feel like I'm being gaslit here, but by people constantly insisting that it's totally clear and obvious what they mean when it absolutely is not. And I'm not alone in this: as far as I can tell THE dominant view of "wokeness" among young-ish, online, vaguely-leftist sorts is that the word as its used today is almost meaningless: it basically means "anything a conservative doesn't like." I'm not saying this with malice or even anger: I do find the phenomenon irritating sometimes, but more than that I find it quite curious.
I think discrimination is easy to define. E.g. if you're accounting for a person's race when deciding whether to hire them, you're engaging in racial discrimination. If you were to substitute 'white' or 'male' for 'black' or 'female', respectively, and you would call it discrimination, then it's discrimination. I'm skeptical that people who support such policies *really* don't intend to discriminate frankly. It's just that discrimination is seen as a dirty word and it's more strategic to redefine morally loaded words around their preferred exceptions than admit that their opinion is that in some cases a generally bad thing is actually good.
I didn't include disability or pregnancy in my definition so I'm not following the relevance. If you're leftish, then you probably agree with the idea that discrimination based on race and sex are bad, in general, no? When discussing discrimination against groups of people you strictly oppose discrimination against, you would probably find things less ambiguous, irrespective of the intent of the one doing the discrimination.
What I suspect may be going on here is that to most progressives, certain discriminatory policies or attitudes toward e.g. white people, males, Asians in some cases, follow logically from the same progressive principles that justify welfare or environmental policy or civil equality, so the idea that the former can or should be logically unbundled from the latter and singled out for objection seems odd or arbitrary. And since even unrelated political positions are strongly correlated, it's natural even if illogical to bundle unrelated positions together for proponents and opponents alike.
"I think discrimination is easy to define."
The obvious retort would be "perhaps you think it's easy to define because you've never been confronted with a situation where it wasn't." Or rather more bluntly "perhaps you think it's easy to define because you've never had to grapple with it up close and personal." I don't know you or know anything about you, so I'm NOT actually going to make either of those claims. But I will make the (still rather blunt) claim that you probably have no actually put much serious thought into the matter, and especially that you probably haven't read very widely on the topic. There is a wealth of complexity there that you (apparently) simply don't see. For example:
"I didn't include disability or pregnancy in my definition so I'm not following the relevance."
The relevance is that they play havoc with your nice, neat definition of discrimination. They play havoc with it in a way that ought be pretty easy to see, which makes them useful for testing one's intuition.
Let's take another example: hiring discrimination and pregnancy. Your definition: "if you take a person's pregnancy into account when deciding whether to hire them, you're engaging in discrimination." Let's work with that.
First we need to know what it means to NOT take it into account. If you hire completely blind, looking only at resumes, stripped of any information that could indicate correlates of pregnancy (such as age, gender or marital status)[1] is that a sufficient condition to avoid discrimination based on pregnancy? It should be, right? Hold on, but someone being pregnant isn't just a box they tick on a form (that you can just leave off), it has real, measurable impacts on somebody's job availability. What if you're hiring for extra, short-term programmers to hit a production deadline that's coming up in six months. Isn't it, well, rather important that the person you will be available full-time three, four and five months from now?
Of course, you can just put that in the job requirements. "Must be available full-time for the next six months with no vacation or leave." But then you ARE "taking a person's pregnancy into account," you're just doing it in a way that puts the onus on them to self-select out of your applicant pool, rather than removing them yourself. And of course, it's not the pregnancy itself, merely an unavoidable effect of the pregnancy. But the result is the same: this group of people is significantly less able to get hired at your job.
I'm not even claiming the above paragraph is a bad or unreasonable way to handle it: reality imposes constraints and you DO have to work around them. But I will be *very* disappointed if you try to weasel out of the obvious conclusion by claiming that's not "really" discrimination. Quite clearly it is, by your own definition. You had to take a certain factor (ability to work) into account when hiring somebody. That made certain people (people in the middle of a pregnancy) effectively ineligible to be hired.
I could type more. I could probably fill a dozen pages with examples of situations where "don't take X into account when hiring somebody" is either functionally impossible or would result in a broken hiring process, for almost any X you can imagine. But I'd rather see how you respond to what I've already written and if it results in any clarifications or updates to your thinking.
[1] Which I'll note is actually quite hard to do/
" I'm skeptical that people who support such policies *really* don't intend to discriminate frankly."
I'm skeptical that you have any idea how people who you consider "woke" actually think. I think the entire thread about your writing about such people betrays a very superficial understanding of how *they* think and talk about such issues. I'm actually quite strongly reminded of how I see people on the left talk about "tech bros" sometimes: the same very un-nuanced, very homogenized broad strokes that makes a very simplistic attempt to model a very heterogeneous (and generally poorly defined) group. It shows very little awareness of what discourse *within* these groups actually looks like, or how complex some of the ideas under discussion *actually are.*
In the same way people complained about "political correctness gone mad" 20 years ago, the way the term is often used subsumes a lot more beyond this such as environmental issues.
While it would definitely be pretty easy to sort through these, perhaps there are some procedural reasons to just cut everything that even barely mentions something woke.
Even an executive order can’t do things like violate equal protection, and I imagine there would be some pretty angry lawsuits if there was some arbitrary cutoff of wokeness, that probably placed certain demographics in higher promotions in the woke camp compared to those who were technically woke, but still got away with it.
Maybe cutting it all makes the process simple, easy, and not requiring any arbitrary human judgement.
As somebody who has never looked at grant text before, I had the exact option response to this. The list is true! Almost every grant, if taken literally, is woke and promises to implement DEI in some form.
I don't think think saying "they lied to get the grant" is that much of a consolation either.
Why would someone putting in a couple sentences say they care about students of color be a reason to think their cancer research isn’t worth funding? I thought this administration was claiming that racist tweets are no reason to cancel someone, so why should including a racist sentence in a grant application be a reason to cancel them?
None of the sentences are "we care." They are "we care an outsized amount and promise to give special treatment".
It's not remotely "cancellation" or equivalent if you care to actually think about it for one second. When I first read the uproar I assumed it was (e.g. Marxist professors getting funding for XYZ). But instead no, it's actually straight up government-funded DEI promises (however insincere they may be).
Wait, did you just say that canceling someone’s funding is not literally cancelation? What do you think those words mean?
Everything you say is true, but to me it’s even worse: by Ted Cruz’s own lights, scientists forced to include DEI boilerplate in order to get grants ought to be considered *victims* of the woke regime. Why on earth would you re-victimize the victims? Rather than demonstrating the superiority of your new regime by showing how the victims will now be treated so much better?
Because the goal is not to get these victims to like you, it's to scapegoat them.
I'm not sure there's much thought about the victims either way. The new administration is guided mostly by the beauty of their weapons.
This is a very good point.
> Why on earth would you re-victimize the victims?
Because punishing people is an absolute blast.
Cruelty is the point.
If Trump required grant-applicants to explain how their research helped whites, would you call scientists who applied for those grants victims? When the next administration cancelled those grants would you defend the scientists? I doubt it.
I doubt it because you already understand that if scientists mouthed the words “my research is good because it especially helps whites” it would dignify and reinforce the idea that special favor for whites is good, and you find that idea repugnant. Indeed, you probably would consider those scientists at best cowards and at worst evil.
The reason people think scientists who mouthed woke phrases are victims is because either (1) for class or ideological reasons they see wokeness as generally reasonable or (2) they instinctively believe that the role of left-liberals is to exercise power while the role of conservatives is to merely check power and therefore it is reasonable for “neutrals” to follow left-liberal trends.
Those in category (1) are philosophically and morally wrong.
Those in category (2) need to be taught a lesson. I want our system’s functionaries – the lawyers, teachers, government workers, corporate VPs, scientists – to feel in their bones that the political pendulum does not swing from the left to the middle, but rather from the left to the right. That if you mouth left-liberal orthodoxies under one administration, you’ll lose your funding under the next.
In particular, I want scientists to be so fearful, angry, and annoyed by this phenomenon that they lobby Congress to remove any requirement that they mouth woke phrases; that they lobby the next Democratic administration not to offer grants that require woke phrases. And if even their lobbying efforts fail, I want them to think extra-hard before applying for grants that require woke pretensions and I want them to put considerable emotional effort into toning down any woke language they do mouth.
I realize this will cause individual pain for functionaries who have (quite reasonably!) assumed that mouthing woke ideology is safe. But I care more about the social good of defeating those ideas than their individual pain.
Yes, you're right. I do find the idea of discrimination meant to rectify past monstrous injustices, infinitely more intellectually and morally defensible than the idea of discrimination meant to entrench the injustices even further ... even if the former ALSO turns out to create more problems than it solves and probably, usually be a bad idea.
"Rectifying past injustices" was the justification for affirmative action in the 70s. As you already know, the current justification is "diversity" (fewer whites and men makes us stronger) and "systemic racism" (faith that massive, but invisible racism explains disparities in group outcomes).
To the extent any scientist agrees with you 60 years after civil rights, they are not victims, but rather purposefully blind or more likely masking some other ideology.
To the extent any scientist merely mouthed woke words, they are not victims, but cowards who apparently must be taught by fear to understand that the Right can also wield power.
To a first approximation, my party is whichever party talks to the scientists doing productive science in a less menacing tone. That party obviously isn’t yours.
But not really, right? Because you've already said that you would support "menacing" scientists who sought grants expressly to help white people and men.
You're using "science" to shield your more basic opinion that discriminating against whites and men is fine, but discriminating against "underrepresented minorities" and women is wrong.
There’s the thing: you could *imagine* woke bureaucrats telling me that I need to be defunded, effectively chased out of science, to punish me for my sins as a white male. But they never did. A few crazies on the Internet said that, but the bureaucrats were happy to fund my quantum computing research if I said “I like diversity and want to support a diverse group of students” (wildly controversial, I know) — and then went on recruit the best students of whatever background I could find. *You*, and those in the Trump administration who think like you, are the first people who’ve ever credibly threatened to defund me for failing to toe their political line.
> the idea of discrimination meant to rectify past monstrous injustices
Taken at face value, this is a statement in support of the new regime ruthlessly punishing everyone who sided with the old "woke" one, in order to rectify the injustices it inflicted on its enemies now with the power to get payback.
But of course, you don't mean that. There is no principle here beyond the friend–enemy distinction: if it benefits your side, it's a morally defensible correction, and if it benefits the enemy at your expense, it's a monstrous injustice.
"In particular, I want scientists to be so fearful, angry, and annoyed..."
In this, at least, you seem perfectly in-line with the current administration. A lot of us instead want the scientists to be...wait for it...DOING SCIENCE. That's the entire purpose of science funding, to have scientists doing science, because you value science as a source of knowledge.
When somebody adds some silly political cruft to the grant-application processes, they are moving things in the wrong direction[1] in a real but fairly minor way. Maybe it's for noble reasons, maybe it's for bad ones, but either way they should stop. But when you say "scientists need to be crushed until the FALL IN LINE (with my particular politics)" you're not even *pretending* to make a noble mistake, or a reasonable request or to value science at all. You're simply wanting to exert power over people for the sake of exerting power.
[1] Though notice that the requirement these stem form has seemingly been there for decades and is only now getting this sort of response.
I'll ask the same question to you that I asked above: if the scientists in question had written "my research will especially help whites and men" in order to satisfy some "silly political cruft," would you shrug and call it minor?
Emphatically, yes. It would be minor. Again, whoever added the "silly political cruft" requirement to the process was probably doing bad work and reversing that work seems reasonable. But why on Earth would I get mad at scientists trying to get grants for following the process laid out for them to get grants? Why on Earth would I want the scientists to become "fearful, angry and annoyed" at following the requirements *other people* set on their jobs? Why on Earth would I want them to spend untold time and effort on "lobbying congress" instead of doing science?
Science funding is political because all funding is political, that's unavoidable. But actively trying to make the process *more* about politics--especially in deliberately divisive ways--and *less* about science is B-A-D.
As a side note, when we're talking about science, I don't think there are *nearly* as many people as you imagine who consider research that "especially helps whites" or "especially helps men" to be an inherently bad thing. I certainly don't. Doubtless there are some because you for any stupid position you can imagine, somebody holds it. But I doubt you've actually thought through what that looks like.
What would "science that especially helps whites" look like? Skin cancer research? R&D on better sunblock? Who exactly is protesting these things? Certainly not me.
Meanwhile "science that especially helps men," is a field well enough established that it has a name, journals, clinics, you name it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrology
Is anyone protesting the latest in andrology research? Probably somebody, but certainly not me. They're not getting much press if they are.
It seems like you may be confusing science with politics. The reason that *political* initiatives focused specifically on "helping white men" get such push back is because for a very large chunk of U.S. history that's what nearly ALL politics was about. The people who push back against initiatives like that now largely[1] do so because they think the disparities that were *deliberately* being created through most of U.S. history still have significant lingering effects today. Not, in general, because of some hatred toward white people and/or men (though again, see footnote [1]). It's reasonable to disagree with them on that set of empirical observations about the world, but if you think that their belief system regards "things that improve the lives of white men" as *inherently* bad, you simply do not understand that bit of reality very well.
[1] Necessary disclaimer, no group is a monolith.
"the political pendulum does not swing from the left to the middle, but rather from the left to the right."
Wow, you can't make this stuff up. When has the political pendulum in the U.S. EVER swung "from left to middle?" Look at the past 25 years: how many under Republican presidents? How many under Democrats? What about the makeup of congress over that time? What about the Supreme court? What about major long-term policy items, like the military budget, the distribution of the tax burden, the aggregated size of well-fare programs? Perhaps I hallucinated the past quarter-century, but I seem to remember the right getting its way *quite often* during that time period.
I suspect that your issue has far less to do with politics and more to do with culture. The culture of large parts of the U.S. HAS shifted over the decades in ways that (I assume) you strongly dislike. But culture doesn't flow from the government to the people. The vast, vast, VAST majority of culture comes from what people do on their own, outside the spaces where government happens.
I'd wager that you'd find the cultural makeup of most scientific fields not to your liking. But the reasons for that have (as far as I can tell, having spent quite a lot of my life in the relevant spaces) very little to do with any government policy, and everything to do with who values academics and how they relate to others[1]. I absolutely guarantee you that having a conservative government deliberately try to make working scientists "fearful, angry and annoyed" is going to do exactly NOTHING to shift the cultural makeup of the sciences in the direction you want. Quite the opposite.
[1] Though I'd venture a guess that having one of the two major political parties categorically reject the legitimate conclusions of a major area of science for literal decades has done conservatives no favors there. But note despite the connection to politics, the underlying mechanism is still cultural rather than legal.
If this theory is correct, the more pressing question is what scientists should do about the current administration’s new dogmas, since the next progressive administration will punish them for adhering to conservative dogmas. So if a scientist mouths the anti-woke phrase “gulf of America” or “LGB” under this administration, they’ll lose their funding under the next. What is a scientist to do?
It’s true that one way out of this is to lobby congress to not need to mouth any phrases, but that includes both the hypothetical woke phrases of the next administration and the actual free-speech stifling that trump is engaging in. For some reason you only focus on the woke side.
I don't know enough about the US grant process to say whether Cruz has the right approach, but I'd bet that a supermajority of grantees have been lifelong Dem voters. Hard to call them victims of the woke regime when they've actively supported it
So anything Democrat is "woke" now? Asking because I keep trying to nail down the term to a coherent meaning, with little success.
FWIW I'd wager that a clear majority of the grantees NOT on Cruz's list are also Dem voters. My overall impression is that liberal and left cultural spaces almost always hold academic careers in high regard, while many conservative cultural spaces disdain them, with predictable results for the makeup of various fields.
That question doesn't follow. Not all Dem policies are woke, but all woke policies are Dem. If you vote for the Dems, you're voting for woke policies as well as others. That's the nature of big tent parties
And no, you're not asking because you're trying to nail down the term; you're asking as a rhetorical tool to try to score points on an online comments section. I'm not playing that overdone word game. You know what woke means, I know what woke means, and the host of this blog knows what woke means
>FWIW I'd wager that a clear majority of the grantees NOT on Cruz's list are also Dem voters. My overall impression is that liberal and left cultural spaces almost always hold academic careers in high regard, while many conservative cultural spaces disdain them, with predictable results for the makeup of various fields.
There's good reason to believe you have the causation backwards. Academia's leftward drift began long before the polarization in public attitudes towards it
"You know what woke means, I know what woke means, and the host of this blog knows what woke means"
NO I DAMN WELL DON'T. I'll thank you kindly to not tell me what I do and don't know. Apparently you *don't* know that's rude and dishonest, but you certainly should.
Everybody who's strongly against "woke" and is ABSOLUTELY SURE that it has a clear and coherent meaning and that anybody who claims otherwise is lying. And when I start to ask questions--to the extent that people are willing to answer at all--y'alls meaning are ALL DIFFERENT.
I've got a pretty good memory. I could list a bunch of things that woke means *to different people.* There would be some agreements among the lists, and also quite a lot of disagreements.
The closest thing to a *coherent* hypothesis I have for what people mean by the word is that they use pejoratively it to indicate Blue Tribe Cultural Signifiers. But since everyone has a different sense of what's bad, and a different sense of what, exactly is a Blue Tribe Cultural Signifier, that leads to a semantic mess of usage.
Scott (et al.!), there's another problem. Years ago, I was asked to review a Canadian grant proposal - it was delightful with exactly the right people, save one. She was not in the field and not very good in her own. All 3 reviewers voted to reject but asked to accept it if they ditched the weak link. Apparently, some (all?) agencies could not approve a grant unless it had at least 1 female - not written down, btw.
Another issue is some agencies do not vet the science part and accept things like "my lived experience overrides your hard data." If you can weed out the crap methodology, wouldn't that help?
A possible positive? Some agencies here and abroad demand that grant-seekers explicitly share their expectations of the impact on practice and policy which (to me anyway) is a good thing, if done right. (One thing I'm seeing in grants and especially startup pitches is mentioning which SDG(s) this project will advance. I haven't seen anyone get pissy over that).
Thanks!
Not trying to be difficult, and I'm sure there's lots of context I don't get, but I cannot comprehend how a situation in which a grant was worth accepting *if one person was kicked off* could exist. Is the idea that she is so bad that she will exercise a kind of anti-expertise? That seems like a strong claim.
Part of our remit was to assess the ability of the team to do the work. There can't be a weak link. She was going to get paid a lot of money and clearly would not contribute, so the funder could just cut that chunk of salary (and travel support and clerical support) but that opens the door to backlash. We liked the project but in a hypercompetitive setting., applicants' first job is to not get culled on the first round by the reviewers. Having a weaker team is not a good thing :)
Thanks for the nudge, @Philosophy Bear!
Ahh right, that makes sense.
The requirement that every grant has a woman on it is a bit of an odd overreach because in a heavily gender-skewed field, and with a small team, gives very little evidence of ill will, and even a positive attempt at inclusion can come up short.
Additionally claims [0] made that the number of Woke/DEI grants increased from 2021 to 2022 (by implausible margins, 0%->16%) were caused by the full grant text not being available on the web in 2021 and then available in 2022...[1]. A basic sanity check could find these sorts of things...
[0]https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1844209151406202993
[1] https://x.com/TrevorVossberg/status/1856226251289006198
I am a scientist who has received funding from NSF, among other agencies.
I agree very strongly with this post. Thankfully my grants didn't make this particular list, but under the old system it was very much encouraged to talk up any chances that you might help out minorities etc. Most scientists do think it would be good to help minorities and try to do so when the opportunity presents itself, but it's not our main job and most people just added some boilerplate to make the proposals look good.
I am in the 'business' of selling scientific research to the government. The government said they wanted me to emphasize anything I might do to help minorities, and so I did that. Now they don't want me to, so okay I won't. I mostly want to do science. I am good at it and it is my contribution to "making America great".
The comments saying "well just don't fund them this time so they'll stop doing that" are depressing for two reasons. First, it seems egregiously unfair to set out some rules, people follow those rules, then you change the rules and accuse the people who followed them of bad behavior. You're the one who changed the rules! Second, these comments assume that we have other resources - we do not. If my funding runs out, then I'm unemployed and it's the end of my career as a scientist. I think people are imagining scientists as very well off people, but it's actually a fairly precarious insecure position and doesn't pay especially well. People mostly do it because they enjoy the intellectual challenge of it and because it is a rewarding to use ones talents to contribute to the store of human knowledge and is a benefit to society.
The new wisdom that it’s self evidently bad to want to help minorities or women seems a lot worse than some „woke“ boilerplate. What happened to „free speech“? The problem with woke was that it was causing a lot of hypocrisy and people resented having to be performative. But most Americans actually agree with the basic premise that it’s good to help people who were dealt a shitty hand at birth.
It strains credulity to imagine that being born as a black person or woman in the United States is being given a bad hand
Do you think it is a more privileged position than being born a straight white make in the United States?
My guess is that the average black child born today is at most a moderately less privileged position than the comparable white child. The average girl born today probably has a better position than the average boy.
*the key here is comparing only Americans
Didn't JD Vance say that the only relevant group to compare to is other Americans? Our duty is to other Americans not to people in other countries, so, to be consistent, those other people should be excluded from these comparisons.
JD Vance says many things, that was certainly one of them.
It's less privileged in any meaningful sense than being born a woman in the US. https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/rise-of-the-matriarchy
I read this whole thing waiting for you to get to your defense of why the U.S. is a matriarchy only to reach the last paragraph, where you called your headline "provocative" and said you really wished that "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" were used less.
Of course it is. Look at the ratio of people falsely claiming to be black to those falsely claiming to be white.
Do you have those numbers? Black people trying to “pass” as white are pretty common, but I’m only aware of one white person who has ever claimed to be black.
Whose credulity? Maybe in daily life there isn't much difference for some people, but when it comes to things such as the likelihood of being pulled over by a cop, the likelihood of being arrested, injured or killed as a result of that traffic stop I'd call that a bad hand. There are still persistent wage gaps of -87% and -84% respectively. The historical odds of serving as president are 2 in 67 (if i counted the member of presidential terms correctly) for black people and 0 in 67 for women. You and i might disagree about what constitutes "moderately".
Comparing groups of Americans to other groups of Americans yields some differences sure, but I would not generally describe them as being dealt a bad hand by life.
That title has to be reserved for people born in exceptionally bad circumstances, like the huge percentage of people born in extreme poverty across the world.
Do you also oppose your local soup kitchen on the grounds that it's helping hungry but well-off Americans rather than even more impoverished people in other countries? This seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
I'm not that extreme, but a part of me does feel like those are wastes of time all things considered. It's not really an isolated demand for rigor because all charities are not equal and some are more effective than others.
For women, they are advantaged in that they face less violence, less punishment for the same crimes, have easier admissions into schools, preference in hiring, have favorable divorce laws, and don’t have to work as much for the same consumption level.
The child poverty rates aren’t hard to look up and say you’re wrong, although both are better off than Native Americans.
Because they're more interested in signaling their ideology than reflecting on reality.
Your credulity must strain easily then. Are there areas in life where people will go out of your way to smooth your path if you're black or female? Yes, certainly. Are those areas the only things that matter? Hardly.
A person's "hand" in life depends on a great many things, but at a zoomed out level probably THE most important is the socioeconomic circumstances of your birth: how much money does your family have, what careers are they in, where do they live, who do they know, that sort of thing. That doesn't map perfectly to race: a white guy born into an unemployed family in a poverty-stricken town in Oklahoma is looking at a tough ride for sure. But *on average* knowing nothing but skin color, you're way the heck more likely to start in a good place if your skin is pale than if it's dark.[1]
As for being a woman, that's harder for me to say. Obviously that's not going to correlate with socioeconomic status at all, so that's one big factor removed. But I've had a lot of women I know (and read a lot from others) about less-visible cultural factors, crap that they have to deal with that I never have. It is very hard to make any sort of a principled estimate of how that will affect their overall life prospects, but clearly the amount is not zero.
EDIT: looks like I missed part of your point: " born in the U.S." compared to "born elsewhere." Looking over the whole planet is a different story: I'd say *most* people born in the U.S. are more-fortunate-than-the-global-average, but far from all. In many ways its hard to do comparisons. At any rate, I don't really think it's a very consequential question when framed that way: U.S. domestic politics has always been mostly about re-arranging the interior of the country, so this sort of question has rather limited relevance.
[1] There is a fair argument to be made that most or all of the anti-racism stuff should instead be focused on anti-poverty and anti-classism. Though in the U.S. in practice, it's mostly the same people opposing both, so the point is often moot.
> What happened to „free speech“?
The same thing that always happens: one side gets to speak, the other must stay silent. Why destroy perfectly useful circuitry when you can just flip the polarity?
Race and gender are worse predictors of whether you were dealt a shitty have at birth than many more readily available ones. That openly discriminating based on race and sex - call it what it is - is becoming seen as bad is actually the silver lining here.
"The new wisdom that it’s self evidently bad to want to help minorities or women "
That's not the new wisdom. That's the new "you're a racist" and means as little. It's the new shield for those who did want to pollute the wells. '*All* I wanted was to help the unfortunate, but you cancelled my grant because you hate the poor!
No, your grant got cancelled because you were churning out rubbish.
It's self-evidently bad to *discriminate*, and the willful ignorance about this distinction is a big part of how we got a second round of Trump.
Also, is it a "shitty hand" to be born a woman? How misogynistic are you?
I mean come on, it's hard to deny that they got completely screwed over by evolution. They're basically doomed to be at the mercy of their counterparts forever.
Yeah, I am thankful I don't have to carry the big gametes.
This comment should be elevated. A scientist without money to keep the lab going is basically unemployed.
Also, once you’re out, you’re out. You can’t get back in the game with a big gap in your CV.
The median salary for a US scientist is $107k, not including benefits. For the median us citizen, their salary is $48k. Yes, you are rich. Yes, some portion of your salary is tax monies from people poorer than you.
Median household income in the US is about $80k, which is about what a junior scientist makes. $107k is not exactly wealthy - probably most people commenting here make significantly more. Also, probably a below average salary compared to most people who get government contracts.
One of my neighbors is a police officer and another works for the department of sanitation; both make more than I do and get a pension when they retire. If Ted Cruz cuts my funding, I hope to become a garbageman.
Scientist is a solid job that I like doing, but it's not one that is leading people to strong financial positions.
You've confused median and mean. I intentionally used median because the mean is brought up by extreme wealth inequality. No, $107k is extremely wealthy. Anyone who doesn't realize that is delusional about how most Americans live.
Yes. I wouldn't necessarily agree that $107K is *extremely* wealthy, but it's approximately 33% higher than 80K, which is stated as household income versus individual income. So it is, by the definition of a median, "exactly" wealthy.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-282.html
"Real median household income was $80,610 in 2023"
Please read carefully and do not assume the people you are replying to are too stupid to know the difference between median and mean.
Household income is not personal income.
Here's the BLS data.
"Median weekly earnings of the nation's 120.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,192 in the fourth quarter of 2024 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today."
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.nr0.htm
You compared household income to salary instead of salary v salary, likely purposefully. Your number is higher because household income often includes multiple salaries
First, I don't think it really matters. The point is that if you cause a bunch of scientists to lose their jobs, they won't be doing science in their free time and they won't be coming back - you'll lose most of your research workforce.
Second, I do think household income is the more relevant number. Median individual income is also biased as it includes people who are very young, very old, work part time, attending school, and so on. Both numbers are biased in opposite directions. My household income is my income and it seems fair to extrapolate that.
The respondent was pointing out that your depiction of your profession - "a fairly precarious insecure position and doesn't pay especially well" - is wrong, and that, actually, the paycheck is relatively good and, moreover, is made up of contributions from many people who make substantially less. That fact remains true no matter how you try to wrangle over the right number to use
The first point is a matter of philosophical difference. Lose them to what? I don't take it for granted that whatever they're doing now (a state-directed deployment of their labour funded by tax dollars) would necessarily be substantially or at all less than whatever alternatives they would end up doing
The median household is a two income household. You make more than the Average American family with two incomes.
>If my funding runs out, then I'm unemployed and it's the end of my career as a scientist.
I'd say that this here is the crux of the matter. Either science is actually useful and VCs should be competing to fund it, or it's just vanity subsidies.
Have you heard of this thing called "basic research"? It took roughly 40 years from the first work on artificial neural networks to the point where everyone's ecstatic about deep learning and LLMs, with no guarantee whatsoever that it would end up like that. Find a VC willing to sponsor that.
Well, maybe you could, but the pitches you'd have to write in the first 30 years would have to be so delusionally over-optimistic that a few lines in the "broader impact" statement are not even detectable in comparison.
Also, lots of research are really relevant for the public good, but not easy to monetize. Why would a VC company sponsor weather monitoring systems to track and understand climate change?
Well yes, this is my point. Right now there's no good way to evaluate whether any particular 'basic' research would provide 'public good' any time soon, if ever, so why should taxpayers fund it?
Because on average it's good (for the taxpayers) that it gets done, even if the impact of each individual project is uncertain. And it's especially good when the results are accessible to everyone, which they wouldn't be if the work were commercially sponsored.
>Because on average it's good (for the taxpayers) that it gets done
Suppose this was true 50 years ago but no longer is today, how would you be able to tell?
>And it's especially good when the results are accessible to everyone
I guess they largely are, but we have to thank SciHub for that, not the government billions.
How would I be able to tell? Well, where are the countries with exclusively privately sponsored research that surpass the ones with extensive public research?
Also, it's news to me that SciHub pays for the expenses of the scientists whose papers are published there.
> so why should taxpayers fund it?
For the same reason that angel investors fund startups, even though 95% of them fail and it's impossible to predict ahead of time which 5% are going to succeed.
Also for the same reason you encourage kids to experiment with a whole bunch of different things, even though when they grow up they will only stick with a few of them if any.
And also for the same reason that you dig a hole in the ground to place foundations, even though after the skyscraper is built you will be living in the penthouse and not the cellar, and even though that is somewhat different reason to the above.
Holy capitalist ideology! You truly believe that any useful science must be privately profitable?
Imagine for example a world in which some herbal extract halves the severity of infections with Covid, H5N1, or whatever the next pandemic is. Studying this is hugely beneficial to the public but not at all profitable because you can't patent a herb. Government-funded research into it saves lives for pennies and could never be done by VCs.
...Honestly, what's your problem? You spent the last decade complaining about leftist rot in academia, and now an administration has finally come to solve the problem by commiting a political purge of academia. Why aren't you happy about this? You can talk about IQ as much as you want, and no one will be able to cancel you anymore. Enjoy your newfound freedom, for goodness's sake.
I think he cares more about science than about the “freedom” of losing your funding if you use the wrong words.
People were already losing their funding for using the wrong words! Nothing is changing except that the new status quo is way better if you're a white male.
Why is that worth supporting?
...Because you're a white male, and you're interested in your own well-being and agency?
I’m not a white male. I don’t think the new status quo is better for white males either. It’s just better for people who don’t talk about anyone who isn’t a white make.
God forbid people have principles other than naked self-interest.
> Nothing is changing
Exactly. The banwheels are turning in the opposite direction now, but the complaint was about the mechanism existing at all. Of course we're not going to stop complaining. We wanted the machinery destroyed, not repurporsed.
It is NEVER going to be destroyed as long as humanity lives. Why can't you just be happy that the system benefits you now? You can't realistically ask for anything more than that.
This is just completely false. There was no politically appointed, woke bureaucrat under Biden, ensuring that non-woke grants don’t get funded. I know anti-woke warriors want to imagine that this is how it worked, but as both a grantee and a reviewer who doesn’t work on anything remotely political, it’s just not true. There are now several arms of the Trump administration that are actively banning grants that they think is woke. They want you to think this is all just symmetrical payback, but it absolutely is not.
How confident are you that you could identify a "politically appointed, woke bureaucrat" if you saw one? Maybe they just look like nonpartisan dedicated public servants full of "basic human decency" to you.
Conversely, if you assume there are secret enemies everywhere, no one is going to ever be able to convince you that each individual is innocent. Assuming that all government employees are an enemy is not an effective way to run a government.
I've been seeing the weirdest failure mode in rat adjacent circles; people just really clinging to the scales on their eyes about this.
This is an offshoot of 'The Cruelty Is The Point'.
Woke is just a shiboleth that drips out of their mouth into the ears of the faithful, as it were; just like it is a cargo cult ritual performed by scientists who statistically believe in the principles but don't believe in the ritual, for political institutions that don't believe in the principle but do believe in the ritual.
Ted Cruz probably doesn't give a shit so 50/50 anything happens, but Ted Cruz also doesn't give a shit if any research is ever done again, so 50/50 something does happen.
„The liberals (they said) had so carefully sunk their tentacles into everything“ When you confuse what we used to call Christian values like charity, grace, humility, compassion and temperance with „liberal“ then you will see „liberal tentacles“ everywhere in America. It’s ironic how the Evangelicals and Trad Catholics in particular seem completely unchristian in their commitment to nihilism and cruelty.
Hey, Hannes, don't you know that privileging one religion over another is bigotry and discrimination? As well as introducing religious values into secular spaces? You show a distinct lack of empathy and tolerance by claiming those values are "Christian"!
Those people who have made a stand on "religion bad" can't then turn around and go "this is really religious, you guys just don't know what your own religion is".
Sorry, that's a fatuous comment. The Christian virtues aren't up for debate, they have been an explicit part of Church dogma for several millennia. And if I, as a Catholic, am not particularly tolerant of Protestant sects and heresies, I am not going to apologize for that. Tolerance of false beliefs and nihilism has never been an explicit Christian virtue.
Sorry, but Catholicism is in fact correct. This being said, I already display a great deal of niceness, tolerance and civilization towards heretics.
Broad, vague concepts like that aren't the "tentacles" that are being talked about, it's about a particular bunch of human parasites as much as it is their ideology. If every program and grant was required to have some element that was about increasing reverence for God, and an enormous class of ministers was being produced by colleges every year, and every project is bringing those people in at a nice cushy six-figure salary to show that you were serious about reverence for God, and every government institution down to the Poughkeepsie post office had a Christian minister on staff to show their commitment to revering God, and throwing money at a Christian organization was a way to up your ESG rating, you would think we were living in a theocracy and nonbelievers would be railing at this priestly class as vile mooches. And if Christians were a minority in the country, it would be even more outlandish.
That's all we're saying for the DEI crowd, they are entitled to their beliefs, but they are not entitled to act as a priestly caste, to have the public give them lavish salaries and fund their proselytizing, to keep inventing more and more posts to elevate these useless midwits into. It's a philosophy that sees every action in the context of power structures, and so they have sunk their claws into every power structure in America, and when they see something that lays outside their control they either conquer it directly or force it to pay tribute by hiring some of their priestly caste (who will eventually conquer it from within.) To do that for a popular ideology would be ugly, to do that for an unpopular one like this is outright hostile to the citizenry.
We do do that with Christians, to a certain extent; and we already do do that with mediocre (mainly) white guys [I've seen a decent amount of mediocre latino guys, due to location].
The amount of 90 IQ bosses I've had in trade who didn't know anything about trade, didn't know anything about management, but did know heaps about cheating on their wives with sex workers and were very skilled in being friends with the owners mediocre son is such that N approaches 1.
Who could possibly be more parasitical than the 10000 and 1 descendants of some guy who struck it rich in 1850; and thus blighted us with an infinite chain of dummies that nonetheless get to decide how you live and die?
There is no default 'fair' state of society except the state of nature where if I see you have a nice car or whatever I club you over the head and take it, before getting tboned by a grizzly bear (the best at taking sick whips, the worst and driving them).
"This is what the American people want out of their government! They kicked out the last government because it couldn’t provide!"
It may be wishful thinking, but I think Republicans could build a sustainable governing majority if they clearly dedicated to good governance. Unfortunately, I don't think we can even get a simulation of this from the current administration. I'm afraid it will be a long wait to get a nominee from either party who is fundamentally serious about governing.
We’ve had several in recent years, between Obama, Romney, Biden, and Harris, and almost had another in Nikki Haley.
Harris? Now I know you're joking.
Or Biden lol.
I don't think Harris appeared to be very serious about good governance. Which wouldn't preclude her from having governed well IF she was surrounded by a bunch of smart, capable and sane people. I think normie Dems tended to just assume that was the case, this "west wing" mythology that all the best people from the best schools with the best intentions must obviously be hanging around in droves in any Democrat administration. But that doesn't seem to have been the case during Biden/Harris, who inherited the dregs of Obama's leftovers and then filled out the team with box-checking halfwits like KJP.
Romney was a fundamentally serious and competent person, probably the most competent person to run for President by either party in my entire lifetime, and he did have a chance, but that was a very different world. And if he had won, and had gotten serious about good governance, inevitably there would still have been *some* screw up by somebody in his admin (can you believe John Sununu flew to a stamp auction at Christie's at public expense and this was once a big enough scandal to joke about for months?) and the legacy media would've jumped on it to discredit and derail the whole thing.
Ole "Binders full of women" Romney? How long after his failed election bid did it take you to warm up to the idea?
Biden and Harris were not fundamentally serious.
I was in favor of the “binders full of women” line! I didn’t like his remarks about the 47%, and I obviously preferred Obama, but he seemed like he cared about the issues. Even at the time it was clear to me that it was the election with the least gap in how much I preferred one candidate over the other (despite me being a big fan of Obama).
He cared about the issues... unless you were in that 47%, in which case he saw you as a useless eater.
I cast the one "lesser evil" vote of my life against Romney, and all I can say about him and the political movement he represented (if DOGE isn't just cover to resurrect it) is "good riddance"
Donald Trump is a hard negotiator. He had someone ghost write a whole book about it. You reviewed that book.
Hard negotiators do stupid things that work sometimes, because behavioral psychology is dumb but often true. One of the things they do is to lead by asking for everything, so that you anchor on "everything", and giving them "half the things" still feels like a win for you.
Can you honestly, confidently say that by 2026 or 2027, it wouldn't feel like a win for the Democrats or their constituents or this comment section, if someone got back half of USAID or saved the Department of Education at 60% the old budget?
So I think DEI was cut in a simple way in part because they were lazy, but *also* in part because maybe they end up getting half of what they ask for and their opponents get to feel like that was a win.
This isn’t a Biden administration effort. The random references in these abstracts to broadening participation in STEM are in response to requirements in NSF calls that predate Biden.
For example, NSF’s computing arm’s effort to broaden participation in computing (BPC) required most grant applications to have a BPC plan. The most recent iteration of that BPC program launched under Trump in July 2017, following recommendations from a 2012 strategic plan. https://www.nsf.gov/cise/broadening-participation
Moreover, it’s in NSF’s authorizing statute itself! All proposals are evaluated on intellectual merit and broader impacts. By law, the latter includes “Expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.”
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:42%20section:1862p-14%20edition:prelim)
Not saying I agree with this move or that it will work, but you could characterize this as a form of collective punishment meant to dissuade academia, particularly the parts of academia that have nothing to do with culture or social issues, from injecting borderline cultural propaganda into everything they do.
Yes it's true that many of them were following the incentives laid down by the previous administration. But in this particular case I think we have to recognize that wokeness/DEI mostly originated in academia before migrating to politics and the Biden administration. Or at least academia were equal partners in pushing it.
Perhaps that's a long winded way of saying you reap what you sow, and if you let some rot into your institution then the next guy who comes along might want to tear it all out and replace it.
It is not "unfair collective punishment" to say "if we give an institution public money to do a job" and it shows itself incapable of doing that task properly (and instead allows itself to be hijacked for ridiculous partisan ends), to be more restrictive about giving it money / cut its funding / impose more restrictions upon it. Something like this is the only credible long run equilibrium.
If you have a child, and give them money to pay for music lessons, and keep hearing that they use the money to buy alcohol instead, you cut off their money. It's pretty simple. Organisations that betray public trust lose what that trust had granted them.
A weapon is only bad when it's the other side using it.
Yup. If your institution lets the barbarians inside the gates, lets them run rampant and completely hijack substantial parts of it, there will be payback. You can't just say "well, keep funding the good parts". At the very minimum it's going to take time to root the bad stuff out and until that happens the public *should* be less willing to fund your institution.
This is a very good reason to resist the barbarians in the first place!
Someone who ignores history is a barbarian
Thank you for your delightful contribution.
>You can't just say "well, keep funding the good parts". At the very minimum it's going to take time to root the bad stuff out
Is there a reason you can't take time to identify the bad stuff *before* you cut funding, rather than making a fool of yourself when you publish a list that claims cancer research is actually woke?
This administration has an absurd case of "do it now"-itis. It doesn't matter if the thing you're doing is good or bad, only woke girly men actually think about the consequences of their actions.
a) Isn't publishing this list part of "identifying the bad stuff *before* you cut funding"? They pretty explicitly ask for feedback it reads to me!
b) People like you keep bringing up cancer as if its the representative example in this dataset. What % of the money in these grants was for cancer research would you say?
If you don’t want people to inject propaganda into their science, you shouldn’t be canceling their science grants because it had the wrong propaganda. You shouldn’t be *ignoring* the propaganda. Because otherwise you’re just telling them they need to try twice as hard to inject propaganda that will please *you*.
a) I think there is a typo here, the first two sentences seem to contradict
b) Guessing what you mean, er no. We're not just gonna roll over. You can't continually abuse public trust and then say "ceasefire, you can't punish us now".
This doesn't sound right and I'm not sure this is the right comparison. I suspect Cruz is missing a lot of woke stuff to cut.
The initial list provided is 3,400 grants, of which 40%, or roughly 1,100, are probably woke. But it's not 1,100 woke grants out of 3,400, it's 1,100 grants out of all the grants NSF gave over the Biden administration, right? From their website (1) it looks like they gave 11,000 grants in 2024. So, not my area of expertise, but then we're presumably looking at 1,100 woke grants out of a guestimated 44,000 total for the four years of the Biden Administration. That's roughly 2.5%, which seems absurdly low. That means there's probably a lot more out there that this isn't catching.
It's also hard to justify people adding in woke terms to help get their research funded when, apparently, the overwhelming majority of their peers, over 40,000 of them, got grants without tripping Cruz's system.
Actually, it looks like the entire thing (2) is available as a postgres sql database (3. Has anybody played with this data before?
(1) https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget#financial-reporting-cd6
(2) https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/national-science-foundation?fy=2024
(3) https://onevoicecrm.my.site.com/usaspending/s/database-download
The efficiency improvements from replacing all these politicians with even half-decent AI would be insane. Too bad it will never play out that way.
As a DOC employee, I feel obligated to make a pedantic correction: this list is from the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Department of Commerce had nothing to do with it.
What have you got against STEM scholarships and mentorship targeting Native Americans in Montana? Why is it especially 'cringe'?
Government funded programs should not have the goal of helping some specific racial group. In addition to the moral component where I think racism like this is bad, I would also argue it is illegal under the 14th Amendment.
I disagree here, which is why I am so disgusted to find myself in broad agreement with Ted Cruz. I think something like the Montana programme, which smuggles in "and we might also help poor white kids" under the aegis of "this is to help smart Native American kids" is indeed a public good. It's a pity they had to downplay the "poor white kids as well" bit, but Native Americans are a marginalised and deprived community who could use the help. Getting the smart kids into education and good jobs will help them and their families and community down the road. It's not like a cushy grifter job like "help me get into the Ibrahim X. Kendi anti-racism department".
Helping poor kids is a race neutral goal that I don’t have a problem with. But when you include a goal to help a specific racial group, you’ve passed into the territory of government sponsored racism which I consider both immoral and illegal.
I essentially think we should use the standard from discrimination law that says you can’t use a race-neutral process if your goal in doing so is in fact racially motivated. Consider the following hypothetical grant: “We decided to give a benefit to every child under the poverty line in XYZ County [i.e., we are using a race-neutral method of participant selection]. We selected XYZ County because it is 95% white, so we can be sure our grant is helping the white community. [i.e., our intention in using this race neutral method is racially motivated]” I think there would be outrage about such a grant, rightly so, and I don’t doubt that a court would immediately strike it down. All I want is to apply that standard to all racial groups equally.
I agree. We should shift from racial based to poverty based bias in public aid .
The beetle-proposal should be rejected, as awfully written. Sounds like a project of high school students or sth. I might have written, ie subpar. There is A! for that. Otoh , interesting. ;)
Overall, my take is: The Biden admin forced all of them to play "woke". Bad.
At least the beetle thing is about living organisms so it might accidentally stumble over something useful in biology. The IoT thing is just nuts. If it's something that would be superior to what is currently on offer, that would be commercially viable and private industry would want to throw money at it. If they're not, I'm very dubious that it's anything more than "Well I need *something* to work on for my PhD".
While I personally cannot stand IoT products, they must be pretty dang profitable for companies to push them into every $#%@ing home appliance. It may however not be profitable to make those appliances hard to hack, which is what this research is about. I can imagine the US govt taking an interest in whether Chinese spies can listen to a US general's conversations through his wife's lamp or something.
Even then, it'd be cheaper to phase in a regulation on the companies involved and have them self-fund the research needed.
despite the click bait title
your own research shows
that at least half of the grants were for political crap
and that even the other innocent half of research had to pretend to be woke in order to get money
and americans should be fine with that? why?
This is not half of the grants - it is half of the tiny fraction of grants that Ted Cruz called woke. Most grants didn’t even make the list, and Ted Cruz couldn’t even find enough woke ones to make a full list.
what’s the fraction kenny?
and “it’s not woke if he didn’t really mean it” is not a real argument for the NSF
the whole problem was that even the none woke felt they need to bend their ass to get the money
So the solution is to make them bend their ass to the new language police instead of the old language police? I’m starting to think it’s not that Trump dislikes language police - it’s that he thinks the wrong language police were in power.
...You're just starting to think that?? He hasn't exactly been subtle about his disdain for the press, you know.
It’s an understatement for dramatic purposes.
The list was supposed to be 100% political crap! If Ted Cruz gave you a list of 10 squares and there were five circles in it would you feel better or worse about his ability to recognize shapes afterward?
I am allergic to metaphors
according to our esteemed host SA the cruz list contains (40+20)% original woke and 40% sheep in woke clothing
with some very few examples of false positives
so the cruz crew has ~100% success at the detecting wokness either when it is intrinsic or when it is added artificially to pacify the blue haired land whales and calcified karens of the NSF
so why is the failure of NSF commissars to detect woke drag relevant ?
"Woke drag" is pretty metaphorical for a guy who is allergic to them! Are the land whales actual whales? Let me know if you need your literal epi-pen to reopen your airway.
If you're giving credit to Ted Cruz for a boilerplate sentence about increasing the number of women in STEM or whatever in an article that appears to have been caught because it used the prefix "cis" in a non-woke context I think you're just—not literally, don't worry—a very cheap date for this stuff.
"Staggeringly easy" for one of the smartest guys in the US, staggeringly difficult for a mid-level bureaucrat not versed in right wing Vs left wing sociology battles like yourself. Just because we both probably tend to right wing sociology there are two issues.
1. it's all sociology, which is very subjective.
2. you don't seem to understand a very basic but if economics, the law of competitive advantage. Control freaks suffer a similar lack of understanding. The American economy is superb at getting/training low-skilled, low IQ, people to do simple but essential tasks.
I am a PI on an NSF grant. I know exactly how the "meaningless sentence" in these grant abstracts came to be there, and even if the sentence seems out-of-place or silly, the aspect of the grant-making process that lead to sentence being there is actually a good and important thing.
Under practices that have been in place since 1997, NSF grant proposals are evaluated on two criteria, "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts." Broader Impacts are impacts of the grant activities outside of academia. Some fields of research lend themselves to obvious broader impacts (e.g., cancer research leading to improved treatments), and others less so, at least on the timescale of a 3-year standard grant (e.g., theoretical physics). But, regardless of the immediate applicability of their research, all scientists and mathematicians can do outreach and public engagement activities like visiting K-12 schools, running programs like summer camps and science fairs, making science YouTube videos, writing a blog, and so on. Grant applicants include these activities under the "Broader Impacts" section of their proposal. The public abstract (the text Scott has quoted from for the awards mentioned in this post) must mention the Broader Impacts, and that is the source of the "meaningless sentence" that Scott identifies in these proposals.
Most universities primarily reward professors with tenure and promotion for research publications and grants, with teaching and "service" (committee work and professional service such as refereeing papers) being other required, but less important, parts of the job. There is little time or university resources being put toward scientists engaging with the public outside of the walls of the university, because the university does not make money off of such activities. Professors are very busy people and can't usually find time to do extra work that doesn't benefit them professionally. Nonetheless, it is a huge public good to have scientists and mathematicians talking about science and math in the public square and in K-12 schools.
On its face, it's weird to insert a statement about K-12 outreach or gender equity into a grant about countering security exploits in IoT devices. (One imagines it's a little less weird in the actual proposal, where there's a Broader Impacts section that's typically a few pages long and contains a detailed description of what the PI actually plans to do, not just buzzwords.) But this is the current system's way of capturing a little bit of the massive positive externality of public outreach and engagement by academics. These are activities that (many) professors want to do but are not incentivized to do by their departments or universities. By making Broader Impacts part of the grant evaluation process, and including public outreach and engagement not strictly related to the research topic under the Broader Impacts umbrella, the NSF provides some actual incentive for these activities, in the form of money to the professors and their universities (including F&A overhead).
The degree to which some Broader Impacts activities are or are not woke is largely a matter of branding. I've seen programs for gifted kids in wealthy white neighborhoods billed as "broadening participation of underrepresented minorities" and so on, and I've seen a program serving a low-income majority-black community purposely avoid DEI language because it's located at a fairly conservative institution in a conservative state. But, to be clear, the current Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) lists "full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)" as one of its (many!) "examples of societally relevant outcomes" under the Broader Impacts umbrella. As a consequence, a typical NSF proposal will include some mild DEI language in its Broader Impacts section. A review of the actual proposal texts (not just the public abstracts) using Cruz's apparent criteria would flag many more proposals, perhaps a majority of all proposals.
One other thing I'd like to make clear: NSF grants directly pay many people's salaries, including many non-tenure-track people without other sources of income. These include people in postdocs and graduate fellowships directly administered by NSF and grant-funded positions administered by universities and labs. Whether a grant contains woke language or not may have little to do with the work a postdoc or grad student funded under that grant is doing. However, a postdoc or grad student funded by a grant containing woke language is more likely to be a woman or a member of a minority group, and if so, they may have been encouraged to apply for the position due to their gender or race. University hiring is highly merit-focused (for a definition of merit overly skewed toward publication output), and the preferred outcome for a typical university department is to hire the best people (according to their metric) and put those that fit into DEI-shaped boxes. Also, language about inclusivity on a grant may (sometimes!) indicate a research group or lab that is actually friendly and inclusive, and such a group attracts both more people in general and more people that have faced discrimination and harassment and are trying to avoid those things.
If NSF-funded positions are eliminated based on DEI language, the NSF will be defunding (essentially, firing) a bunch of early-career researchers who are mostly doing the same science as everyone else, but maybe are also passionate about mentoring science fair projects in under-performing schools or something, and maybe were told to apply for a job with "diversity" in the description because of their gender or race even though they could have gotten a similar job without "diversity" in the description.
I am, in fact, fine with proposals that are "we are doing this to get more women/minorities into STEM" but stuff about "outreach to kindergarten minority kids about security exploits in the IoT" are not what I would expect to have any impact in fact. Who is more likely to have those kind of IoT items - well-off white liberals or black kids from households on free school lunches? That's what is griping a lot of people.
The Montana grant application is fine, because it's upfront about what it wants to do and it might even have a snowball in Hell's chance of getting kids off the rez into science (and a few poor white rural kids by the way as well). The BRAIN thing is not, because it's so vague: who exactly is it trying to help? in what? how? What neurological injuries that minority people suffer from more? What it sounds like is "I have a cool project for playing with robots that I might be able to parlay into a fatcat job in private industry, but that won't get me funding so I'll throw in that it's all for the sake of thinking about the children, sorry, I mean "underrepresented minorities". I'd love if it did something about "people are getting older and living longer, so are people with brain injuries and mental illness and other shit, we need to incorporate technology in how we diagnose and treat that" but it tails off into all this pie-in-the-sky stuff about "BRAIN leverages wide-ranging expertise from neural, cognitive and rehabilitation engineering to neurorobotics, neuromodulation, and ethical artificial intelligence to enhance the rate of development and empirical validation of new neurotechnologies through partnerships with industry and other strategic partners while developing a highly skilled workforce".
"Gimme money for my pet project because, uh, we're Hispanic-serving" is not persuasive.
It may not be persuasive, but is it anti-persuasive? I saw elsewhere you commented that you were in broad agreement with Ted Cruz and think proposals like the IoT thing are undeserving of funding. Note that that's not even what Cruz is proposing--we don't really know how many proposals on IoT items without woke buzzwords *are* being funded, and Cruz hasn't suggested reexamining those. Should IoT proposals be penalized solely for woke buzzwords?
> Nonetheless, it is a huge public good to have scientists and mathematicians talking about science and math in the public square and in K-12 schools.
I agree that we should have some folks getting the public & kids excited about science, but does it need to be the same people doing cutting-edge research? Bill Nye the Science Guy is a much better science educator than your average physics grad student. We don't make elementary math teachers spend two weeks per year writing math journal articles.
One of my general complaints with the university research system is that, to reach a certain level (professor / PI), you must be both good at research AND extroverted enough to handle science outreach, lab management, and of course, opaque grant-writing word games. This necessarily selects against folks who are very good at research but stereotypically introverted.
I appreciate your effort, but sometimes it feels like you're cosplaying as an objective viewer
Feels like a lot of folks on here are talking past each other; curious if maybe how people rank the following outcomes might be a factor:
A. A woke study that aims to stop cancer doesn’t get funded
B. A non woke study that aims to stop cancer doesn’t get funded
C. A woke study on bullshit gets funded
D. A non woke study on bullshit gets funded
People who don’t take issue with Cruz’s list essentially seem to be saying that C is worse than A— while people who do take issue with Cruz’s list seem to be a mix of people saying A is worse than C, and people saying “oh my god regardless of how you rank A it’s clearly still bad that that’s happening why don’t you just read your own list it’s not that hard to avoid A”.
B also seems to regularly be brought up as an attack on the Biden approach— I agree B is bad but in practice it seems like scientists figured out how to avoid B pretty quickly on, and it was replaced by
B*: A non woke group of scientists pays lip service to wokeness to get funding
which while still bad seems way less bad than the other ones.
Your list leaves out: "A woke study that aims to stop cancer _does_ get funded". I think that's a negative! It leads to bad incentives which is worse than any individual study getting funded or not.
Start with these 2 beliefs:
* All "good" studies don't have to be woke (i.e. any "good" study could be changed to be non-woke and at will be at least as effective).
* Some bullshit studies can only be woke. There's no way to make them non-woke.
By approving woke good studies you're allowing bullshit studies to exist that should be easily excludable. By excluding all woke studies you will, at the margin, approve fewer bullshit studies with no downsides.
Belief #1 isn't completely accurate, but I think it's close enough that the idea holds.
Yeah-- it doesn't exactly leave that out, but it being the inverse of A, if you hold that that is bad then you think A is *good*. That is a perfectly consistent belief to hold that would make C worse than A, spending zero time avoiding A reasonable, and make B* worse than A.
Essentially you're saying there's an A* option-- woke scientists make their study non woke-- that they'll figure out. But I think Scott is showing some pretty clear examples of would-be A cases that would at a minimum get delayed many months-- and I have trouble believing that any of the marginal effects in stopping woke studies come anywhere close to the EV of a study aiming to stop cancer being prevented or even just delayed.
I also don't think your two beliefs alone can generate "A is good". Those two beliefs can be held simultaneously with:
* All "good" studies could be woke (i.e. any "good" study could be taught to underrepresented minorities and will be at least as effective)
* Some bullshit studies can only be non-woke (i.e. "let's rank all the races from best to worst"). There's no way to make them woke.
Wokeness, in other words, says little about how good a study could be. To get that, you need another belief
* Academia, as it currently is, is more likely to produce a necessarily woke bullshit study than a necessarily non-woke bullshit study.
which seems plausible. But also contingent-- it's probably not true in the 1830s, for example, which suggests a woke requirement would be net positive in situations where systemic racism is common...
Not that I have particular sympathies for the NSA, but it's possible that this NSF purge has a very similar shape to what happened to them:
https://popular.info/p/the-nsas-big-delete
If you delete documents because they contain the words "bias" or "privilege", you're going to get rid of a lot of IT-security stuff at the core of the NSA mission:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_inclusion_vulnerability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_escalation
"BRAIN will address problems in the neurological space that disproportionately affect underrepresented groups."
At first glance this sounded like race and IQ research.
Anyway, an ethics blog I follow has a couple of posts that argue for the more scorched earth approach. The first is from the blog's host, who has experience in government work and other managment areas, arguing that when the rot goes too deep, you have to dig it all out: https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/02/12/the-meat-axe/
The other one is a guest post which gets deeper into why government spending is so hard to control, and points out that there are a LOT of government contractors besides DOGE that have access to private citizen information: https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/02/13/impoundment-and-other-confounding-obstacles-to-government-fiscal-responsibility/
The blog has its own Open Forum on Fridays. I'll be posting this substack on there tomorrow to see what the commentariat says.
Focusing on the wokeness of it all misses a key point. Applying for grants has always had a "let me write it in such a way such that the grant maker is happy"-component. As a mathematician I can tell you that lots of applications talking about "possible applications" is complete BS. These things are mildly annoying but harmless appeasement is just a part of life.
It is the same as in the Soviet times when textbooks of math and physics had an introduction praising Lenin and the communist party. They just had to be written otherwise they couldn't be published. It didn't affect the content of these textbooks. Apart from certain deviations (e.g., Lysenkoism) STEM in the Soviet Union was solid.
In the same way it would be wrong now to cancel the studies just because they had to write a sentence or two that the current woke ideology required them to write. We have to be more discernible to not throw out good studies with the bad ones.
Another lurker from behind the Iron Curtain here.
Yes, most works from completely unrelated fields had to start with a Lenin quote etc.
The question is, if you want to tolerate or even cultivate this absurdity in the free world. Once scientists get themselves used to fluent doublethink, or at least newspeak, will there be further consequences?
(I can think of at least one: talented people who still have a spine escaping to other jurisdiction, though this is somewhat mitigated by the US being really, really rich.)
Obviously we shouldn't tolerate this nonsense. What I am saying is that we don't need to punish people who had to write these things to get grants. Instead we should punish those who forced to write them. It may be difficult because these things are nebulous, very difficult to establish who forced whom.
But at least now we can all agree that this woke nonsense should be eliminated as soon as possible.
> They can kick out this government too if it also fails at this staggeringly, staggeringly easy task
This assumes "they" will still have a say in their government in the near feature. My prior for this is now slighly smaller than it was, say, a year or two ago.
I was wondering where you even got that quote from, and it turns out Scott edited the post. For posterity, here's the original ending to the post, as seen in the e-mail:
> It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it. But at least if you included the stupid sentence, you could get the grant to cure cancer. It reflects even worse on the Republicans when they propose it for cancellation just because it did include the sentence about minorities.
JUST FUND RESEARCH TO CURE CANCER WITHOUT JUDGING IT ON WHETHER THERE IS A SENTENCE ABOUT MINORITY OUTREACH IN THE GRANT PROPOSAL! This is what the American people want out of their government! They kicked out the last government because it couldn’t provide! They can kick out this government too if it also fails at this staggeringly, staggeringly easy task!
Maybe we need to reintroduce the term Quisling to the language.
Who does it petain to, in this case?
It's one of those irregular words English is so full of. The conjugation goes - I am on the side of good, you are suspect, he/she/it is a quisling.
It looks like it would only take a smart person a week to sort through this stuff. But where are they going to find such a person? Most people who have legible credentials to do this sort of work are, if not woke, at least anti-anti-woke.
I'm sure there are lots of smart conservatives who got discriminated against by Universities who would be willing to do this work, but because they got discriminated against by Universities they don't have legible credentials. How is the government going to tell them apart from a person who merely pretends to be a smart conservatives who got discriminated against by Universities?
Just look through their social media history. It's honestly so nice of everyone to publicly announce their political allegiances. It makes stuff likes this so much easier.
I think they did just that, and selected a suitably loyal person to put in charge of filtering the woke science stuff. But just from looking at social media you can't tell if a person will be competent enough to do the task.
I mean, we can, but a person working for the Trump administration can't. To choose the right guy they have to rely on credentials or on instinct, and in this situation both of those suck.
>his project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial
I'm kind of concerned that this program is getting called woke DEI nonsense, since what it is literally describing is finding high academic achievers and tracking them for better education and opportunities in the future.
That's literally just meritocracy! Finding the talented and giving them opportunities appropriate to their ability! It's literally the exact thing that the anti-woke crowd says DEI is *against*, and the thing they *claim* they want us to be doing all the time!
I understand that it mentions that Native American communities will be helped. But that's because it's a program to help talented impoverished kids, and those communities are very impoverished.
That impoverished communities will be particularly helped by programs to help impoverished kids is just an empirical reality, a mathematical certainty of how any program like this would work even if we assume it is 100% race-blind and impartial.
It's a bit a scary to me that just pointing out the empirical fact that your program to help the poor will end up helping minorities because they are poor is enough to get you censured and immiserated. This feels like a really off-brand position position for this blog to take given basically every other post up to this point, and makes me wonder whether I'm missing something or whether this grant proposal is not being read with the level of charity that's normally expected here.
In discrimination law, it is illegal to use a facially race-neutral process if your true goal in using it is racially motivated. I think we should use a similar standard here. Imagine a grant which said, “we randomly selected participants from XYZ County in a race-neutral way. However, because XYZ County is 90% white, this will have the positive effect of benefitting the white community.” I assume you would be troubled by this, as would I. I don’t see why a different standard should apply for “minority” racial groups. The goals of government funded research should be to help people in a race-neutral way, full stop (except in those edge cases where race might be relevant to a medical treatment or something like that).
> I don’t see why a different standard should apply for “minority” racial groups.
This feels like the standard argument where conservatives say 'You'd be really upset if the law says you can't shoot a camera at a crowd of people, so isn't it hypocritical to favor a law that says can't shoot a gun at a crowd of people?'
As always, the question is the actual and intended consequences of the two policies, not whether you can write a linguistically similar sentence describing the two policies.
Yes, we'd be concerned about a study that touted getting more white people into STEM, because white people are already over-represented in STEM, and there's no indication that getting *proportionally* more white people into STEM would be meritocratic or fix any current systemic problems with the system. We would expect the next marginal white person added to a STEM program to be below-average, because we already got all the good ones up to average *and more*.
Whereas *certain specific* minorities are under-represented in STEM. We would expect the next marginal person from such a group to be above-average, because we haven't gotten to them yet. We would expect that society is missing opportunities in recruitment from these communities, and that these communities are getting worse outcomes than their talent would justify due to systemic lack of opportunity. We would expect a positive benefit from correcting that under-representation.
So yeah, we should not be helping any minority *because* they are a minority. But we should be tailoring policies to have positive consequentialist impacts, and that includes tailoring who they are directed at.
And for reasons that are zero mystery to anyone who isn't pretending not to understand American history, the people who can benefit most from many policies happen to be minorities.
Knowing that this simple empirical fact is true, and then carefully avoiding saying it, and using oblique proxy measure to try to capture it without saying it, is stupid and inefficient. It's ok to target people in a way that will do the most good, and it's ok to say who those people are.
And refusing to target policies where they'll do the most good because doing the most good is 'woke' is... not just stupid, but actively burning utility at teh alter of culture war. It's ridiculous.
(of course, the ultimate dodge anyone who opposes the utility of targeting is forced into is just-world-fallacy by way of HBD. I think this is a pathetically weak and transparently dishonest gambit in this *particular* conversation, but I don't need to attack that position until someone explicitly makes it)
PS: I wouldn't be especially offended or worried about a program saying it will benefit men getting into psychology or nursing programs, if my impression of the gender ratio in those fields is correct. The actual context and consequences are what makes a policy good or bad, not how it is described.
I have several problems with this. First, you are assuming that every racial group has equal abilities (on average!) in every given field. This is just empirically not the case, as even passing familiarity with IQ test scores, etc., shows (and no, reference to differential racial IQ averages does not necessitate "HBD"). There's no reason to expect racial/gender proportionality in any given field, and in fact we should expect the opposite. Given that, I don't see why "representation" or "under-representation" are things we should care about. If your goal is really just to get the best applicants, you don't need to look at the race of applicants whatsoever. Give them a merit-based or at least color-blind test of some kind, take the highest scoring applicants regardless of their race, and simply ignore the racial and gender makeup of the resulting recipient pool.
Second, I strongly doubt you really believe in consequentialism in the area of race relations (but feel free to bite the bullet here--that would be an interesting perspective). The implication of your view is that if I could show that, say, having an all-white research team would produce better research than a more racially diverse one, then it is morally acceptable for the government to mandate that grant recipients have all-white research teams. I don't think you believe that, nor do I. I think because we live in a multiracial society, and because of the horrors of racism in the past, the only way forward is for the government to get out of the racial discrimination game altogether. I think government action should be totally colorblind, even if you can make arguments that here and there we're not getting the empirically "best" outcomes due to colorblind policies.
When Putin was just beginning to consolidate power in Russia, many people preferred to turn a blind eye and focus on how he was suppressing “liberals” (not American liberals, but liberals in the Russian sense, something like American libertarians). They were stupid and cocky, everyone was fed up with them, people blamed them for the disaster of the 90s. Nobody wanted to go with them against Putin.
Now, 25 years later, it's hard to find excuses for the idiocy that struck Russians then. And I see that Americans seem to be embarking on the same path (except that, unlike Russian liberals, Biden has left the American economy in near-perfect shape). In the midst of a constitutional crisis, with a ridiculous proto-dictator wrecking the American political system and on his way to becoming a mere dictator, discussing what is woke and what is not is.... would be funny if it weren't scary.
Right. It is incredible the priorities people here have. I cannot figure out how a bunch of above-average intelligent people have convinced themselves that, what is at worst writing woke shibboleths into grant proposals is a greater evil than culling otherwise valuable science that used those shibboleths. Many people here are actually endorsing defunding cancer research if that helps them “defeat wokeness”.
When writing a comment there's little point in making the same point someone else already made, and there are more ways to be wrong than to be right. Together these seem to lead to a surprisingly large portion of comments being silly, given the expected intelligence level of the commenters.
My significant other works in university research mostly funded by e.g. NIH, NIDA, et al., and in particular is very involved in the grant application processes. My longstanding impression is that name-checking groups described as minority, "marginalized," "under-served," etc. in the package is expected .... or at least perceived to be expected.
I cannot believe that I am being dragged, kicking and screaming and fighting all the way, to the conclusion that Ted feffin' Cruz is in the right on this. Fuck me.
I totally agree with this conclusion:
"Just fund research to cure cancer without judging it on whether there’s a sentence about minority outreach in the grant proposal!"
But what we should be asking, and what should be a public scandal, is: how many proposals were rejected (and how many grifters and scammers instead got grants) because the filtering system decided the pinch of incense to Caesar was not big enough? I was part of a group deciding on grant awards in one job (and I hated every minute of it, because it was literally deciding "do we give this grant to the 101 year old woman or to the liver cancer patient?" since we didn't have the funding to give it to both) and now I have to wonder: what metrics were being used?
I used to laugh about Sam Brinton, but I'm not laughing now, because he was plainly a symptom of the rot. How deep did the rot go? How many grants for cancer research got turned down because they used the outdated or wrong terminology, or none of the terminology at all? Why the hell does it matter if your institution is "Hispanic-serving"? Worse, how many grants got turned down because the algorithm or the Ibrahim X. Kendi trainee decided "Sorry, 'Hispanic' is an outdated and offensive and non-inclusive term, we need it to be 'Latinx'"?
How much damage did DEI and intersectionality do?
Do you see why I am reluctantly (but less and less reluctant as more of this nonsense comes out) behind the DOGE Killdozer? Strip out all the meaningless DEI genuflecting! Absolutely give grants to help Native Americans access STEM education, with the bonus that you're also helping poor rural whites and blacks and non-Native Americans! But drop the pretence that a couple of boilerplate sentences matter a continental damn, and even worse that the entire proposal may be skipped for lack of the boilerplate!
If it makes you feel any better, I did my grant applications without the DEI boilerplate (more out of ignorance than ideological principle) and had no trouble getting funding.
That does make me feel better. But I do wish we had solid evidence about "were grants refused because they didn't have the boilerplate?" though I don't expect we'll get it now.
If we assume that Cruz stuffed all the boilerplate he could possibly find on his list, which seems reasonable given the contents of the list, this then implies that grants not on the list were approved without boilerplate.
I don't have numbers, but we do have Scott's post to help us gauge how large a set that might be: "This post just finds that 40% of the science that Ted Cruz flagged as woke was actually woke. I think this works out to 2-3% of all Biden-era science."
So just based on what is here on this page and literally no other research, I'm going to extrapolate to suggesting that at least 90% of "Biden-era science" was approved without either being actually woke or containing the boilerplate.
> But drop the pretence that a couple of boilerplate sentences matter a continental damn
The purpose of a grant proposal is to explain what it is you intend to accomplish, but /also/ to get given a grant.
For any complex system, whatever the system measures becomes the thing it produces; this effect emerges from the patterns of human motivation just as inevitably as our reality emerges from the laws of physics.
If adding the boilerplate increases the chances of the proposal being accepted by, however tiny, nevertheless a statistically significant amount, proposals will add the boilerplate. It's just how people work; compare e.g. discussions elsewhere in these comments sections of what people are willing to go through and risk for a negligible hope of increasing their kids' IQ by a tiny amount.
This effect happens entirely automatically and without anyone explicitly gating proposals based on the presence or absence of the boilerplate. It cannot be avoided; whatever it is that the new administration turns out to like will end up pandered to. They don't have to explicitly call for this; it will happen, if slower, simply through people looking at what applications succeed and imitating their structure.
So I would not put too much weight on what boilerplate people have attached to proposals in the past or will attach in the future; none of it should lead to despair. Only the actual substance matters.
i am very sympathetic to what you are saying, but also think that indiscriminate broad-brush keyword-based cuts are a solution for a different problem than the problem you describe
...But they may as well also solve 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 problem while they're at it, yes?
The "DOGE Killdozer" amounts to a suspension of the constitutional order and is obviously rampantly corrupt. But grant application processes *were* pretty annoying and inefficient, so, you know, hard to say who's more in the wrong here.
"Just fund research to cure cancer without judging it on whether there’s a sentence about minority outreach in the grant proposal!"
That's the obvious solution. However:
1. Given the length of the typical funding cycle that would take way too long, and wouldn't get picked up by the news--and if it were, given the MSM leans left would be slanted to make the GOP look bad anyway. "Cancer research killed because affects minorities!" or something. If they're going to do that anyway, why bother?
2. The GOP has a working-class, aggressively anti-intellectual base now. If you tell them you're going for more 'natural' approaches a la RFK Jr rather than funding the NIH they won't know the difference at this point. The small fraction of smart rightists has a physical, not a life, science background so this is out of their wheelhouse.
<It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it.
1. It appears that the NSF awards about 12,000 grants per year. That is 48k in four years. This data is re 3400 grants. Where is the evidence that you had to have "woke" language to get a grant?
2. Where is the evidence that this was unique to the Biden Administration?
3. There is probably very little distinguishing grant applications at the margins. If two grants are a tossup, what, exactly, is wrong with funding the one that has a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
>There is probably very little distinguishing grant applications at the margins. If two grants are a tossup, what, exactly, is wrong with funding the one that has a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
Anyone who thinks "actually affirmative action only decides between tossups!" is unlikely to be able to fairly judge applicants. They're likely to motivated reasoning themselves into believing that the black kid and asian kid are tossups when they really shouldn't
We aren't talking about affirmative action.
And, if you think there is an objective difference between the marginal grant application that is accepted versus the Marginal grant application that is rejected, I have a bridge to sell you.
The logic is the same, but I'll amend it since you insist:
Anyone who thinks "actually DEI priorities only decides between tossups!" is unlikely to be able to fairly judge applicants. They're likely to motivated reasoning themselves into believing that the woke application and non-woke application are tossups when they really shouldn't
You are evading the issue. As I said, given that there are tossup, what, exactly is what, exactly, is wrong with funding the ones that have a tiny chance of improving educational outcomes for black kids?
The fact that affirmative action has been used in non-tossup circumstances (see, eg, the facts underlying the Bakke case) says nothing about how actual tissues should be treated.
>given that there are tossup
That's precisely what I'm disputing. Measuring the relative value of projects is a subjective exercise based on the judgment of the evaluators. My point was that those who believe there are tossups between "improving educational outcomes for my preferred groups" and X are likely very biased in favour of the former type of research such that their evaluation that there exists the tossup cannot be trusted
>those who believe there are tossups between "improving educational outcomes for my preferred groups" and X
The tossup I am talking about is re the SCIENTIFIC VALUE of the proposals.
If the best thing that a researcher can come up with for external impacts of their research is that it will help make more researchers (regardless of their racial or sexual characteristics), that research is not deserving of funding by the US government.
Now, now, Peter, where else are we going to get new baby researchers from? If a researcher and a researcher love one another very much, they engage in drawing up a grant application and six months to a year later, the government funding arrives with a new researcher! It's how nature intended it to be!
Not making a normative declaration, but your take seems plainly sensible to me with a lot of explanatory power. Cruz, DOGE, et al. know that huge quantities of government money go to people who fundamentally oppose them politically. Some may do so passively, some may do so actively, but either way the ecosystem of their implacable political opposition is being propped up by a network of government dollars. The goal is to use the most blatant examples as ammunition to starve that network, then maybe reopen it once it's been purged of its role in political opposition.
Or to put it another way, Scott seems to think "cutting out the rot" would mean funding the actual research and defunding the dumb stuff. But "cutting out the rot" to Cruz more likely means defunding the people and orgs who are nodes of the Resistance network. Only then can a less politically biased system rise in its place, which will fund the useful stuff without also being a Resistance bastion.
I believe that is exactly what is going on. I believe it is called the "friend-enemy distinction." Politics is done by people. Those people can hide their intentions in any number of ways because people lie and otherwise weaponize language, but *who* the people in question are is difficult to conceal. So, as a basic matter of political warfare, oppose the people who are opposed to you, even if they are currently hiding behind a hostage puppy. Someone else will take care of the hostage puppy.
Obviously, this can go way too far, but the possibility of an overreaction does not make the tactic itself unethical.
Can it be a sort of inoculation though? The part of a vaccine where it does in fact do some harm is crucial for teaching the immune system that the part that presents some proteins presents *adversarial* proteins.
So being heavy handed like that ensures (hopefully) that in 4 or 8 years when a Democrat is elected, the pendulum doesn't immediate swing all the way back.
Before this the wokies had a reasonable argument: why don't you just say the words, it's just words, refusing to say them is mighty sus. It's like as if you lived in a village plagued by skinwalkers and every evening all your people gathered in the common dinner hall and said the Lord's Prayer before eating, on the assumption that any skinwalkers would burst into flames if they did. Now, if you said that as an atheist you refuse to say the prayer even though as an atheist it costs you nothing, because of vague and hard to explain reasons about slippery slopes and such, people would rightfully become extremely suspicious that you are in fact a weaselly skinwalker.
Now there's a counter-argument: the motte of "it's just words, just say them even if you don't mean them" has been breached, any scientist can rightfully point out that the next *republican* administration can and probably will punish them for including them, so no, that's a pretty good reason not to say them if you're not an actual believer. And so the minority of actual believers will lose their huge meat shield of people complying with the woke demands to avoid making a fuss. And that's a very, very good thing!
It seems we both made the same argument at around the same time. 😅
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/only-about-40-of-the-cruz-woke-science/comment/93425493
While I doubt that Ted Cruz was consciously trying to achieve this, I suspect there is a game theoretic strategy at play here (maybe driven by human biases, or just accidental) that may achieve goals beyond what is stated on the surface.
By punishing people who threw a DEI line into their grants, you are punishing people who capitulated with what the conservative party considers ridiculous requirements of the previous administrations. This will cause anyone who witnesses this retaliation to be more cautious in the future when given the opportunity to blindly jump onto a dangerous bandwagon, and perhaps think about their actual beliefs a bit more rather than following what they believe to be the dominant belief system.
In theory, with enough instances of situations like this people would eventually learn that sticking to principals even in the face of a shifting overton window is a better strategy than trying to chase the overton window. This would result in those people in the center being more principled, which is presumably exactly what the conservative party wants (more people resisting sudden changes).
Again, I am not making claims that this was an intentional play here, just noticing that there is a potential outcome beyond what it seems like on the surface. Humans evolved biases like grudges, retaliation, etc. for a reason and retaliating against people who went along with what you believe is "bad behavior" discourages people from committing bad acts that suddenly seem to be socially acceptable.
Scott, you may be underestimating how many people saw this propaganda and said, “hell no, I’m not going into academia.” It hasn’t been a problem for just the last 4 years, and you’re likely underestimating the serious deterimental effect of requiring all academic research to fledge fealty to nonsense.
You are right that some of these are non woke, and that these seem like reasonable projects to fund. But all of this is arguing from the perspective that the current academic system is more or less functional. It’s not!
This administration is actually … doing stuff. Try proposing your craziest overhaul of how academic research works, and maybe it could happen. If I could donate funding directly to academics studying things I found interesting, instead of paying taxes to fund God knows what - I and many others would be happy to do it. That cure for ovarian cancer is more likely to come sooner when academia isn’t full of nonsense compliance rituals that drive away anyone with the disagreeability necessary to consider truly new hypotheses.
Is the administration doing anything to besides cutting things on this front? Doesn't seem like there's much legislation on the way besides a tax cut which will erase all the gains made in terms of saving.
On the flipside, how many people do you think are seeing this regime change and going “hell no, I’m not going into academia"?
Very few?
Yeah agree. While academia is important, and there are many good scientists out there doing good things, the whole institution has been MASSIVELY hamstrung over the past 10 years by ideological bullshit. It’s no coincidence that the most virulent anti Semitic propaganda is coming from University campuses.
I don’t think the answer is “shut it all down and start over,” but it’s a lot closer to that than Scott seems to think. In particular I think any field ending in “Studies” could be safely eliminated and the number of bureaucrats could be reduced by 80%.
Speaking as someone who successfully applied for an NSF fellowship in 2018, the "add a woke sentence" stuff was encouraged even during the first Trump administration, it wasn't just Biden. The NSF grant review panels are made up of academics who are usually liberal, and it's a good strategy to appeal to them.
(Although "woke" wasn't really a well-known term in 2018 the idea was the same.)
As other commenters pointed out, this is related to the "Broader Impacts" requirement for a grant, which was in place long before Trump.
One point we might be overlooking in assessing whether a study is woke is that some NIH and NSF grants were designated only for particular groups of researchers-- for example, women of color principal investigators, BIPOC undergraduates, low-income community college students who receive Pell Grants, first-time researchers under age 40, etc. Middle-aged white men were not even eligible to apply for some of the grants. I'm not sure if that was reflected in Scott's investigation.
My main thoughts are:
1. Surely there's a vast swathe of things that are reasonable but people would likely support *more* if they choose for woke reasons, eg research into a medical condition that affects women. Are you considering "woke" to be "anything excessively progressive people support" or "anything ONLY excessively progressive people support"?
A big grab of banning "woke stuff" without considering that seems likely to prioritise "we hate woke" over saving money (which is what I assumed, but I could have been wrong)
2. I'm curious how many of the ones that SOUND stupid still sound stupid if you looked at them for a couple of hours. I'd guess about half, but it could be 95% or 5% I don't know.
3. I feel like there's a systemic problem of funding science for crap reasons. Right now there's a lot of spurious pro-diversity guidelines. But there's always a lot of spurious military funding. And a lot of pork barrel projects. Cancelling projects that look woke while not changing anything about the system will cancel some crap projects, cause lots of disruption, but (assuming doesn't have any long term solution) not really change anything. Given this list I'm not sure it would ever actually save any money compared to cancelling stuff at random, it might be a lot worse.
FoxNews headline: "Rightwing politician accuses Leftwing reprobate politician of 10 acts of corruption."
MSNBC Headline: "Rightwing politician pounces on leftwing crusader."
ACX Headline: "Rightwing politician wrong 60% of the time."
There's a problem with Cruz's list. Indeed. Shame. Good catch, ACX. And thanks for hopefully improving their aim in the future. That said, I know where I want my attention spent on this issue.
Why do you think the Trump Administration plans to use the Cruz database? This is just one Senator doing the kind of quick and dirty attention grabbing stunt that senators do.
Because they've already shut down large parts of government with a "kill them all and let god sort it out approach" while openly bragging about it and talking about how they're going to do more?
Yes, I think this should be treated with as much seriousness as the "Red, White, and Blueland" bill.
If you want scientists to stop including woke shibboleths in grant applications, then "Republican administrations ignore them and Democratic administrations require them" is not obviously an effective strategy for making that happen.
You might worry that "Republican administrations prohibit them and Democratic administrations require them" will lead to chaos and dysfunction, but Democrats have no reason to disarm when they're in power if Republicans always disarm unilaterally for fear of chaos and dysfunction.
Suppose that Republicans take a hard line here and we don't get a new cure for cancer. Do we blame the Republicans for refusing to negotiate with terrorists, or do we blame the Democrats for using cancer patients as hostages in stupid ideological conformity games?
I think you don't like retaliation spirals or partisanship and you want each side to be the adults who take the moral high ground by dropping the stupid games and implementing good government when they have power. It would be nice if both sides did that. But this feels like a blog post written by cooperate-bot about five minutes after the woke defect-bot finally started experiencing consequences for the first time ever.
I'm not saying that the Republicans are correct, here, but I am saying that they have more credibility than you do when it comes to slaying woke dragons, and I don't think you've actually articulated a political strategy that could possibly work better than the dumb revenge heuristic that you're criticizing.
I personally care very little about whether woke shibboleths are added in grant applications one way or another, compared to actually getting science funded.
https://youtube.com/shorts/V9nStjw5H8A?si=_s5Rm9EIJoLev7_B
A proportionate response would be that Republicans demand different shibboleths (eg all new grants must now include ‘all hail president trump, he who is making America great again’) in order to be funded. Canceling already approved and in process grants for having uttered the previously required shibboleths is an escalation. If it becomes the new norm, it implies that all funding provisionally terminates at the next election. That’s going to make it pretty hard to make any kind of long term plan.
I think I basically agree with this. Certainly I would prefer not to pull funding from cancer research, if it isn't a forced move.
I mean, that's only a problem if you have elections.
"Suppose that Republicans take a hard line here and we don't get a new cure for cancer. Do we blame the Republicans for refusing to negotiate with terrorists, or do we blame the Democrats for using cancer patients as hostages in stupid ideological conformity games?"
Send in the Killdozer, let God sort 'em out.
I think that's a fair description of the Republican political strategy right now. I interpret it as the dumb version of a more enlightened strategy that would still find some way to punish wokeness.
With that said, I don't think Scott has identified a more enlightened strategy. His proposal seems less dumb, but more naive.
At the margins, it's fair to argue that programs like PEPFAR are good enough that we should set aside normal political strategy to support them. But I think the argument is more persuasive if you first demonstrate an understanding of the strategy.
> refusing to negotiate with terrorists
(the scientists in this analogy are hostages, who all got shot by the supposed rescuers after the terrorists left the scene)
The supermajority of scientists in this analogy voted for the terrorists
Oh, apologies, that should have been /alleged/ terrorists.
I suppose at least some of the scientists believe the terrorists aren't terrorists
I think you may be giving a little bit too much credence to the words put down, and not being credulous enough about what they're saying. To be fair, I agree with you that Ted Cruz went too far the other direction.
In general, there's a question about whether someone putting various woke phrasing into a grant proposal is just faking it or are serious. It could very well mean that a non-negligible portion of the grant is going to be spent on woke or woke-adjacent goals. I don't think we can say much for sure either way, and dismissing the wording is not the best way to approach a review.
To be specific, the sentence "focused on attracting underrepresented minority groups" reads to me differently than it apparently did for you. You read that as a random boilerplate to get approved easier by the Biden administration. I see the word "focused" and note that this is significantly different than you paraphrased. Instead of incidentally also reaching minorities, they are directly saying that they will intentionally reach out to minorities more than other groups. This could mean a wide variety of things and may end up meaning what you read it as, but it could also mean they spend a significant amount of time and money reaching out to those groups, to the exclusion of others.
If it were me, I would want those grants denied for being discriminatory, at least when phrased as strongly as that specific wording.
OK I haven't read the whole post and have no comment of the woke stuff. But that first grant about capacitors and security sounds like total BS from a electronics point of view. Of course you use a cap to store energy. They are frikin everywhere in all your electronics. There are some capacitors that can fail if run near or above their specs*. Notably tantalums, but if it's critical you can pick a different cap.
*tantalums have gotten so bad that I would use them at only 1/3 of their rated voltage... it's mostly a result of specmanship by the cap manufacturers.
Reading your article, I got the impression that these grants had been marked for being cancelled. But I can't find that statement, or anything implying it, on the announcement you linked to?
The announcement you linked to, said that the way funding works needs to remove the wokeness criterion, which I understood to refer to future funding?
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I'm not convinced that these sentences are without consequence. A small number of personal friends have told me over the years about their work being diverted in significant ways by these sentences; for example (fabricated example related to what they said), for cancer research, maybe this sentence means they're pressed to have a cohort to test on from groups that are normally very under-represented -- but maybe there's a reason they're very under-represented and it is very difficult to get the cohort together and this creates delays, and there is no reason to believe that outcomes would be different in the cohort so these delays are unnecessary (and possibly costly).
But totally agree seems like they should have done more due diligence.
Shoehorning otherwise irrelevant statements about DEI into abstracts is woke science by definition Scott.
Gathering statistics on the proportion of woke statements that abstracts contain is literally woke science. Scott is doing woke science! Quick, get the cancellation ray!
Scott's not being funded by the US government, though I'd vote for that if it were an option
I'm struggling to reconcile the tenor and quality of this post and comments with others I've read here. The biggest problem I see here is a complete lack of accounting for who is doing the sorting of grants into these three categories. Agreed that once you've arrived at criteria, it might be easy to sort them. Agreed that the current administration isn't even trying. But when the sort-er uses words like "cringe" to describe his reaction to a grant, or "garbage" to describe "woke" grants, an obvious bias comes into view (maybe one of the things that triggers people who encounter the word "woke" is that it comes from Black vernacular speech).
And this is only looking at the >3400 grants that Ted Cruz identified as woke -- you'd need to start from the beginning, including all of the other grants he didn't so identify, because if he did such a poor job identifying his sample, why would you give his work any credence in the first place? So I think the problem is much harder. But is it even a good idea to try to sort them on wokeness?
As others have pointed out, the Biden administration wasn't the first to start requiring grant applicants to reflect on the effects of the funding on underrepresented communities; someone stated that it went back to 1980 or so. But why, at that time, was the change made to require it? Because, historically, effects on underrepresented communities, or the relevance to them from the research, wasn't taken into consideration at all. And this led, and continues to lead, to bad things. Things like pulse oximeters not working as well on dark skin.
Some have said in the comments that they just want to do good science, that it distracts from the "real" work to take the communities studied or affected into account. I understand this point of view, and in some research it clearly makes no difference at all (in astrophysics, for example). But for a grant evaluator, why exclude information about wokeness that might be helpful? If the wokeness boilerplate is not included then those effect definitely will not be taken into account. Boilerplate, or what you might see as purely performative, language may seem icky, but it does no harm and maybe will do some good. If you don't include the boilerplate, then the possible effects on underrepresented communities will definitely *not* be on the radar of the evaluators. We can only study what we're aware of the need to study.
"maybe one of the things that triggers people who encounter the word "woke" is that it comes from Black vernacular speech"
Oooooh, I see! We all Wascally Wascists if we object!
Yeah, it's not that the word originates in AAVE, it's that it was appropriated by while (oh so very white) finger-wagging progressives who like to pontificate about how "being on time" is White Supremacy and they just looooooved Kendrick's Super Bowl halftime show due to the deep cultural artistry on display which they have to explain to us plebs who don't get it.
"Boilerplate, or what you might see as purely performative, language may seem icky, but it does no harm and maybe will do some good."
Great, so if the current lot impose a requirement for "this research will aid in Making America Great Again", you'll be fine with that? Because I wouldn't be, but then again, I must be one of them Wascally Wascists who disapprove of Wokeness because the term comes from Black People Talk.
Sorry you felt triggered. I didn't call you a wacist -- that was your interpretation. I still don't see any harm from boilerplate DEI language in grant applications. As others have pointed out, there isn't much evidence of large numbers of good applications being denied because they omitted it. Elsewhere in this looong unwieldy thread I posed the question what is different between DEI impacts and other claimed broad impacts of research -- all impacts have political or moral components and all affect different populations differently. But somehow people find DEI impacts objectionable and not those that promise things like national security or increased economic activity. I don't know why that is. I feel broader impact statements add, rather than subtract, from a grant's attractiveness. And I confess to being disappointed that missing from this thread is any mention of the US Constitution's separation of powers.
> But somehow people find DEI impacts objectionable and not those that promise things like national security or increased economic activity.
...Because DEI is bad and those other things are good? How is that difficult to understand?
Not sure if you're being sarcastic?
Why would I be sarcastic? The entire point of all of this is to purge the very concept of DEI from this nation.
Because earlier you responded to my statement that civil servants who didn't want to break the law weren't actually Trump's enemies, as if that actually did make them enemies. I took that as sarcasm too. If I was mistaken then never mind.
Has any concept of anything ever been purged from any nation by executive fiat?
Here is what the article author failed to understand:
If a grant for harvesting energy from radio frequency/WiFi mentions any woke point such as "promote equitable outcomes for ..."
...then its approval was tainted by wokeness - it doesn't matter that the main goal of the project itself isn't woke.
It means grant money didn't go to another project that might be even more important but didn't pass the wokeness criteria because it didn't add those "kneel to Zod" keywords.
You can say it was a "false positive" and throw a tantrum but can't deny that the process was vitiated. Its approval didn't follow the strict goal of advancing science because of that shadow.
1. As many commenters have pointed out, making a statement on "broader impacts" has been a requirement since the 1980s, because the government wants to hear about not only if it will "advance science" in the abstract but also if the research might be a good thing for other reasons. It's not correct to say that the organization has a "strict goal" of advancing science.
2. "Funding was denied because the grant application contained certain keywords" is *also* a failure to pursue that strict goal, just in the opposite direction.
No, these people need to put in the throw-away sentence so that the filters in databases which select for woke crap won’t throw out their papers regardless of their efficacy. Whether they like or dislike it is barely relevant to their work or its quality, it’s just a game you need to play in the current bureaucratic and regulatory environment. Instead of focusing on surgically changing the environment, the administration is spazzing out and creating enemies out of people who should have benefitted from not having to worry about any of this anymore. What’s so hard about this to understand?
100% this, it isn’t the researchers fault, they’re getting screwed both ways (first by the Biden administration who pushed everyone to tart their stuff up with DEI terms, now by the Trump administration who is incapable of a reasonable and measured response).
None of your statements about how science funding works are true. You’re making things up and then assuming what you made up is right.
As someone who has graduated from undergraduate school in the last couple of years, I can attest that myself and others would play these sorts of word games for the purpose of "playing well with others."
While this wasn't doing research, I am readily inclined to believe that these kinds of statements are injected to keep the approval process favorable to the researchers in an environment when such injections are viewed favorably. It seems to me that it is the environment that should primarily be at fault under such circumstances.
Banned for this comment.
but what's the game theory of this? maybe it's most rational to not want science done by people who pandered to the (opposing (?)) political regime in their science
maybe it's bad actually because periodically cancelling self-described-woke scientists gives real woke scientist a better way of signaling woke loyalty
As Humphrey said up thread:
> A proportionate response would be that Republicans demand different shibboleths (eg all new grants must now include ‘all hail president trump, he who is making America great again’) in order to be funded. Canceling already approved and in process grants for having uttered the previously required shibboleths is an escalation. If it becomes the new norm, it implies that all funding provisionally terminates at the next election. That’s going to make it pretty hard to make any kind of long term plan.
I'm not sure honestly, it's hard to evaluate without knowing the motivations and these decisions have been very opaque. Is this goal to reduce public spending? My impression is that Musk is extremely skeptical about public spending, and given his very successful private entrepeneurial background I can definitely understand his skepticism. Is the goal to punish universities for being very liberal and not voting Trump? Is the goal to burn down universities because a significant part of the Trump's voter base consists of anti-intellectual types?
If we take them at their word and they just want universities to stop doing "woke" stuff, but keep doing science, then it is probably important to keep in mind that these methods have already damaged the US ability to conduct scientific research, things like the spending freeze make the US seem unreliable when it comes to being a patron for science and this will figure into postdocs decisions when it comes to whether to accept a position into an American university. There most likely are better ways to achieve the goal of enforcing political conformity among scientists without incurring this damage.
...Why not all of them?
"People are losing grants for the stupidest reasons. I'm going to put a stop to it."
"How?"
"By making people lose their grants."
Everyone loves to punish. I simply can't count any more how many times I've seen someone identify a social problem and decide to fix it by punishing people trying to cope with the problem. Like they're the masterminds we've been waiting for.
The Trump's administration's response is the true meaning of 'reactionary', which only prepares the path for the return of the very thing being reacted against.
I have submitted several NSF grants as a PI (and was even successful with one). I have also been a Co-I on several other grants (many of which were successful). I have also been on several NSF review panels. The grants that I have been a part of range of from a few hundred $k to many $M. So I can provide some expertise on what goes into a successful NSF grant.
NSF judges grants based on two criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. Broader Impacts has been one of the review criterion for as long as I've been a part of NSF grants (over 15 years now). I actually didn't know the full history but Google tells me Broader Impacts was made an official review criterion in 1997. I believe that this is legally mandated by Congress. So my first point is that this is *not* some new initiative started by the Biden Administration as a result of the post-2020 rise of DEI.
What counts as Broader Impacts? NSF takes a very broad view of this (no pun intended), so PIs can try to make a case for pretty much anything that benefits society, but I'll point you to the NSF website for some examples
https://www.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts
It's worth stressing that your grant *will not get funded if you don't have a serious and well thought out Broader Impacts component* (as I explain below I think NSF has been judging Broader Impacts components with greater rigor recently). The rubric for judging grants explicitly includes this as a criterion.
Now, inclusion is definitely one of the popular examples of Broader Impacts but it's not the only one. And the logic behind Broader Impacts has nothing to do with DEI -- Congress wants NSF to fund research that benefits society in some way, as opposed to just being intellectually interesting on its own.
In practice, a lot of NSF grants use some sort of DEI or educational component to satisfy the Broader Impacts criterion. But this has been the case since well before 2020, when woke DEI really entered the zeitgeist. So, again, this is not a result of a Biden administration policy. I will say that, personally, I don't find everything related to increasing participation of minorities to be "woke" or objectionable. There really are opportunity gaps along racial/ethnic lines (less so along gender lines than there used to be), and I think it's a good thing to try to close those opportunity gaps so that smart people of all backgrounds can try to go into science. That's not in opposition to meritocracy as long as people are succeeding or failing based on their abilities once they actually get into STEM.
Some history -- when I first got into this a lot of grants basically just tacked on an educational or outreach component to the grant, sometimes something that was unrelated to the research itself. The education and outreach efforts were frequently (but not always) targeted at underrepresented groups, and this typically would be racial/ethnic minorities, women, or socioeconomically disadvantaged youth (read: poor people, often rural). Just as an example, when I was in grad school we got NSF funding for an after-school STEM program at a rural elementary school not far from the University (you didn't have to drive far to get to pretty poor, rural areas). I actually think this was one of the better programs (though I'm biased). Another example I was heavily involved in -- we recruited rural high school students to actually help classify and categorize data with an eye towards finding new astronomical sources (this was before AI really took off in the field). This was real research and they found some cool new things! But a lot of grants from those times included Broader Impacts that amounted to "give a public talk and gesture vaguely towards some minority group."
Now, you may very well think this is not optimal, because it means that NSF was funding things not really related to the research itself (and I'm inclined to agree). NSF actually seems to think this, too. Within the last decade (yes, even during "peak woke") I noticed a definite attempt by NSF program officers to encourage PIs to take a more expansive view of Broader Impacts (i.e. don't just focus on minority outreach and education) and to tie it more directly to the main research program. I don't recall hearing explicit guidance that one must not just tack on an outreach program, but the change in tone was clear. This extended to panel reviews. The last time I was on a review panel we were clearly encouraged to rate Broader Impacts programs higher when they were more closely integrated with the research. The panels have also started to expect the educational and outreach components that do exist to be of a higher quality and to incorporate the latest results from education research, and to rigorously measure their impact (well, at least as rigorously as one can with these things). As a rule, Program Officers really try not to influence the panel, so even this gentle guidance is significant.
I think the culture, both of PIs and of panel reviewers, is (or maybe was) taking a while to change. Lots of grants still come in with unrelated outreach activities as part of their Broader Impacts, and these still get funded, and many of these might be considered woke DEI. But definitely not all, and things were shifting a bit.
One other thing to note if you are someone who is interested in reforming all this -- NSF does not just hand out "grants", NSF has a large number of funding programs for different types of activities. A lot of them are grants to individual PIs or small teams to focus on a specific research question -- what you probably think of as the typical NSF grant. Some are focused on supporting early career scientists. Some are focused on much bigger, multi-institution and even international research collaborations. Some fund instrumental R&D and others fund facilities, from the small to the very, very big. Some programs seek to explicitly support education and public outreach activities. The exact mix varies by NSF Directorate and Division. All of these have to include Broader Impacts components but what you might consider to be woke DEI activities are not uniformly distributed across programs or Divisions. Targeting your reform on specific programs is going to be much more effective than trying to take a hammer to NSF as a whole, or just instituting some broad budget cuts based on a click-bait analysis of the amount of spending on "woke" projects like the list that Cruz put together (I have no problem calling Cruz's list propaganda -- the headline number and underlying analysis is worthless for anyone who wants to take this issue seriously).
Probably the best informed comment on this thread, but I'm worried it will be ignored because it's long.
Quite the contrary, I think it's very important that they consider these implications. Just observing that Cruz et al are really only posturing at this point.
I miss the quiet competence of the Biden administration. I didn't agree with everything (I don't know who could, there's so much the federal gov't is supposed to do), but it was capable in a general sense. Now, muppets sit in office chairs thinking they wear crowns while sitting on thrones.
Are you sure the Biden administration was competent? Almost everything you know about them comes through the press. Isn't it more likely that the press you consume desperately wanted you to think they were competent, and filtered the facts you were fed?
As one example: After Biden was clearly unable to speak or think at the debate, everyone knew he had some kind of loss of mental capability. Any reporter covering the government should have noticed this, and every right-leaning outlet reported on it two years before that debate. If your news source knew this, and let you believe he was okay in those two years, your news source deceived you into thinking he was competent.
Good thing that now we have an administration that you don’t need any press to see is incompetent, and no amount of good press could make appear competent. Wait… why is that better?
You perceive the Trump administration as incompetent. Is that because they truly are, or is it because you learning about them through media that hates them and spins everything to make them look bad?
I am not saying Trump (or Biden) is (was) good or bad. I am asking you to consider the possibility that your news source can shade your perception.
The blue-tribe members I know are sure Fox News is propaganda. By choosing the subset of news they show, choosing "experts" on topics to favor red-tribe ideas, and assuming that liberals are fools, Fox can make its audience see Republicans in a better light than reality warrants.
Are you sure other news sources are not doing this in the other direction? If so, how do you know?
My main source of news on their incompetence has been following Elon’s own X feed and Trump’s press conferences. Elon couldn’t even get the math right on the indirect costs at NIH, while cranking the outrage machine on these costs. By his own pronouncements, he doesn’t know what the things he’s axing do, but “he’ll bring them back” if they’re useful. Those people and that extremely niche expertise are not going to just “come back”. I’m sorry, but it’s all just obvious, dramatic incompetence.
But also, what is with all the false equivalence? No, the NYT is not as D-friendly as Fox News is R-friendly. No, the excesses of woke culture, whatever exactly they are in the most negative light you can come up with, are not anywhere near as bad as freezing all medical research. I can’t believe this seriously needs saying.
> But also, what is with all the false equivalence? No, the NYT is not as D-friendly as Fox News is R-friendly.
You say this. How do you know? Are you measuring it, or is it your subjective impression, clouded by your preconceived notions? I think you have a trapped prior. You hate Trump, so you make no effort to understand his position.
It is of course possible that Trump or Elon is doing something truly bad. But your interpretation of his actions seems over-the-top unreasonable to me. For example:
> By his own pronouncements, he doesn’t know what the things he’s axing do, but “he’ll bring them back” if they’re useful.
That seems like a reasonable plan to me.
You have a giant pile of grants, each of which spends money. Most grants say they will do something that is deeply immoral and probably illegal, such as favoring people based on race or gender. You can look at each grant with care, but that will take a long time (if you care about accuracy). Or you can cut everything that might be bad, knowing that some good things you cut will re-apply for money.
Projects that are truly bad won't reapply. They know you will reject them. You will save a bunch of time by not having to review them.
Projects that are truly good will reapply, and make their case. You wind up reviewing them, and they get money.
You get the same result with less projects to review. You do interrupt some projects (it takes time to re-apply) but you avoid funding bad things that would otherwise have kept getting money while you took months to do all the reviews. Seems like a win overall.
If a person you like and trust presented the above plan, I bet you would see it as reasonable. But a politician you think is Very Bad did it, so it is Very Bad.
> No, the excesses of woke culture, whatever exactly they are in the most negative light you can come up with,
You refer to the bad aspects of woke as "excesses". This dismisses the damage with rhetoric in place of argument. If BLM riots cause some number of people to die (for whatever reason: violence at the riot, extra COVID cases, murders not punished due to lack of cops, ...), is that fairly described as an "excesses"?
> are not anywhere near as bad as freezing all medical research. I can’t believe this seriously needs saying.
"Freezing all medical research" is absurd hyperbole. Plenty of medical research is funded by entities other than the US federal government. Only some US federal government money is being frozen. This is the sort of cognitive distortion I think you should try to avoid.
Dripping condescension coupled with ignorance of the basic facts isn’t fun to engage with, sorry. If you want to check your own biases, you could do a minimal search on these questions. Here is the NYT two days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/business/trump-deregulation-firing.html
Read the opening sentence, then read it again. Then ask yourself if this is how Fox News would ever open an article or broadcast about Biden.
Very on brand with the current context of “people trying to fix systems they don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of”, the idea of canceling all grants and making everyone reapply is an absolute disaster no matter what ideology was behind it. That whole process would take a year. People need to eat. Most people funded on grants are not going to just reapply or be available to do the same work in a year, they are going to be abruptly fired because there’s no money to pay them and they’ll have to find other jobs, because they need to eat. Maybe this is a good example of why people who want to propose systemic solutions (as opposed to wrecking balls) need a passing familiarity with the systems they’re talking about.
If you want to propose things that make sense, please learn how the system works and how it is currently being destroyed first. Here’s a decent starting place: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/continuing-nih-nsf-crisis-part-iii-indirect
Fox News payed the largest defamation settlement in history for lying about Dominion voting machines being rigged. They admit to intentionally lying in their internal emails and text messages so they can stop losing viewers to Newsmax and OAN, which have also lost defamation lawsuits or are in the process of losing them against Dominion, Smartmatic, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, etc. Left wing media is nowhere near as corrupt as right wing media.
Failing at the ostensible task this badly suggests that getting rid of "woke" wasn't the real goal after all.
> This seemed like a surprising failure mode, so I decided to investigate
Jesus Christ. I kinda expected your intuitions to be better than to trust Ted Cruz at his word on whether a scientific grant is "woke"
> It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it.
This was also true of the Trump 1 NSF, the Obama NSF, and the W Bush NSF. It has been part of science funding for decades.
So are you saying that the grant applicants were lying in order to get the grants? That they never intended to spend grant money on "woke" projects, and expected no oversight on the matter? And that this is somehow excusable given the incentives?
If resources are in fact diverted to such projects, the critique is relevant.
It is the 'systemic' stupidity that bothers people.
Incredible annoying trend where tech people think their narrow technical skills make them gods that know better than us mere mortals. DOGE is amply proving that they aren’t any better than the government employees they’re replacing and are arguably worse.
The truth is that these are not very bright guys, and things are getting out of hand.
Please, game-theory this out for me. If the norm is that Democrats can reward inserting diversity-blather into a grant but Republicans can't punish it, what follows? Solve for the equilibrium and try to tell me it's the one you want.
We saw a similar game being played with the panic over Meta Community Notes and the $1m bend-the-knee inauguration donations by tech moguls. Rational(ish) institutional spinelessness is treated as right and normal when Democrats are in power, shameful when Republicans are.
Even if we buy the premise you're setting out and ignore the fact that a) these sorts of public impact analyses have been part of grant applications for literally decades and b) that these supposedly woke grants only constituted 3% of all grants given (truly, our opponent's hold on society is unshakeable!!!) there's still no reason to have Repubs _punish_ people. The Dems didn't _punish_ people. In your version of the world, the Dems used their cultural influence to get people to lie about their true intentions for political reasons. An equivalent response from the GOP would be to...do the same thing. If you feel that the GOP doesn't have the influence to actually get people to do that, it's probably worth doing a bit of introspection about why that's the case.
More to the point. The spinelessness is shameful regardless. But the Repubs are very obviously acting out of malice and spite instead of out of any principles or commitment to ideological freedom. Unless you think that actually the guys who are suing news organizations for *checks notes* giving airtime to their political opponents are actually bastions of free speech?
The premise is a trap.
As alluded to in the linked Twitter post, these statements are included because they are part of the application: "The Broader Impacts discussion is a critical component of any proposal submitted to the U.S. National Science Foundation. It answers the following question: How does your research benefit society?"
https://www.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts
I have an active NSF grant (not listed in the database). You can witness the real-time tug-of-war between the new administration and the bureaucracy.
From what I can tell, the current instruction is, yes you can still receive the funds, but don't do those DEI outreach things.
Here are some emails received:
___
28th Jan
MESSAGE to the NSF PI Community,
"Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-25-13, issued on January 27, 2025, directs all Federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by the recent Executive Orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards, and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis. NSF has created an Executive Order Implementation webpage to ensure the widest dissemination of information and updates. We will continue to communicate with you as we receive additional guidance.
All NSF grantees must comply with these Executive Orders, and any other relevant Executive Orders issued, by ceasing all non-compliant grant and award activities. Executive Orders are posted at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/. In particular, this may include, but is not limited to conferences, trainings, workshops, considerations for staffing and participant selection, and any other grant activity that uses or promotes the use of DEIA principles and frameworks or violates Federal anti-discrimination laws. Please work with your institutional research office to assist you in complying with the Executive Orders. You can also direct your questions through the form on this NSF webpage.
Thank you for your work advancing science, engineering, technology and innovation for our nation."
___
2nd February:
"MESSAGE to the NSF PI Community,
On Friday, January 31, 2025, a Federal Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) directing Federal grant-making agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), to “...not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate... awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the States, and... not impede the States’ access to such awards and obligations, except on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms.” Although the language of the TRO is directed at State institutions, the Department of Justice has determined that it applies to all NSF award recipients. You can review the TRO here.
In order to comply with the TRO, the NSF Award Cash Management Service (ACM$) system is available for awardees to request payments as of 12:00pm EST, February 2, 2025.
This message is also available on the Executive Order Implementation webpage. Please check back regularly as we add frequently asked questions (FAQs) based on community feedback."
_____
I think you guys are solving different problems. Scott is solving the problem of, "how can we eliminate wasteful woke science in order to improve science in general". Ted Cruz is solving the problem of "how can we generate headlines by eliminating spending while owning the libs". These problems require different solutions.
First off, what's wrong with "Woke" programs, if wokeness simply means "addressing the concerns of members of marginalized communities?" It is entirely possible that such programs promote the desire of such minorities to enter into STEM programs, and that seemingly helps improve US economic productivity (not to mention addresses institutional discrimination).
A thing is not bad just because it is "Woke" (depending on what you think that means).
Next, the incompetence with which "Woke" is being attacked is an inherent feature of the motivation that underlies the attack. This was never about rebalancing US government spending toward some sort of "rational center." It's about taking resources away from minority communities, and spending it on white people instead. It isn't even about the amount of money involved--a couple hundred million isn't enough to make a difference in the standard of living of the majority. It's about symbolic acts of power--Trump "Gets things done!" and what he's getting done in this case is symbolically reestablishing the majority's cultural privileges.
If you disagree, then logically it seems to me that you have to present and defend either one of two arguments: "There is no institutional discrimination to address" so all this is a waste of money and time; or alternatively, that "Woke programs were never about helping minorities!" so all this is a waste of money and time. Either of these seem objectively wrong to me, but have at it.
If you agree that there is institutional discrimination in the US and that this is a problem that should be addressed, but feel that "Woke" programs (whatever you think those are) are not the best way to go about it, I would like to hear your alternative. If your alternative is reliance on the private sector (ie, market forces) then that seems objectively wrong to me, but let's hear it.
If you agree that government programs and policies are a useful way to help integrate minorities into the US economy, but "Woke" programs are not the best sort of program or policy, then I would like to hear your alternative. This isn't necessarily objectively wrong, so I'm sincerely open to new alternatives.
If you can think of an alternative framework that I missed, please share, that would be really interesting.
Victor,
Great questions and comment!
I think some of us define woke more along the lines of “Modern America is fundamentally an institutionally racist, sexist society designed by and for white males at the expense of minorities and women, and that justice requires balancing the scales the other way”.
I believe this was probably true (pretty much everywhere when adjusted to local majorities) in the past. Liberal ideology slowly defeated this, culminating in the Civil rights movement of the 60s. However, after that the initiative went from eliminating unfair advantages to building compensatory privileges the other way under euphemisms such as affirmative action, disparate impact and DEI. To be blunt, I believe these all quickly descend into reverse racism, and two wrongs don’t make a right. So, yes, I believe woke is wrong. It is bad. It is a dysfunctional ideology which has started to rot our all our major institutions, undermining merit and effectiveness for racial spoils system to reward friends of the left.
I am sure you disagree, but please understand that this or something like it is how a lot of people feel about woke. We should never have aimed resources in the first place toward communities based on their racial makeup. This is racism, in our opinion. Instead direct resources toward the poor, or those having trouble in school.
As to your required arguments, I believe institutions in America have for decades been privileged for minorities that lean to the left. The woke initiative wasn’t about correcting racism, it has always been about extending it. And as above the non racist solution is to direct funds to those most in need regardless of their skin color or whether they have an innie or an outie.
Thank you for your considered reply. It was far less emotional that I was expecting, which I appreciate. That said, you are correct that I do not agree.
So, if I understand correctly, you define "Woke" as any attempt to address racial disparities by directing resources to minorities (and therefore not toward whites). The opposing approach would then be that often referred to as "Colorblind"?
My post was inspired by the example Scott used to illustrate a "Garbage" program which devoted money to studying how STEM programs could make themselves more appealing to black students. To call something "garbage" seems to assume that the weaknesses are so obvious and extreme that no justifying explanation is necessary. I don't think that's the case here.
One might believe that efforts to devote special resources toward historically marginalized populations are misguided, but that's a case that needs to be made. It isn't obvious. It isn't obvious that all such programs must fail, and it isn't obvious that if they succeed in their stated goals, society would be worse off. It also isn't obvious why attempts to provide special assistance to minorities are morally questionable.
The counter-argument, of course, is that "colorblind" style programs were tried, and failed. Take employment disparities. "For example, even with the tightest labor market in almost 20 years and a historically low black unemployment rate (6.4%), black workers remain twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers (3.1%)—a pattern that has persisted for more than 40 years." https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-racial-disparities-in-employment/
Racial disparities in job stability and duration also persist: https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/11/1/224#sec-9
All this despite the fact that during many of these decades, the US economy was steadily growing (and indeed, black unemployment overall is historically low right now).
There are similar long term disparities in housing, health outcomes, educational attainment, and so forth.
So the question I suppose is "Does the persistence of racial disparities matter? And if so, why do they persist? What would we have to do to reduce them?"
From a liberal perspective, the hypothesis that black people just don't have the same inherent capacity for skilled labor as other races is a very big no-go. So if we eliminate that explanation, what's left, other than institutionalized discrimination?
Of course, programs directed toward the poor would *help*--not arguing that this is a bad idea, since disproportionally more minority people are poor. But you would have to fund such programs significantly to ensure that the money trickles down to include minority communities (because, historically, they don't. Politics gets in the way).
If we accept the empirical fact that American society doesn't treat black people the same way it treats whites, then logically there would seem to be only two broad solutions: either we eliminate the institutional discrimination (a tall order), or we add institutional programs that compensate for the discrimination. Which do you prefer?
> The counter-argument, of course, is that "colorblind" style programs were tried, and failed. Take employment disparities. "For example, even with the tightest labor market in almost 20 years and a historically low black unemployment rate (6.4%), black workers remain twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers (3.1%)—a pattern that has persisted for more than 40 years."
...The disagreement here is that this is not a failure. This is the system working as intended. Of course a population that is less useful would be less employed.
>One might believe that efforts to devote special resources toward historically marginalized populations are misguided, but that's a case that needs to be made. It isn't obvious.
It isn't obvious only because.. well, you said it yourself
>From a liberal perspective, the hypothesis that black people just don't have the same inherent capacity for skilled labor as other races is a very big no-go
Obvious things tend to become not obvious when you have to cordon off the obviously true explanations as no-goes. And so the left has to believe silly things like disparities in outcomes being entirely a result of, and being evidence of, racism. The end result is many billions, maybe trillions at this point, of dollars being spent on policies that are bound to not work
This comment is directed at both anomie and anon123, because the issue here seems very similar. Are you two actually claiming that black people are in some way inherently inferior to Whites? I want to be crystal clear, because if so then this conversation could potentially go to some ugly places. Before I presume racism on your part, did you mean to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites, and that's the source of the disparity?
>did you mean to claim that blacks are just inferior to whites
I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to put words in my mouth. I don't think blacks are inferior to whites in much the same way that I don't think people who are stupider than me are inferior to me (and conversely, that people who are smarter than me are superior to me)
I implied that blacks are underrepresented in areas that are largely dependent on cognitive ability mostly because they have on average less cognitive ability than groups with higher representation in these areas, and that, therefore, interventions that have been premised on pretending otherwise have predictably been ineffectual and costly
That's why I asked first.
Notice I originally said "Inherent Capacity", not "Cognitive Ability." Cognitive ability can be trained, and a lack of it might be due to upbringing, which can be corrected. Also, cognitive ability can be hidden behind different forms of self-expression or culture. This would not correspond to what I would understand as "inherently inferior" or "just inferior."
Really, all that claiming that a lack of cognitive ability is what holds black people back is transfer the institutional discrimination from the employers to the schools.
And after all, the whole point of that program was to help universities find smart black kids they might otherwise miss.
In defense of the "dumb woke" grants, I will say that that is far from the dumbest grant proposal I have ever seen. They want a team to experts mapping out how racism negatively impacts the learning trajectory of otherwise smart and capable minorities and that's honestly not unreasonable.
Imagine calling a grant for The Nego Motorist Green Book dumb because you think it's giving black people special treatment when in reality it's just telling them how to not get lynched when they're traveling.
Wokeness debates really come down to whether or not you think the government has an obligation to help groups of citizens with problems that aren't universal to all citizens. Maybe you don't like those groups defining their problems and dictating the solutions, which is why a group like the one referenced in the "dumb woke" proposal could be useful.
I think a lot of the discussion is besides the point. It is silly and wasteful to have to include any kind of disclaimer in your grant application, be it about woke stuff or not. I remember there used to be the joke that if you applied for a European grant, you always said your research had no military use and if you applied for a US grant you always said it had ample military use. Needless to say, both were just written in so that some bureaucrat could check a box.
I think the real issue we have is with this "bureaucrat box checking", whether it is for wokeness, military use, benefitting SMEs, Millenium Development Goals or whatever.
The MORE interesting thing is that Trump's dewokification EO told the *wokes* to dewokify themselves, and wokes can't tell the difference between woke ideology and normal science. So for instance, the CDC nuked a bunch of normal webpages that were ordinary and valuable after a keyword search, instead of just rolling back their content to pre-Great Awokening language, because they literally do not understand the EO.
If you have a study that says at the end "oh by the way FtM trans folks can still get endometriosis so watch for that," the researchers nuked the entire study because the researchers themselves can't tell the difference between woke ideology and science.
Mentioning that trans people exist is woke ideology though.
"The MORE interesting thing is that Trump's dewokification EO told the *wokes* to dewokify themselves, and wokes can't tell the difference between woke ideology and normal science. "
Wow, it's almost as if "woke" is a moving target and a meaningless buzzword, and every request for any sort of a consistent definition gets pooh-poohed or laughed at, like many have been saying for years.
"Remake your organization according to standards that I refuse to communicate and expect you to already know" is not and never has been a reasonable request.
This is the kind of article for which I like Substack. Just normal, intelligent reasoning, without an overbearing bias. As a classical liberal conservative myself, I appreciate and value every effort to make sure that what is being said saying is in fact true.
Is this post ceding the premise that any sort of acknowledgment of cultural difference and the ways that groups are differentially represented in institutions is "woke" (i.e., bad)? What, for instance, is wrong with the idea of exploring different concepts of blackness and nuances of black identity? I have no idea if that particular project is the most deserving of funding among all potential options, but on the face of it it's a completely reasonable thing to study. The cultural experience and socioeconomic situation of African-Americans vs., say Caribbean blacks or African immigrants really is different. And this is supposed to be "one of the worst offenders"...
I actually think the ones that randomly insert a DEI-speak non-sequitur are more worthy of criticism (though not worthy of, say, burning down the entire system of research funding in the United States, let alone our democratic form of government).
Nothing wrong with exploring black identity per se. However, when we're talking about distributing the public budget, the distribution and the preferences necessarily become a political decision, and the politics of the previous administration has been to take a hard turn towards the "woke" topics. The politics of the new administration is to remove that focus. Neither of those decisions are objectively better than the other, and from a libertarian perspective exploring black identity, white identity or any kind of other identity using tax money is equally wasteful and unnecessary. Our government though is not at the least libertarian, it does spend vast piles of money to such projects, and the question of who gets some of that money can't be anything but political. Once we have a political question, since we live in a democratic republic, the way it is decided is by the people electing representatives who will make those decisions the way the public prefers them to go, hopefully. The public preferred non-"woke" policy to a "woke" one, and so that's what it happening.
> though not worthy of, say, burning down the entire system of research funding in the United States
Let's not get carried away here, nobody is burning down the whole system. Some thorough audit of the system, and possibly some serious changes to it, are long due though. And the fact that it is happening is the most prominent sign our democratic system is working - the people may have been ok with "woke" before, it was woke, now they don't want it anymore - and it's getting taken out. Some may like more smooth and consistent rules, but that's democracy for you - people change their minds all the time.
I agree with some of this and disagree with a lot of it. But to stay on target with my original comment: Scott called this "one of the worst offenders," and it seems to me that can only be the case if you accept the idea that investigating issues of cultural difference and institutional bias toward various groups per se is "woke" in a bad sense. Sounds like you, at least, disagree with Scott about that.
Abstractly, "investigating issues" is not a bad thing per se. However, in current context, let's not be coy and pretend we don't know what a typical work in this area consists of. In the best case it would be a mishmash of specialized jargon saying "everybody is racist, please give us more money", in the worst it would be something advocating racial discrimination and exclusion a-la Kendi, and declaring that algebra is white supremacist. The chance, in present climate, that it would be objective scientific sociological research of cultures with an inherent scientific value is not zero, but quite small. Just as if you hear your boss saying "We need to fire some people, please prepare the list of Jews working for us" - theoretically it could be unrelated and the list may be just to not to forget to invite them to the next Hanukkah celebration, but if you'd feel uneasy upon hearing that, you are probably right. You can reduce something to parts that look innocent out of context and find an appropriate sterile description, but this doesn't happen out of context.
Thank you, I was thinking the same thing.
Full disclosure: I did want to throw a brick at whoever wrote that abstract[1], but that's might just be a difference in vocab and communication standards between fields. The thing that they were actually proposing to do seemed perfectly reasonable, considered as part of the social sciences.
Now it's fair to ask what fraction of science funding should go towards social sciences, and even fair to ask what fraction of social science funding should go towards *topics broadly like this* and to advocate for more or less. If there were a bunch of similar proposals funded, cutting some of them to fund different stuff might well be warranted. But all of that requires taking a higher-level view where you compare *different* proposals within the category-of-interest, no reading the abstract of one paper and noticing it includes buzzwords you don't like.
[1] and it went through an editor, two bricks for the editor.
I find it hard to trust you tbh
> promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program.
Very recognizable for anyone with Soviet experience. There it also was common to bolt on quotes from Marx and Lenin (and, in certain time period, Stalin) to otherwise unrelated technical and scientific texts in order to satisfy the commissars.
Andrey Sakharov (the father of Soviet hydrogen bomb and later one of the most prominent dissidents) was promoting a theory of "convergence", which postulated that capitalist and socialist countries would eventually converge into some kind of hybrid political system. I have never been a big fan of that theory, but looking at what has happened lately in the US, I wonder if he was onto something.
You were *surprised* that Ted Cruz (or whatever YRNF intern this busywork was passed off to) indiscriminately projected their psychotic political valence onto legitimate scientific research? This seems like a major blind spot in your understanding of the GOP.
>people inserted a meaningless sentence saying “this could help women and minorities” into unrelated grants, probably in the hopes of getting points with some automated filter.
Not just "hopes" but explicit knowledge that if you don't talk about this stuff you will have a much lower chance of getting funded -- and base rate is already only ~17%. Applying for science funding circa 2020 was a nightmare.
Also keep in mind that you are only reading the abstracts. The actual grants themselves all would have had detailed plans for diversity/equity/outreach/insert woke keyword here, buried deep on page 30 of a 40-page R01 grant. You can't just say "oh I'm going to help minorities" in your abstract and not elaborate on that in painstaking detail---you get dinged for that too.
It's hard to see who's wagging whom here: did NIH goes woke and so all the scientists put on the woke song and dance? Or did scientists go woke semi-independently of their grant funding? I can't really blame them, it'd be the same as asking how many tenure-track professor applications included woke language in their cover letter circa 2020-2024. The answer would be...almost all of them! Since you wouldn't get the job if you didn't!
To be charitable to the list: If the applicant felt the need to put a woke sounding sentence in the abstract, that might be an indicator that the grant selection process was not entirely on merit. Even if the science itself is non woke.
I'll note as others have that it's been a law since the 90s that NSF grant applications include some statement about societal benefit ("Broader Impacts"), with positive impact on women and minorities being specifically noted in the law as one of the options. So all these people were following the law, and should not be punished for doing so.
I'd like to also point out that the issue is much more complicated when you look at NIH grants. For many decades much medical research in certain areas included mostly white men. (Except when it was syphillis, I guess.) There are lot of reasons for that, including simple referral patterns - small community hospitals are much more likely to send white men off to the big tertiary care hospital than they are white women or people of other self-identified race or ethnicity groups. White men maybe were more aggressive about seeking experimental treatment. Whatever the reason, these were the people ending up in the trials. At some point someone realized that a lot of the evidence we had did not generalize well because for example with heart attacks women experience them differently, and people who identify as black have better outcomes (probably survival bias). So at some point NIH started requiring that any proposed medical research include a statement about how these groups would be represented and, if not, why this was not a problem. Is this woke? I don't think so. But I know a lot of NIH researchers who are very concerned right now because they made a big deal about how they were recruiting representative populations for their studies, and to people like Ted Cruz it's gonna look like a lotta wokeness.
"People who identified as black"? Jeez, just say black.
"Is Person X black" isn't an objectively-measurable criterion, especially not at the edges. Human skin doesn't come in two tones or five tones, it comes in thousands. So when you're doing something like medical research and you're trying to bin patients into categories to see if there are any measurable differences[1], it makes a difference *how* you assign those bins. One of the easiest and most practical ways in many cases is simply to ask them to assign themselves. But it won't necessarily give you exactly the same grouping as other methods. So yes, in context "people who identified as black" is a reasonable way to refer to this category.
[1] Which can be a statistically useful thing to do when your categories are fuzzy and inexact.
Agree. This is typical scientific usage for the reason you state. Seems like the word police don't like it.
Oh the poor wee scientists who were force - forced I tells ya! - to include casual genuflections to vaguely woke topics.
Strong disagree: zero tolerance. Anyone who even so much as hints at breathing about any vaguely related woke topic positively should be hammered so far into the ground that they never get up again.
Being "tolerant" or excusing the lesser of two evils, or making vaguely utilitarian arguments, is how we got into this mess in the first place.
That's how "the system" works, by making you an offer you can't refuse it "forces" you to nod to its requirements in a way that shores them up through repetition and makes them seem to hoi polloi like the norm. You end up being just another brick in the wall.
People need to grow balls, nothing will change until people refuse to comply. Maybe they won't discover that cure for cancer, but chances are they wouldn't have anyway. Maybe you'd be better employed as a barrista and bring more joy to people than work under the cosh as a "scientist" who refused to stand by their principles.
Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm calibrating right. The thing that you believe needs to be stomped into the ground so forcefully that you are willing to sacrifice even the veneer of tolerance and mercy (as well as several legitimate opportunities to do good for the world) is... educational opportunities for minorities?
I'm legitimately curious what, exactly, has you personally so up in arms.
"Educational opportunities for minorities" - sounds so innocuous right? :) But what if that's just the racket (in the sense of "thing for show to misdirect away from real thing")?
"Woke" is just anti-White, i.e. anti-the-genetically-European and of European descent.
Motte, meet Bailey.
Your original post was "Anyone who even so much as hints at breathing about any vaguely related woke topic positively should be hammered so far into the ground that they never get up again".
To you, this supposedly includes sentences like "The project also aims to integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women in computer science through K-12 outreach program."
Out of curiosity, in your view is there any way at all to direct funding towards underrepresented groups in a way that does not deserve 'stomping into the ground'? I'd love to understand what that looks like, and specifically how it differs from the sentence above.
Is there any way? Yes, when the surrounding context is different and the proposed act is no longer part of a humiliation ritual and/or a required display of fealty, but an act of genuine care and interest.
Curious that you should invoke our old friend the Motte & Bailey, as it struck me that's exactly what's going on here. (Under pressure, one retreats to the easily defended "but what about the children?11!11!" :) )
Your bailey is '"Woke" is just anti-White, i.e. anti-the-genetically-European and of European descent [and is therefore worthy of being squashed]' (which is still a questionable claim but whatever, I could at least imagine someone smarter making a better argument). Your motte is "'integrate research findings into undergraduate teaching and promote equitable outcomes for women' is worthy of being squashed'.
In fact, i'd go farther and say based on your last response that your motte is 'any attempts to allocate resources to <groups that are not me> should be squashed'.
Sorry mate, I think you are not serious people and I'm not interested in responding here further.
> Sorry mate, I think you are not serious people
People keep saying that, but I have no idea what they mean by that. Are you implying that it's impossible for people to be serious about safeguarding the future of the white race?
I think you're completely wrongheaded, I think the OP has a really really good point.
We obviously should have a zero tolerance policy in the comments section for this type of incendiary idiocy. Any less than a permanent ban from the internet and a freezing of the guy's bank accounts would be too lax.
Your problem, as I've pointed out twice now, is that you're taking the "aww diddums" thing seriously. You think someone, somewhere in all this, is seriously trying to promote "equitable outcomes."
What's really going on (whether it's seriously meant by the authors or not) is that this is a required genuflection to the Narrative, a basically anti-White narrative. (For example, "equity" is just the exclusion of Whites, particularly White males.)
10 years ago you might have gotten away with pretending that I'm talking hyperbolic nonsense. But now? As an obviously intelligent person, you should know better (or alternatively, you should dig deeper).
I think you completely misunderstand the system. If you do not get a funded grant, you cannot keep your job. You don’t get tenure and you are fired. There is no option where you can “grow balls” and resist. You just quit and do something different. The only people who get the grants are the ones who play by the rules set up by the government.
They would absolutely have cancelled Norman Borlaug’s research in rust-resistant wheat.
> Because both pollen and ovary come from the same plant, the new seed has the same genes as its parent — it’s an identical copy. To create new varieties, plant breeders must stop wheat from fertilizing itself. In Borlaug’s case, this boiled down to him and a couple of assistants sitting on little home-made stools in the sun, opening up every floret on every plant of a particular variety, carefully plucking out the stamens (the male parts) with tweezers, hundreds of plants at a time. When they were done, the wheat was entirely female — the plants had been, so to speak, feminized. Borlaug and his assistants then covered all the altered florets with folded paper so that no pollen could get in.
Damn woke liberals, feminizing the wheat!
(This is from this great piece: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-agriculture-system-works)
There does need to be a recognition that organizations applying for Federal grants have had to burn a pinch of incense to both the DEI and Green New Deal scams during the Biden years. I saw it personally right after Biden took office in 2021. My current position within a state government is Federally grant funded. When our grants manager was applying for funding during the 2021 grant cycle, she was losing her mind trying to figure out how our project ticked some environmental impact nonsense that the then- new Biden regime wanted recorded in the application. She was having to run all over town to get signatures from people in other parts of the government just to complete the application.
Our project has nothing to do with the environment. I mean, we work in an office building that has a HVAC system and drones like myself are issued cars that burn gasoline for us to drive ourselves around the state to serve the public. I don't know about the DEI impact statement that was (probably) also required, but I'm sure it was there.
Cruz is trying to jump on the DOGE train and he (or his junior staffers that put this together for him) went about it in a ham- fisted way. I know it's too much to ask Cruz to stay in his lane, but he really should.
It's like the bureaucratic version of one of those really nasty civil wars where the first thing each side's army does when it takes over a village is punish the villagers for obeying and paying taxes to the other side when their army controlled the village.
Indeed. There's a huge difference between `we're in charge now, henceforth you obey us and only us' and `we're going to punish everyone who obeyed the other side back when they were in charge.'
I did not see this posted anywhere else in the comments, so I will point this out:
Time is of the essence to DOGE's operations. As soon as they started shutting employees out of buildings and auditing budgets and payrolls and firing people, states and federal employees started filing ten gorillion lawsuits in response. Some of these lawsuits contain real concerns about executive outreach, while others are obviously frivolous and ideologically motivated. For DOGE to have any lasting success, they are better off moving quicker rather than taking real time to comb through and find anything they want to keep, because any more time given to the opposition means they get shut out entirely.
...And why, again, do they need to care about lawsuits? What are they going to do, arrest the president?
They won't arrest the president, but they might undo his changes.
And how are they going to do that? The NSF is, as the name implies, a federal agency. That means the federal government effectively has full control over it. All that's changing for now is that leftist-associated research will no longer get federal funding. Do you think people are going to start a civil war over this?
I don't think they will start a civil war. I think they will look for any avenue in which a judge would say, "No, akshually the president can't defund this, so put the money back where it was." Many court cases have been raised to this effect, and supposedly one has already reinstated USAID money.
And again, they can just ignore the courts. They don't have any means of actually physically enforcing their judgements.
But if they hadn't started shutting employees out, holding back money, and firing people, they'd have had the time to do it right before triggering these lawsuits.
"Do it right" is synonymous with "not doing it at all".
"Time is of the essence to DOGE's operations. As soon as they started shutting employees out of buildings and auditing budgets and payrolls and firing people, states and federal employees started filing ten gorillion lawsuits in response. "
Well, points for being honest, I guess. But "if they tried to do it legally and responsibly it would never get done, so they have to do it illegally and irresponsibly" is NOT the greatest argument that has ever been made. Like, you DO notice the part where this logic rests *entirely* on the assumption that these people have such perfect judgement and purity of character that *anything they accomplish* will be a net benefit, no matter how little time *they* spend understanding the system or pondering the ramifications, right? Why on Earth should the U.S. public put that kind of trust in a group of unelected ideologues?
The character and judgment of the DOGE team is irrelevant. What they are doing is what it takes to actually prune the US government down to size. I think that in itself is a good thing, you may disagree.
"The character and judgment of the DOGE team is irrelevant. "
What? Excuse me, what? Of course it is bloody-well relevant.
If somebody is digging a ditch their character and judgement might well be irrelevant. Ditches are simple things. If somebody is making sweeping changes to a complex system that regularly affects the lives of 300 million people[1] then OF COURSE their character and judgement matter. People with *poor* character and *poor* judgement will make *bad* changes that cause a lot of damage.
I'm aware that many people have never developed their thinking on this matter beyond "more government: bad, less government: good" but I regret to inform you that the real world is NOT as simple as some pretend it is. This would be a really, truly excellent time to start *questioning* your beliefs, and *making sure* they accurately model reality, because again, the lives of 300 million people are directly and severely affected by the changes you're so thoroughly uninterested in even understanding.
[1] Setting aside the fact that the U.S.'s reach extends FAR beyond its borders.
You're misunderstanding the role of the DOGE team. They aren't supposed to sort through the chaff for the good ones. They are supposed to get as many people as possible out the door as fast as possible. Why? Because government employees are not like a private company. As soon as you try and fire anyone, they will scream and kick and fight back with lawsuits.
It's not up to the DOGE team members, but Elon and Trump, on who they want to spare and/or hire back. Their judgment will affect what departments keep doing what work with which employees. That's where judgment is more important.
This is a brilliant move from a perspective of hardball politics — but Wokeness is just a cover for a deeper agenda. Steve Bannon had been complaining about liberal universities since the first Trump administration. His stated to goal was to weaken their hold on US intellectual life. By gutting NIH, NFS grants and removing payments for administrative costs most universities will have trouble maintaining their facilities and won’t be able to pay their faculty and administrators. Labs will shut down. Vast numbers of post docs will be unemployed. Grad students will be let go as their programs are cut. The right has been whining about leftie universities long before the term woke ever existed. The anti-woke witch hunt gives them an excuse to weaken traditionally liberal bastions of thought.
You're grotesquely abusing the term "liberal" when you call elite universities "liberal bastions of thought." And it's these illiberal elite universities that suck up most US government grant money. I remember when I was in grad school that MIT's comp sci department received about $1 billion per year in grants, while my university's comp sci department received about $20K / year.
Not necessarily liberal bastions of thought, but any independent bastion of thought. The crusade against wokeness is just a form of edgelording and y'all should be able to identify the totalitarian playbook, it's been a whole 26 days already.
I understand that people have different opinions, but some comments here are just batshit crazy. If you say that it is literally okay to stop a cancer research just because they wrote 1 sentence like "this could encourage minority kids to join STEM", then I wonder...
Are you a psychopath, who is willing to let people die painful deaths just to send an infinitesimally stronger message in a recent culture war? (In the sense that we need to stop 1000 researches, because only stopping 999 of them would not send a sufficiently strong message to our opponents.)
Or are you too stupid to see the connection between words written on the screen and the reality they describe?
Or are you so immature that you prioritize being edgy when adult people are trying to discuss serious topics?
Do you think the people who cheered on every previous fascist regime were just "being edgy"? You don't need to be a psychopath to want to see justice done, to desire the spectacle of evil being hanged and torched. It is the dream of every man to fight for what they believe is right. Would you rob them of that opportunity? Can you?
Wer zu lange gegen Drachen kämpft, wird selbst zum Drachen.
Oh, if only. There's no dragons being fought, of course. Just apes fighting among themselves. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Are you saying that the cancer patients deserve the "justice done" to them by delaying the research?
Or it is the researchers who wrote the sentence that was necessary to get the money for cancer research?
If you can find the guys who *made the rules* that you needed to add DIE statements to cancer research in order to get money... hey, if you hang them, I will consider it excessive, but I will understand the logic behind that.
This is just randomly lashing out. It's like imagining that you are fighting the Nazis, but instead you just find a random guy who was once dragged into a Gestapo building, told to write something positive about the regime, so after some hesitation he wrote "I think Goethe wrote good stories"... and now you found the piece of paper, so you lynch the guy and consider it justice done.
> Are you saying that the cancer patients deserve the "justice done" to them by delaying the research?
The cancer patients are irrelevant. This is about good slaying evil, the collateral damage doesn't matter.
> and now you found the piece of paper, so you lynch the guy and consider it justice done
A better metaphor would be fighting the Nazis by killing every German. You understand this is only the beginning, yes? All supporters of the old order are potential targets. For your own sake, I suggest you put your head down for a while.
The small number of research projects that might get defunded are likely to add up to an infinitesimally small amount of progress toward curing cancer. So it's really an infinitesimally stronger message in the culture war at the cost of an infinitesimally small number of painful deaths prevented
I'm seeing a lot of defenses along the lines of "this is a requirement that has existed for decades, the scientists probably don't mean it they just want to please the grant givers"
If that were true wouldn't the ctrl + f selection method have returned all grant proposals? What are all the other grants giving as their broader impact sections the Ted Cruz finds acceptable.
The "write a sentence about how your grant promotes equity" did not exist 15 years ago. It exists everywhere in science now, and I wouldn't call it a formality, either. I recently submitted a grant proposal to the NIH, and we had a Zoom meeting between applicants and selected previous-year grant winners. I noticed that not a single member of any of the teams of previous winners was a white male. When I asked whether any of the previous year's winners had been white males, they explicitly refused to answer the question, and would only repeat that they followed all relevant regulations.
You had to write *something.* Something could be `this work will help all people. `People' includes women and underrepresented minorities.' This might have sufficed. Or not, depending on who you got as your reviewers. It could even have been `I don't think whether someone is an underrepresented minority has any bearing on how deserving they are of help, this work will help everyone regardless of their demographics.' This might still have worked, though the odds would have been worse. Exactly how much you bent depended on how proud you were, and how much you needed the money.
To some extent, people who just added a meaningless woke sentence (without actually proposing to do any woke work) were plausibly taking the Kolmogorov option. Evidently that's not safe either.
Pure Orwell. Ministry of Information impregnates Ministry of Truth. We lost that battle 60 years ago. I can't get Tenure unless I get a grant. The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. And Cruz doesn't have the slightest interest in reform, just a useful hook for the power climb.
40% hit rate is honestly a lot higher than I would have expected from this bunch of incompetents.
If 40% are woke, 40% are not woke, and 20% are borderline, the honest title would be "Only About 50% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science". Otherwise, it would be equally accurate to say "Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Not Woke Science".
No, an honest title wouldn't try to use the word "woke" as an objective quantifier.
Anyone who seriously trying to improve the process should be sorting on actual, concrete criteria not vibes.
This is the problem with a society in which you have to lie to get anything done. You can't be reasonable anymore. You don't know who's just saying the words to do real work and who really means the nonsense words.
I think believing what people say is the correct response.
The corrective mechanism is to stop lying. Sure you miss out on your grant the first time around but that's a problem you actually need to address - not just insert a lie to skirt around.
> I think this overestimates the difficulty of sorting. It took me one hour to review 100 of these grants and see which ones were really woke. That suggests it would take 34 hours - less than a work week for one person - to go through the entire set.
This would be a pretty good job for a contemporary LLM, too. You could let it read all grants ever, not just this preselected list.
Afterwards, you can have a human or two spend a week to go over the short list, like you suggest here. The LLMs still make many mistakes.
One small point: the term “cis-regulatory” doesn’t usually refer to genes that regulate other genes on the same DNA molecule but rather to noncoding chunks of DNA (i.e. non-genes that serve as binding sites for proteins) that regulate genes on the same molecule.
I'm sorry. My inner pedant is too strong. I tried to resist! I really did! (That's a lie).
*Ahem* There's no reason an EHS system isn't still technically within the classification of IoT. That first grant implies these are distinct categories.
Alternately, I'm interested in what percentage of the research was *stupid* and how much overlap there is between the "woke" and "stupid" circles in the Venn diagram.
The nonsensical persecution of "woke" and DEI is only an excuse. Parsing it is a waste of effort. The idiocy is deliberately insulting. Ha, ha made you chase the squirrel.
Harassment and a show of dominance is the objective.
And the same applies to some of the medical literature. Every other paper published in JAMA or the NEJM is about some "disparity of care" or about "systemic racism" as a Social Determinant of Health. Accordingly, inserting woke keywords seems to be part of the cost of getting published there (and likely elsewhere).
For instance, a recent study on the persistency of patients on GLP-1RAs for weight loss included in the abstract - *in the abstract!* - a ritual sentence about "disparities", even though the body of the article (Results AND Discussion) had nothing whatsoever to say about it.
I am a professor in an engineering department at an R1 university. One of my grants made this list. The grant is to study polymer crystallization. It got flagged for the (required) educational portion of the grant where I discuss plans to mentor students, including women and underrepresented minorities in science. The latter was language that was de facto required by NSF. Getting grants from the NSF are extremely competitive. It took me 12 tries and 5 years to get this one. Losing this grant would kill the research project and cause significant hardship for a graduate student. Much of what many of you are discussing has little or no basis in fact. Feel free to ask specifics, and I can hopefully help you understand.
Can you be specific on what's wrong in the post? Does it change his overall point?
Sorry to be vague. What Scott got wrong has been discussed a bunch in the comments above. Broader impacts are a required element. They can include many things, but expanding opportunities for women and groups the NSF deems “underrepresented” are part of it. Broader impacts are not just a side piece, they are one of the two primary criteria for evaluating the proposed work. So, many comments above saying that one could simply not add a “throw away” line are not realistic. In addition, while there are in principle many things one could do for “broader impacts”, what is actually proposed has to be doable by a professor at a university. Educational outreach and providing opportunities for minorities are much easier to do than say, implementing some workforce development program.
In addition, there is a real lack of a sense for how intensely competitive these grants are, how critical they are for making a career, and how much work goes into preparing them. There is also no sense for how little an individual scientist has control over the system. I would love to not have to do a bunch of extra work for educational outreach and to never again have to think about “URMs.” I just want to do science and teach and mentor students. But I played the game the way the rules were written, and destroying good science and a graduate students career seems like a really crappy thing to do. It’s all just sad.
Yes. If Trump just wanted to get rid of DEI, he could change the criteria for evaluating future grants, perhaps getting the Republican controlled Congress to repeal the “broader impact” requirement. But he seems more intent on destroying the system than on changing it. I hope you are able to continue your research.
I mean, the problem for them isn't that scientists are forced to explain how their work helps society. The problem is that federal funding is being wasted on liberals.
I’m happy to explain how science helps society, and I’m not a liberal. But yes, one of the problems is that science has become a political football.
The other problem I think is much deeper. Congress is not functioning. So we have either executive action or the Supreme Court trying to do congress’s job.
I'm not sure what you mean by "wasted". If your argument is that liberals should not get federal research funding because they are liberal, than I agree that this is the primary goal of all these anti-woke efforts, which have nothing to do with eliminating waste or making awards on the basis of merit.
But I'm quite confident the NSF/NIH/DOE/DOD will continue their geographic affirmative action plan which awards a lot of funding to non-competitive institutions in fly-over states.
I'm not claiming that science has a "liberal bias", just noting that talent tends to concentrate, and in science it is concetrated at places like Berkeley, CalTech, U. Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc..., all of which happen to be located in blue states. The same is also true in tech (everyone loves to complain about the bay area, but it is where tech talent is concentrated).
Personally, I think it's good that federal funding takes geographic diversity into account in an effort when making funding decisions, but if you are arguing for a purely meritocratic process you should accept that most federal research funding will go to CA/IL/MA/NJ/NY.
Yes definitely seems like a bunch of grant applications put in pseudo-necessary language to get approved and are now being punished for essentially doing successful grant application writing.
It is very easy to imagine how this sort of boilerplate language was required in previous grant applications .
It seems like a very lazy error from the current administration to sweep all of this in with it. Almost too convenient to think it is an oversight
Yeah, it is in their best interest to get the number of grants/dollars as large as possible.
"The latter was language that was de facto required by NSF."
And that is the exact root of the problem, though I think Ted Cruz is an opportunistic little toad. If you were going to mentor women'n'minorities anyway, as part of general mentorship, that should go without saying. If you have to make a big production out of it, just to get past the filter, then it's got nothing to do with the science and is just burning the incense to Caesar, and junking requirements for the ritual genuflection probably benefit everyone.
A study or project specifically for women and/or minorities to participate in? No problem with that. A study about everything from beetles to paint colours that has to include the shibboleths or else? That's bad for every kind of outcome one can imagine, in science and in society.
I don’t disagree, but change the rules, don’t nuke the system.
> Grant 1542 is an attempt to come up with better treatments for ovarian cancer
This would legitimately most benefit women and minorities - with "women" being the operative word here.
Ah, but remember, even a Supreme Court judge can't say what a "woman" is, so the grant wording may or may not be considered offensive or non-inclusive. A woman is, well, if you feel you are a woman, you are a woman, yes? So is your research going to include persons in possession of XY chromosomes, or are you going to be a foul transphobe?
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2022/03/24/marsha-blackburn-asked-ketanji-jackson-define-woman-science/7152439001/
(I did think that was meant as a 'gotcha' and not a sincere question and I don't blame Brown Jackson for dodging it, but man. What times we live in, eh?)
I am continually amazed and disappointed that, even after realizing the skewed incentives at play, people continue to believe that the government should take taxpayers’ hard-earned money and give it to others of their choosing.
Good causes? Good schmauses! The “Muh roads!” and “We, the people” fallacies strike again!
(And my mother died of cancer.)
That's right! There's no such thing as society, only individuals! That's why I should be able to roll up to your house, decide I like it, and throw you out by main force and take it for myself unless you can see me off with your own main force, because the state is tyranny or something.
I’m not sure I can count how many assumptions you’re jumping from and to in this little rant. If you’d care to address what I actually said, I’ll happily engage.
What was your point? It reads like the normal insulated from reality libertarianism you see around the place.
Root out the cancer. Healthy tissue will regrow. Corruption has many victims.
Alas, sometimes damage is permanent.
Permanent? None of the damage is permanent. Systems can be rebuilt, the dead can be replaced. Nothing of value is lost.
I don't think German universities have recovered from the experiment they did, all these years later.
I mean, we did steal a lot of their scientists.
I imagine you can get some bargain prices for American scientists these days.
Nothing stays the same.
As a scientist who has written (and reviewed) many grant applications to several different federal agencies and private foundations, I will say that I always look at the wording in the funding opportunity announcement and tailor sentences in the abstract and application to reflect the goals of the funding mechanism. That’s just smart grantsmanship. ‘Wokeness’ is a ridiculous made-up construct that serves some political agenda. The research is the research. It is hypothesis-driven and stands on its own merits. . I suspect you won’t find the word ‘woke’ in any serious scientific grant title unless it’s related to a sleep study or some such thing.
Secondly, one needs only to do a cursory look through any dermatology text from previous decades to see that there are truly disparities in the presentation of many disease processes. I use dermatology as an easy example, although the disparity is pervasive—processes like erythema can present differently in people with darker skin tones, but photos in texts have frequently only shown presentation of disease processes using patients with Caucasian skin tones. Addressing these disparities is not ‘woke’, it’s a recognition of a gap in knowledge and an improvement in our medical education for future physicians.
This assault on science is just so exhausting.
I’m sorry that’s your take on my comment. I think I can assess my situation more objectively than you give me credit for. I am not saying anything about wokeness on college campuses, an issue which of course I am aware of. I can only say that no basic scientist I have ever worked with has designed a research protocol in order to have a more ‘woke’ outcome. And the effort to undermine the validity of good science is not just misguided and wrong, it is potentially dangerous.
It's not an assault on science, though. It should be possible to say "this research is to investigate known issues in different responses in patients with different skin tones" without needing to go (or at least sound like) "All praise Ibrahim X. Kendi, BLM, down with white supremacist time- and record-keeping!" in your application.
It should be possible to do that without signaling to the world that American funding of science is unreliable. It's hard to see this as being successful at anything other than damaging the US capacity to conduct scientific research, which to be fair might be Elon's objective, I don't think he values anything to do with public spending at all.
"I always look at the wording in the funding opportunity announcement and tailor sentences in the abstract and application to reflect the goals of the funding mechanism"
That is what everyone does with government returns, which is why they're a poor mechanism for figuring out what is actually going on. The problem is if you have to stick in the pinch of incense to Caesar just to get past the filters to be considered. You are then at the mercy of the new Caesar who decides he prefers a different sort of incense.
And the likes of the sincere "feminist glaciers" stuff then blackens the name of the rest of science by association.
Ok. So I had to go look up feminist glaciers and OMG, I really am too old for this shit.
Minor correction: " this reflects poorly on Binen administration" could be slightly misassigning the blame, ignoring the role of the legislators. E.g. Section 305 of the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2022 specified "The Director of the Foundation shall continue to support programs designed to broaden participation of underrepresented populations in STEM fields." This was implemented by requiring all NSF grantees to have a plan to how they will contribute to this goal.
+1
I would never imagine I could evaluate a research proposal by reading just the abstract. In particular, if a research proposal made it through the very competitive process of competing for an NSF grant, but I think the proposal is “garbage,” I would think the most likely reason why my views differ from those of the NSF reviewers would be that the NSF reviewers read the proposal and I did not.
Still, I suppose that Scott wasn’t trying to do a perfect job, just a better job than Cruz.
I think this may be a feature, not a bug. Imagine a substantial portion of funded grants promised to allocate a portion of the funded resources to voodoo rituals or to praising our Lord. Would it make sense for an incoming administrator to treat these commitments as signals of scientists honesty or their scientific integrity?
I’d like to see a list of the 100 grants so I can decide for myself whether I agree 40% qualify as “woke.” My gut is that something on the order of “4%” is more likely to be true.
This is a very typical case of over-extending charity resulting in a fundamental misinterpretation of other people's motives and actions.
The purpose of the Ted Cruz database is not to locate and end actual "bad woke science"; it's to signal a political realignment and demand new signaling from researchers. The purpose of flagging perfectly legitimate research that happens to have added "This will help minorities somehow" at the end in hope of pleasing grant administrations is to signal to researchers that they are no longer supposed to do that, and indeed, that attempting to do so may be punished. The goal is not just to eradicate actual "woke" research, but to ensure that researchers no longer attempt to suggest that their research might help minorities, or that helping minorities might even be good at all.
If any actual useful research ends up defunded, targeted, or in some other way suppressed as a result, that is not a mistake; that is a casualty. It's acceptable collateral damage. Best case scenario, it serves as an example. Seeing cancer research get its funding pulled because the researchers made the mistake of saying that some minority has a higher cancer rate so this may incidentally help them will teach the *other* researchers that this is No Longer Something To Care About.
Good science is an acceptable casualty in the process of realigning society along Non-Woke principles. The political has primacy over the practical. Everything is about moral aesthetics.
«The goal is not just to eradicate actual "woke" research, but to ensure that researchers no longer attempt to suggest that their research might help minorities, or that helping minorities might even be good at all.»
And of course they should not. Publicly funded science ought to be for the common good. The idea that serving minority interests in particular, more so than those of the majority being a signal of virtue is utterly corrupt. Of course, some science will benefit some groups more than others, not every group is as large or as rich as others and that's fine. But scientists should not see themselves as beholden to a minority qua them being a minority. And if they do, they damn well should not use public money to pursue such advocacy.
A bit of collateral damage is good, too.
Setting such a harsh example, means that scientists cannot be as easily coerced by peer pressure or mobs into needing to play such games out of fear.
You're right, that this is about moral aesthetics. But it is about banning them.
But you're wrong, this is reasserting the primacy of good science over the political.
In the long-term at least.
this really isn't conservative imo, a conservative would be against wokeness but they wouldn't hack everything to the root precisely due to chesterton's fence. this is more techbro radical libertarianism hiding behind woke.
i mean you can just edit or remove requirements for future grants and next renewal they can resubmit. you don't need to immediately sever things snd this increases the chance it will just be reversed next administration.
woke feels more like an excuse; yeah it may happen but theres no need to not give even woke researchers time to adapt.
Interesting, but fairly obvious. Must of the “woke” statements are perfunctory. What I’m curious about is excision of “trans” related pseudoscience, it’s going to be harsher.
No, batteryless IoT devices actually would be helpful to minorities. Does anyone not know about the smoke detector chirping meme?
While the papers themselves might not be woke, I must admit that I do, in fact worry about the kind of scientific environment where people are forced to make token statements of fealty towards "increasing equity" or "diversity in science" or whatever to even be able to be eligible for a grant. It feels like the kind of thing that the story of Havel's Greengrocer points at.
Mr. Alexander calls "many of the grants being singled out for wokeness and/or defunded for wokeness are not, in fact, woke" a surprising failure mode. I submit that as is often the case, surprise is caused by a failure of one's own mental model to correctly embrace reality.
This 'failure mode' if one imagines that anyone with actual political power in the "war on wokeness" has any interest in, understanding of, or care for the general success of the American scientific community and its ability to do research. To the kind of people actually running the movement and actually in charge, these goals are secondary.
Ted Cruz does not actually care; if he did, he would have winnowed through his list a lot more selectively and screened out all the grant proposals like the one that did nothing but pointlessly boast that the University of Houston has a lot of Hispanic students. A Senator Cruz who understood and cared about science would know that putting that project on the list could severely undermine valid and honest scientific research for the 'crime' of a single sentence that is not false and in no way wastes any taxpayer money. But this is not important to Ted Cruz; Ted Cruz does not care and probably just told a 24-year-old raised on a diet of OANN to search for keywords like "cis," "trans," "disability," and so on. Senator Cruz might easily figure out that this could cause harm to many scientific projects and in the long run to his own constituents, but Senator Cruz does not care.
Elon Musk does not actually care. He has limited if any history of funding primary research except when there is no alternative, and when he benefits from other people's funding of primary research he gets to cherrypick the research <i>after</i> it has already succeeded. As we can easily see from his takeover of Twitter, he has a history of sweeping, arbitrary firings and funding freezes that then force him (or other managers in his employ) to frantically backpedal and try to rehire essential personnel he just fired. We are now seeing him do the same thing with the federal government's air traffic controllers and nuclear weapons safety inspectors. If Elon wanted to learn from his own experiences, he would have ample reason to do so, based on just how badly Twitter's market capitalization has imploded in the roughly two years of his ownership of the company. Elon Musk has more money than God and thinks "essential employee" is a fancy way of saying "Elon Musk, only why are you calling him an employee." Elon Musk has been told that there are consequences (to other people) for recklessly freezing funding to major projects based on a whim. Elon does not care.
Donald Trump does not actually care. Like Musk and Cruz, he is greatly removed from any life experience that could force him to care about the consequences of capriciously firing other people, or cutting off the payment for an important project for little or no reason. Indeed, Trump has repeatedly been rewarded for doing so, with fame and applause on <i>The Apprentice</i> and with successfully getting away with nonpayment for services rendered many times as a real estate mogul. Donald Trump signs executive orders banning entire categories of activity that he cannot plausibly be familiar with, as even a summary form of them would be a document no one can seriously argue that he has read. Donald Trump does not care.
Courtesy of the 2024 election, we are ruled by people who simply do not care if they destroy American scientific institutions in the name of hunting a "wokeness" that lives mainly in their heads, any more than Stalin really cared whether he was making a mistake by having biologists thrown into gulags for questioning Lysenko.
It occurs to me that the example Scott singles out as "extremely dumb" on the grounds that it is 'woke' can be summarized as "as a social/anthropological thing, we're going to set up a network to ask black STEM students what they think it means to be black and whether they see themselves as black."
Now, if this is being presented as medical or physics research, that's not on-topic. But if this is a sociological exercise, directed at researching how universities in particular engage with "black students" as a category, then there is some merit to doing that. "Black" is a large enough and distinct enough category in American history that the field of sociology and American cultural studies probably shouldn't just be pretending that it doesn't exist. And there are some relevant questions here.
For instance, if I asked Scott "is that Nigerian pre-med student here on a student visa black," he would probably say "obviously yes." The Nigerian himself, however, is clearly not "African-American" in the usual sense and has a quite different ancestral history than most of the "African Americans" at the institution. But it isn't as simple as saying "well, he was personally born in Africa so of course that's different," because a <i>Jamaican</i> pre-med student here on a student visa has a lot of overlap in his ancestral history (such as being descended from plantation slaves and having ancestors who may well have been formally and legally lesser-than citizens of their own country within living memory).
There is a valid reason to spend some money doing formal scholarship on this question if your institution intends to pay any attention to "how are our institution's policies affecting black students." Because it kind of is a valid question to say "so, do you mean students with high-melanin skin, do you mean students with a specific history, or do you mean some jumble of the two?"
Cited in the Economist (https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/02/19/how-the-trump-administration-wants-to-reshape-american-science):
> One analysis of a randomly chosen subset of these grants by Scott Alexander, a blogger, found that only around 40% were actually related to DEI (an analysis of all 3,476, conducted by The Economist with the help of an artificial-intelligence model, found the figure was 44%).
If they had such statements at the end, even for throwaway grant optimising purposes, then the project is justifiably woke and can be cut guilt free.
This is just the fair and equitable outcome of putting political statements into your grant proposals. If you have to do it to get funding then accept you are a political activist in part, or don't get the funding. If you are an activist then when your faction is not in power you can lose funding and have no legitimate grounds for complaint.