The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia

I didn't look at every one on the list of these 1000 NSF grants that were cancelled:

https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jnt...

but I think if you skim the titles you can sense a theme.

Here's the very first one: "Cambio: A Professional Development Approach for Building Latinx-focused Cultural Competence in Informal Science Education Institutions" for a whopping 2.8 million dollars.

This is not basic research, this is not important research, this is left wing politics parasitically attached to scientific institutions.

This is some serious cherry-picking at work.

Look at the NIH grants listed, which by dollar value far outweigh the NSF grants listed: https://grant-watch.us/nih-data.html

Which part of preventing the spread of HIV is "left wing politics"? Or better understanding radiation exposure? Or developing anti-viral countermeasures?

Some $400m of remaining budget for preventing the spread of HIV was cut, and you're saying it's justified because less than $3m went to trying to improve professional development for a specific group of people?

I mean even look at the specific example you picked - $2.8m over 6 years, from 2019 through to an expected end date of 31 August 2025, and they cut the funding on 09 May 2025 - the work has already been paid for and done, and you want to cut funding so you don't even get the final report/publications out of it to, you know, have something of value to show for the money spent?

Absolutely not cherry picking, almost every single one of these has to do with race, diversity, equity etc

“Amplifying Diverse Voices in STEM Education”

“Research Initiation: Long-Term Effect of Involvement in Humanitarian Engineering Projects on Student Professional Formation and Views of Diversity and Inclusion”

“Conference: Future Faculty Workshop: Preparing Diverse Leaders for the Future, Summers of 2022-2025”

“RCN: LEAPS: Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology”

“CAREER: When Two Worlds Collide: An Intersectional Analysis of Black Women's Role Strain and Adaptation in Computing Sciences”

“EAGER: Collaborative Research: Promoting Diverse and Inclusive Leadership in the Geosciences (GOLD-EN)”

It goes on and on like that. Millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

>already been paid for and done, and you want to cut funding so you don't even get the final report/publications out of it

Yes, correct. This is tax payer money funding racist politics. It’s garbage pretend science and this stuff is done spreading.

Finding the ones that aren't DEI-related is difficult. At first I found "CAREER: Understanding the Interdependence of the Microenvironment and Nuclear Organization in Stem Cell Aging" that looks neutral from its title, and the first part of its description was, but then there's this sentence in the middle that sticks out like a sore thumb: "The primary educational objective of this project is to develop a series of stories that focus on introducing concepts of stem cells and genomics to under-represented minority (URM) students in K-3." The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.