This post is about two science organizations going very different directions. I wrote to thank the first and criticize the second. Here is the good news.
The full letter can be found here.
Here is their contact info:
Then there is the National Science Foundation — going along to get along. This is from Science. The bolding is mine.
As U.S. science agencies scramble to follow a slew of executive orders from President Donald Trump clamping down on diversity initiatives and other topics, the National Science Foundation (NSF) appears alone in creating an intricate, multistep process for deciding whether an already awarded grant violates those directives.
NSF officials declined to comment on the process, which began last week and is expected to wrap up later this week. But people with direct knowledge say it started with NSF senior managers selecting 10,000 grants, from a pool of roughly 50,000 active awards, for review. They then enlisted staff to vet the awards using a list of key words that include “diversity,” “inclusion,” “women,” and “race.”
To be sure, a sizable share of those words also refers to scientific designations, such as plant diversity, that have nothing to do with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA); those awards were dropped from the review. To avoid potential conflicts of interest, program managers were given grants outside their field of expertise.
Here is part of the list.
Here is the NSF’s contact info.
Email: info@nsf.gov
Mail: National Science Foundation, 2415 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: (703) 292-5111
FIRS: (800) 877-8339
TDD: (703) 292-5090 or (800) 281-8749
Please join me in letting these organizations know how you feel about their very different responses to Trump’s EOs. And please share this diary.