It's past time these institutions were audited. I had an NSF fellowship and was on numerous NIH grants during my PhD work (Chemist). All of them, even in 2013, had DEI language that made it clear if you were a white/chinese/indian male you were not going to be funded. The institutions, already, were self sabotaging, doling out tons of taxpayer money, not to the best ideas, but to labs that had a few women of various colors other than white working in them. It pushed me and almost all of the other chemists (who were generally white/chinese/indian males) in my class to leave the field either after our PhD or post-doc.
I can only speak for my own experience, but this is 100% not what I have seen (as an NIH-funded white male PI, and one of many at my institution and in my field). I just submitted an R01 last week, and can firmly say that there is no "DEI" language in the grant application forms or in the program announcement; anybody who is interested can easily see the kinds of documents that are required in NIH grants: https://grants.nih.gov/grants-process/write-application/samp...
I will elaborate, for the intentionally obtuse and for people who have not lived in the world of academia. When writing NIH grants you typically have a section describing prior foundational work in the field or in the lab itself that the grant proposes to fund.
In our lab, at the time I was there, the majority of our publications were from 2 white and a chinese male. When writing grant proposals to continue this work (to be continued by the same 3 chemists) the gender/racial characteristics of other members of the lab who were female and of other racial backgrounds were described in great detail, even though they had not contributed to the prior work and were not going to continue the project in the future. Our backgrounds were left unmentioned. This was the way to secure funding was what the PI in our lab told me when I inquired about the glaring discrepancy.
It is my opinion that backgrounds should be irrelevant and funding should be granted on the strength of the proposal. That's not the case today.
EDIT: I left academia in 2013, maybe things have changed.
> This was the way to secure funding was what the PI in our lab told me when I inquired about the glaring discrepancy.
I'm not saying that what your PI told you was wrong, but I will say that it would've been useful to get some additional information about why your PI decided that was the right thing to do. It might have been useful at some particular time or in some particular situation.
> EDIT: I left academia in 2013, maybe things have changed.
That's an important piece of information, as when I read your original post, "even in 2013" made me think that you were still in academia.
This isn't an auditing. This is a gutting based on senseless and illegal procedures. You want to get rid of DEI, fine. That doesn't mean get rid of the whole agency. This is incredibly alarming.
Here is another perspective, there are many more deserving research proposals than there are grants. Even if they banned all minorities from grant funding there would still be many disgruntled and unfunded scientists languishing without grants.
I think the "many more deserving research proposals" more funding as well. So we should judge the proposals by merit, and not the immutable characteristic of the researcher. By the way, why should tax payers fund grants for foreign countries research and education?
I'm not disputing your personal experience, but I've worked on numerous science-related NIH grants over the past decade and the vast majority of performers were white (sometimes asian) males (myself included).
> The institutions, already, were self sabotaging, doling out tons of taxpayer money, not to the best ideas, but to labs that had a few women of various colors other than white working in them.
I am a male of Indian descent, my PI was white male and we collaborated with a number of Asian male PIs and postdocs. I was in PhD research starting in 2015. All of us were funded.
This is an absolute trash take. I've been through the NIH grant process as a white male and there was absolutely 0 mention of diversity, DEI, or whatever other qualifying characteristic of my grant. It came totally down to the content of my proposal. You don't know what you're talking about
