In The DEI Catch-22, Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch confirms what I suspected: During the Biden administration, researchers were under pressure to add language on "diversity" and "equity" to grant applications. Now, under the Trump administration, they fear DEI verbiage will doom their research funding.
"When the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million worth of grants to and contracts with Columbia University, ostensibly to punish the university for its handling of anti-Semitism amid pro-Palestinian campus protests," researchers looked for patterns in which grants were canceled, she writes. "As far as they can tell, nearly all of the canceled grants seem to have made some mention of diversity, equity, inclusion, or other disfavored topics" medical school researchers told her.
"Making the cuts even more maddening is the fact that, at least until a few months ago, the federal government required researchers to include plans to 'enhance diversity' in many grant applications," she writes.
The National Institutes of Health has offered "supplemental funding for grants that employed someone from an underrepresented minority group" since the first Bush administration, Horowitch writes. That's now considered evidence of racial discrimination against whites and Asians.
Friday, Columbia agreed to comply with the demands of Trump's anti-Semitism task force in hopes of getting the $400 million in federal funds back. The university will hire 36 security officers "who will be empowered to remove people from campus or arrest them," and will ban wearing face masks (with religious and medical waivers) to conceal protesters' identity, reports the New York Times. "Columbia will also adopt a formal definition of antisemitism."
The administration is going after other universities. The University of Maine system has agreed to comply with federal policy banning biological males who identify as female from competing on women's sports teams.
The University of California system will no longer require would-be professors to submit a "diversity statement" pledging their allegiance to DEI. These statements were unpopular with many professors.
Employee of a university here, although not Columbia, and speaking for myself, not my employer. Can confirm that grant applicants were strongly encouraged, if not required, to add DEI verbiage, to increase chances of getting the grant. This is why so many of the projects in the "Public Database Release" that came out last month have a throwaway line about how it will improve some aspect for the underserved, people of color, etc. even if the project has nothing to do with that.