Sen. Cruz’s National List of Targeted Science Teams is No Laughing Matter.
In the continued attack on US leadership in science, Sen. Cruz targeted more than 3,400 research teams working in robotics, manufacturing, lasers, and more.
Ending the Endless Frontier
On Tuesday Feb 12, Sen. Ted Cruz released a list including more than 3,400 National Science Foundation (NSF) grants that he claims promoted ‘woke DEI’ or ‘neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda’. This release targets individual researchers, teams, and institutions across the United States working on projects that span the scope of NSF’s mission: projects on robotics, radar imaging, biogeochemistry, chemical signaling, advanced manufacturing, multi-material architecture, geophysics, and on and on and on. Each grant is given a label by Sen. Cruz – the classification of offenses include ‘Social Justice’, ‘Race’, ‘Gender’, and ‘Environmental Justice’.
The entire spreadsheet would be absurd if it weren’t serious in its intent.
Making Lists
The cumulative impacts of flagged projects represent more than $2B in NSF funded initiatives The total NSF budget per year is $9B though the White House has proposed slashing these budgets to ~$3B a year. The implication here is that a substantial portion of NSF funded work is un-American. Too far? I am not sure how a reasonable person could otherwise interpret accusations of ‘neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda’. I don’t know what it is, and doubt most people do either, but it seems intend to evoke a different, more familiar word.
It is more than 70 years since Joseph McCarthy was censored by the Senate. The intervening years included remarkable growth of federally funded research, building an endless frontier that has propelled American innovation, technology, and economic prosperity. The majority of the public supports federal funding of science and research nationwide, and believes it is in the county’s national interest. But the Trump administration has taken an entirely different approach.
Since the inauguration, the Trump team has done the following (and more):
Halted monthly paychecks to postdoctoral researchers, some of the country’s most talented scientists.
Prevented the CDC from publishing its Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, for the first time in 60+ years.
Sought a $6B reduction in NSF’s budget.
Imposed a dramatic cut in essential research infrastructure costs on a Friday that would cause damage to America’s health science and research development pipeline nationwide (from drugs, to devices, to ongoing clinical trials).
Throughout, the excuse for these attacks has been that the federal government is wasting money on ‘DEI’ and now, according to Sen. Cruz, on ‘neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda’. But who are they really attacking?
Enemies Everywhere
The White House and its allies are taking aim at life-saving discoveries, technology innovation, and good jobs all across the country – from small towns, to rural hubs of excellence, to major cities. It would seem the White House hopes we don’t have the imagination to believe that critical research could be taking place everywhere, but it is.
Sen. Cruz’s list includes approximately 3x more targeted projects in Alabama than at Harvard. What does Sen. Cruz and the White House have against the state-wide science efforts in Alabama? There’s more: the spreadsheet includes 250+ grants from Sen. Cruz’s own state of Texas, the vast majority from public colleges and universities, that total ~$150M in funds. Why would Sen. Cruz attack research, innovation, and economic prosperity in his own state?
The US research ecosystem is indeed national, vibrant, and imperfect. But fixing imperfection requires a commitment to the mission.
Sen. Cruz’s list may be absurd, but it’s serious in its intent to undo what we have built. For those familiar with neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda, perhaps they can explain the link with a grant that focuses on the roles of nutrients and viral interactions on microbial community assembly? It turns out that there are countless types of microbes and the scientific term for such variation is ‘diversity’. Who knew that neo-Marxism operated at micron scales?
The list of ‘mistakes’ is long, but the intentionality and harm is evident.
The intentionality is evident in other ways. Targeted grants include support for conferences and training programs aimed squarely in the ‘DEI’ space; those teams would almost certainly argue that science should do more to broaden who it reaches, who participates, and who is trained. Reasonable people might have productive conversations on the balance between NSF’s use of funds for scientific discovery, broader impacts, and recruiting, retaining, and training the next generation of talent.
But Sen. Cruz’s list is not intended to start a dialogue.
There was a time, a simpler time, when a Senator from Arizona – Sen. Jeff Flake – posted a list of 20 NSF studies that he viewed as wasteful. It was an absurd exercise even then, but the movement to dismantle science still had its limits. Three of these studies were led by a former colleague – Prof. David Hu - who works on unusual dynamics associated with organismal behavior. It is interesting stuff and it matters. Rather than back down, David took it upon himself to publicly explain both how exciting and relevant his work could be. The projects remained, the work continued.
This time it’s different.
This administration would rather accuse scientists of being neo-Marxists, try to ruin projects and careers, damage local economies, disrupt the science discovery pipeline, and hurt American leadership compared to global competitors (including China).
To those whose projects are on the list – it may be a badge of courage, but it is also a threat that should be taken seriously. It should also be (yet another) wake-up call to certain reticent leaders: silence won’t avoid the pain, but might bring even more.