DOGE Says US National Science Foundation Canceling Over $325 Million in DEI Research

The cancellations are in line with Trump’s directive to end DEI policies in the federal government.

Director of the National Science Foundation Sethuraman Panchanathan testifies during the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing to examine CHIPS and science implementation and oversight on Oct. 4, 2023. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grants under the Trump administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said in an April 26 post on social media X.

“Great work by @NSF canceling 701 wasteful DEI grants ($203M in savings), including ‘Building Racial Equity in Marine Science.’ This brings the total to over $325M saved in the past 2 weeks.”

NSF terminated a $20,000 “management development” contract for training course materials related to “understanding bias to unleash potential,” said another DOGE post.

The NSF is an independent federal agency supporting science and engineering that issues grants for research purposes. The foundation’s investments account for roughly 25 percent of the federal support received by U.S. colleges and universities for basic research.

The agency said in an April 26 X post that it terminated several awards which “did not align with our priorities,” underlining the agency’s decision to ditch DEI criteria in its grants this month.

The foundation clarified its priorities in an April 18 statement, saying the “principles of merit, competition, equal opportunity, and excellence are the bedrock of the NSF mission” and that it continues to “review all projects using Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria.”

NSF’s Broader Impacts criteria looks at whether a funding request for research achieves certain social outcomes, including increasing participation of women, disabled individuals, and “underrepresented minorities” in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field.

In its statement, which was updated on April 25, NSF said that activities undertaken to fulfill the Broader Impacts criteria should aim to create opportunities for “all Americans everywhere.”

“These efforts should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups,” it said. Research projects that are “limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities.”

“Awards that are not aligned with NSF’s priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.”

The DEI Purge

The NSF’s decision to ditch DEI aligns with President Donald Trump’s presidential order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” signed on his first day in office.

In the action statement, Trump ordered the termination of “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) criticized NSF for terminating grants related to DEI and “misinformation/disinformation,” according to an April 18 statement from the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, & Technology.

“The American people deserve a scientific enterprise free from political interference, where expert scientists and engineers participate in a merit-based review process to recommend the most innovative and promising research proposals,” she said.

“The American people do not want a system where politicians, be they in the Senate or in the White House, decide which scientific projects to fund or defund based on their biases.”

NSF’s grant terminations come as its director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned on Thursday. He was nominated to the post by Trump in 2019 and was confirmed by the Senate to a six-year term in 2020.

The agency is also currently undergoing an internal overhaul, including laying off staff members and imposing travel restrictions.

Republicans have accused NSF of leftist bias. In February, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database of over 3,400 grants issued by the foundation during the Biden administration totaling over $2.05 billion in federal funding, according to a Feb. 11 statement from the lawmaker’s office.

The funding was used for “questionable projects” that promoted DEI or pushed “neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” said the statement.

Among the grants included a 2022 award of $401,744 to San Jose State University to train teachers and students as “climate justice action researchers and change agents,” a grant of $99,791 to the Georgia Institute of Technology for a project to address “racialized privilege in the STEM classroom,” and over a $1 million to Northwestern University in 2023 to reimagine STEM education through the framework of “racial equity.”

“DEI initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community, and fueled division among Americans,” Cruz said at the time.