It's really contradictory that the party of less regulation are introducing more friction and bureaucracy in scientific research process. But then it's also the party of anti-science so I can see why.

It's not a contradiction: wanting a small state implies both wanting a low burden of regulation on the private sector specifically, and also wanting a great deal of care to be taken with how money is spent by the government. It isn't a general argument for allowing arbitrary levels of public sector fraud or waste, and it feels bad faith to conflate these two things as if one implies the other. Nobody in the history of politics has argued on principle for a state that has high taxes yet doesn't enforce any rules on how the money is spent.

In this case, the administration believes a lot of the work the NSF funds isn't actually scientific. In that they are correct. The replication crisis has been rolling for 15 years now with no real improvements, largely because the people who distribute the money don't care if it gets used for things that are genuinely scientific or if it gets used for things that merely have the surface level appearance of being scientific. The NSF funds vast amounts of pseudo-science that can be trivially identified and people have been talking about these problems for years with no resolution. Apparently, they need some friction and bureaucracy as otherwise they won't do their jobs correctly. In a free market government intervention isn't required to solve this problem because free actors will just stop funding pseudo-scientific work after a while, but the NSF isn't running a free market, and so the problem just never gets solved.

This article focuses on social science but talks a bit about the general problems at the NSF at the end, and although it was written in 2020 thus at the start of the Biden administration the proposals the author makes for fixes are basically what's happening right now:

https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with...

Nobody actually benefits from the present state of affairs, but you can't ask isolated individuals to sacrifice their careers for the "greater good": the only viable solutions are top-down, which means either the granting agencies or Congress (or, as Scott Alexander has suggested, a Science Czar). You need a power that sits above the system and has its own incentives in order: this approach has already had success with requirements for pre-registration and publication of clinical trials. Right now I believe the most valuable activity in metascience is not replication or open science initiatives but political lobbying

...

An NSF/NIH inquisition that makes sure the published studies match the pre-registration (there's so much """"""""""QRP"""""""""" in this area you wouldn't believe). The SEC has the power to ban people from the financial industry—let's extend that model to academia.21

...

It is difficult to convey just how low the standards are. The marginal researcher is a hack and the marginal paper should not exist. There's a general lack of seriousness hanging over everything—if an undergrad cites a retracted paper in an essay, whatever; but if this is your life's work, surely you ought to treat the matter with some care and respect.

Why is the Replication Markets project funded by the Department of Defense? If you look at the NSF's 2019 Performance Highlights, you'll find items such as "Foster a culture of inclusion through change management efforts" (Status: "Achieved") and "Inform applicants whether their proposals have been declined or recommended for funding in a timely manner" (Status: "Not Achieved"). Pusillanimous reports repeat tired clichés about "training", "transparency", and a "culture of openness" while downplaying the scale of the problem and ignoring the incentives. No serious actions have followed from their recommendations.

It's not that they're trying and failing—they appear to be completely oblivious. We're talking about an organization with an 8 billion dollar budget that is responsible for a huge part of social science funding, and they can't manage to inform people that their grant was declined! These are the people we must depend on to fix everything.

From the article:

> For academic scientists, the list of banned activities could include efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, collaborations with foreign scientists, and research on more environmentally friendly technologies.

These are not the "vast amounts of pseudo-science" that your comment refers to.

I have nothing against the ideas suggested in the 2020 blog post that you cite... it's just that is not what is happening because of the executive order.

The executive orders do not address bad science.

So overall, I agree with most ideas in your comment but I do not think it is relevant to the current situation. The administration is not trying to fix bad science.

Riddle me this, what has the Republican party done to alleviate replication crisis in scientific research?

How about this move that we're discussing? Getting rid of openly ideological research grants will help the replication rate quite a bit, as that stuff is riddled with basic replication problems, much worse than the median paper. It's just too easy to take some grant money then publish something pseudo-scientific which sounds good to left wing ears, knowing that nobody will double check because they want it to be true.

As an example, a lot of research into "misinformation" is like that. It's not replicable out of the gate because the papers don't describe their procedure for deciding whether a claim is true or false. They just present random lists of things that conservatives tend to believe, assert that none of them are true / they're conspiracy theories, then do a survey and use the results to conclude that conservatives are dumb / Russian bots. That's it, that's the entire field. There's no methodology, no theories, nothing to be refined or refuted. There are thousands of papers like this, it's astonishing to witness.

I've been writing for years on the topic of bad science, and the fact that universities/granting bodies claim to care about science whilst simultaneously funding and celebrating this stuff is why their reputation has gone down the drain. The consequences were absolutely predictable. Nobody can claim they didn't see it coming.

Right now, there's just a grant freeze combined with a review to find the really nakedly partisan DEI stuff. That's nothing. Much more intense stuff is well within the Overton Window of possibilities by this point, like ramped up prosecutions or large scale defunding.

You're making so many vaporous claims that I doubt if it's even worth engaging.

I've been on HN for a decade and worked (tangentially) with the individual you're responding to- I don't think you should take the effort to respond at all. He's made up his mind that the current approach will improve things, and believes he has "data" to support it, but also seems absolutely naive about the intent and effects of the current administration's approaches.

Agreed. I myself was involved in academia close to a decade as well and participated in studies funded by NIH and NSF during Obama, Trump#1 and Biden era. This person has no clue how rigorous and competitive the grant review process is. If appealing to DEI was so successful in getting your study funded, everyone would do it. But it was never the case at least in my experience.

Less regulation for _companies_, more regulation for _people_.

I was told that corporations are people, my friend.

If you couldn't see the anti-China rhetoric was a smoke screen, now it should be pretty obvious, with the US going down a similar road (eg. vetting projects that goes against the government's ideology... which is ironically what most far right politicians say they are against: ideology).

If this were the case then they would be replacing the ideological conformity sections with different ideological conformity requirements. Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period.

Whatever a scientist happens to believe in, these changes would not imperil his ability to receive government funding. But in the previous system, if one felt that unconditional merit was the most fundamental factor in science (and refused to simply lie) he would have been found it much more difficult to secure funding.

Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period.

This is the significant part.

Woke ideology was always unpopular when put to the test in the court of public opinion and sometimes even law. Whether it's entertainment products that got reviewbombed for incorporating "diversity", illegal hiring/enrollment quotas that once existed to enforce "inclusion", or the replacing of the word "equality" with "equity" because people started catching on that what was touted as equality actually wasn't.

Now that we have a President (and by extension a party) who was elected to get rid of all that, promises to do so are being kept.

As a Japanese-American, I 300% voted for and support this. Everyone should be judged on merit and merit alone, not whether they have the right skin color, sex organs/preferences, disabilities, or illnesses.

The problem with this idea is that "woke" is a moving target that its enemies are defining. Will they change the definition to include things you don't want? Moreover, does it currently actually have the goal to make meritocracy? For example, they've allowed discrimination based on race in government hiring, for example, so that does not bode well for the idea of being judged on merit alone. Explicitly, they are now allowed to judge on race where they were not before. Read through project 2025 - is that what you actually want, because that's what he's gonna implement.

For example, they've allowed discrimination based on race in government hiring ... Read through project 2025

I advise you read through the actual Executive Orders than some false propaganda material of at best questionable value.

What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character. We are once again on the path to making Martin Luther King's dream a reality.

Here are the EOs with regards to the subject matter at hand:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/refo...

Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.

Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.

----

This Federal Hiring Plan shall: ... prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch;

vetting projects that goes against the government's ideology...

This is with the previous administration was also doing. You were required to buy into the DEI ideology, prove your loyalty to the new religion.

I don't understand why you are calling it a religion.

What has been your personal experience with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in employment?

Mine has been that I watched a few videos that basically said: don't hit on people at work, don't mock people for disabilities, and don't treat people as lesser based on physical attributes.

In other words, don't be an asshole to people at work.

The only people I've seen given preferential treatment at work have been those who suck up to the leadership to get promoted.

This is an interesting question.

I've seen it implemented in a couple of ways. One of the simplest is stronger blinding of applications so you aren't biased by irrelevant personal information.

For example this has been pretty effective in astronomy (proposals to get time on competitive instruments) where applications with female names were less likely to be approved. Simply removing the name was enough to improve the situation.

The fallacy is that people think DEI encourages preferential or token "diversity hires". When implemented correctly, it should mean that successful applications (for jobs, grants, whatever) go to the most qualified or deserving candidate using unbiased/impersonal metrics. That may mean encouraging minority groups to apply, but at the time of review, you should have no idea who the applicant is.

The fallacy is that people think DEI encourages preferential or token "diversity hires".

Why do you say it is a fallacy when the E in DEI stands for the so called equity, which means exactly that. You seem to be describing equality, which is something that DEI was intended to supersede.

When you look at pre-Trump guidelines for FAA job applications, for example, there is an explicitly described preferential process for hiring from the favored groups.

Equity doesn't mean that though. There are people (like the current president) who certainly have something to gain from selling you that bridge, but no one I know who works in or advocates for "equity" initiatives considers them to advocate for token or diversity hires.

Have you considered that your sources of data may be biased?

Consider, for example that need-based scholarships are perhaps one of the clearest examples of a equitable, but explicitly unequal program. Should they be removed, or perhaps is there some legitimacy to this "equity" thing?

Consider, for example that need-based scholarships are perhaps one of the clearest examples of a equitable, but explicitly unequal program. Should they be removed, or perhaps is there some legitimacy to this "equity" thing?

That's discrimination on the basis of income, which is legal. Discrimination on the basis of race and gender is not. All of the DEI programs I've seen have focused on equity with respect to race and gender. And 3 out of 4 companies I've worked at employed discrimination to that end.

Plenty of people have seen their employers adopt discriminatory practices in pursuit of equity. Condescending towards people and insisting that they're being misled about DEI is not a good way to defend it when loads of people have witnessed discrimination carried out under DEI programs firsthand. While I respect that none of your experiences with DEI involved discrimination, I urge you to meet other people who've had different experiences with the same respect.

I want to break down this post a bit, because this topic is often divisive and I'm aiming to be constructive. So, the question I asked, "Is there some legitimacy to this equity thing", and the question you chose to answer, which as best as I can tell is "Is racial discrimination legal?".

Those aren't the same question and I don't think conflating them is constructive. I'm not arguing that companies can do harmful things in the name of diversity. But the goal of equitable outcomes being worthwhile is independent from anyone's feelings about the legitimacy of any particular approach to meeting that goal, and that's what I asked about, and what you didn't reply to. I'd ask you to consider why.

Reading some of your other posts on the topic, you keep quoting a "3/4" statistic, and you've described different practices when asked to describe what they were you've described:

- Explicit racial and gender quotas in headcount (which are flatly illegal and so I doubt) - Hiring goals in OKRS (which aren't inherently discriminatory, and probably weren't achieved!) - Giving candidates multiple attempts on interviews in certain cases - Requiring a certain number of underrepresented candidates to be offered interviews before the candidate can be picked

I want to dig into this last one, because in my experience, this is somewhat common, but only with executive hiring, where often roles aren't open for public application, and this forces executive search companies to make a modicum of additional effort to source and provide diverse candidates to the hiring company. This has, in some cases I've seen, also resulted in executive level positions having open public job postings.

I also want to dig in to something you said in another comment, because I think you're using discrimination in a particular way that's not how most people think of it. Phrased more forcefully, the definition of "racial discrimination" you appear to be using and considering harmful includes practices that are both generally considered legal and generally considered moral.

Not every form of discrimination involves lowering hiring standards. For instance, imagine I flip a coin whenever a Catholic candidate applies. Tails, their resume goes into the garbage bin, heads and their application process as normal. Does this lower lower hiring standards for non Catholics? No. Does this advantage non-Catholics over Catholic candidates? Yes. It would halve the hiring rate of Catholics, though it doesn't result in any "lowering the bar".

So, I agree that this would lower the hiring rate of Catholics, but under this definition, ending this (clearly) discriminatory practice would lower the hiring rate of non-catholics. If your metric is "it is discriminatory if it harms the hiring rate of some group", then you've created an explicitly zero-sum definition of discrimination, and anything that reduces discrimination against some group causes discrimination against another. In doing so you've baked in an assumption about the correctness of the methodology at some particular time and place that you're measuring against.

You can call that discrimination, and I actually do in a lot of circumstances, but it isn't bad. It's actually a good thing, and we recognize that in a lot of circumstances that discrimination in pursuit of equity is moral and legal and even necessary!

Outside the US, for example, there are explicit racial quotas in a lot of situations, for example in New Zealand[0] there are explicit quotas in parliament to ensure continued native representation, and India has quota systems to help support lower caste individuals in opposition to active discrimination in society by upper-caste folks.

Even in the US, Due to the 1965 Voting Rights Act [1], ensuring representation of minority groups and actively "discriminating" in district drawing to ensure minority representation is both legal and in some cases required. And while the supreme court has defanged the voting rights act in recent years, it still recognizes that looking at race explicitly as part of disparate impact tests makes sense in many cases.

So while I do in fact meet with and talk with lots of people who have different experiences, I urge you to do the same: consider if your interpretation of what is harmful discrimination is in line with common use.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_electorates

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

I don't understand why you are calling it a religion.

There's a book on the topic: "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America" by John McWhorter

What you are describing is the motte. What happened to James Damore was the bailey.

Did he fail a critical vibe check / badly fail to read the room? Sure. Given the political climate I'm not surprised he was fired.

But is everyone already forgetting what things were like?

Given the political climate I'm not surprised he was fired.

He was fired because he placed himself in a position where at least half the company would refuse to work with him.

Not disagreeing with you.

It didn't matter if he was wrong or right, his mistake was entertaining the notion that people would entertain an earnest (if misguided) discussion when in fact that whole topic was taboo.

Questioning the status quo is very different from drawing conclusions the way he did. It should never be taboo to question whether DEI practices are fulfilling their goals or harming other metrics.

The topic is not "taboo". In an organization where compensation is based on non-anonymous peer review, you cannot have a person going around with their thesis that women are objectively inferior engineers. That person has to be fired (directly into the sun, when practical).

you cannot have a person going around with their thesis that women are objectively inferior engineers

Did you read his memo[1]? That's not really what he's saying. He's ham-handedly trying to look for reasons that explain the gender gap in engineering. His thesis is that fewer women want to do that kind of work than men, not that those who do take the job are worse at it.

That person has to be fired (directly into the sun, when practical).

Meow!

[1] https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...

Is this based on a quote from management?

How did they measure who didn't want to work with him, did they survey the entire company?

Considering he more or less said women are less intelligent than men, I would guess at least about half were very offended.

No, he didn't say that. Don't misquote.

Were you required to buy into it? Prove your “loyalty”? What do you mean?

Applying for government contracts, academia, NGOs - but also a lot of "big company" procurement processes - required DEI statements etc.

I have written what you would likely call "DEI" statements for grants and job applications, and I have reviewed them as well.

The absolutely worst statements are the people who believe that the statement is an ideological litmus test. It never was, and it isn't.

These statements, to a one, are basic HR stuff: discuss your strategies and experiences to not be an asshole and ensure that the diverse people you manage (and they almost certainly are diverse) will be able to get along and work effectively under your management. Boring stuff.

People think its some sort of ideological purity test, write it as such, and get surprised when the statement is evaluated poorly.

The requests are worded in a way that makes people think they're ideological because (as far as I can tell) the people who added it to the requirements were heavily influenced by their ideological commitments. The statements are then reviewed by volunteers taken from the broader community, who aren't going to rate "contributions to diversity" too highly if they're described with an extreme degree of force.

If the people writing the calls wanted the same things as the people reviewing the submissions, they would say, "tell us about your experiences with normal HR tasks."

In almost every case I've seen, the statements are in fact worded in terms of specific contributions. The most general terminology I've seen is requesting the candidate to explain their role "advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion"—to which the best statements respond with (1) their experiences with diverse classrooms/staff, and (2) their specific strategies for approaching these issues.

I have not really encountered instructions that I would misconstrue to be an ideological litmus test, and the majority of submissions that I have reviewed do not in fact talk about the candidate's ideological priors.

Calling it diversity is a huge ideological presupposition. Two white guys can create a hostile work environment for a third, there's nothing diversity specific about it. This is reflected in the way everyone thinks about it - you're not checking to see whether the experiences they're describing crossed the right identity boundaries, you're judging it according to the wrongs dealt and the submitter's sense of balance.

So you defend it on the grounds, specifically, correct me if I am misinterpreting, that it is nothong beyond a rebranding of typical HR legal speak? You either think it is important and meaningful or you don't-- ie it is a litmus test. I think it is useful as such frankly, but could be minimized. I am totally happy to pledge allegiance to non-racism or something like that. Some arcane limus test where only people like you can evaluate the true merit of a DEI statement is likely to be unfair, widely abused and ironically probably reinforces institutional racism more than it ameliotates it. Not calling you a hard racist, just saying you are contributing to it and sustaining it rather than reducing it.

Having been on a few hiring committees, both in academia, industry, and state: no, it is not arcane; scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I have had mandatory trainings about this ad nauseam before I have been allowed to sit on hiring committees. One of the biases “DEI initiatives” warn against is being impressed by people who spew jargon without having done the work, and supporting people who have done the work (and give examples) without spewing jargon.

If the interpretation is “arcane”, that’s an institutional problem that goes far beyond interpreting an interview question that forms a fraction of the interview process. But claiming that’s inherent to organizations that mention diversity in an interview question is setting up a strawman, and HR will have it ground into your head that it is “inequitable”.

scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I don't doubt your lived experience, but in 3 out of 4 companies DEI initiatives took the form of explicitly discriminating on the basis of candidates' protected class. Practices like giving "diverse" candidates multiple chances go pass interviews where white and Asian men got one. Another straight up created a reservation system for diverse candidates.

I acknowledge that some people have had better experience DEI, but I'd encourage you to consider the possibility that many have witnessed explicit discrimination under the banner of DEI.

I suspect that projects are always vetted against ideology, because everyone has one and everyone believes that his own is correct. I doubt that one could get NSF funding for a study of racial differences in IQ. I am certain that one could not get it for any ‘research’ based on the idea that the Earth is 7,000 years old. That seems like a really good thing!

I think the news is less that a branch of the executive is complying with executive branch policy, and more that it’s surprising how much of the federal government’s actions are based not in the law and the Constitution, but rather in policy. One man almost sixty years ago creates a policy with a stroke of a pen, and it effectively becomes law; another now removes it with a stroke of a different pen. If the latter is a problem, surely the former was too; if the former was not a problem, then why is the latter?

Speaking of the Constitution, what is the Constitutional basis for this large structure of federal funding for the sciences? Nothing in Article I, Section 8 appears to cover it: the encouragement of science appears to be limited to copyright and patent monopolies.

Speaking of the Constitution, what is the Constitutional basis for this large structure of federal funding for the sciences? Nothing in Article I, Section 8 appears to cover it: the encouragement of science appears to be limited to copyright and patent monopolies.

This is like saying I read the first sentence of the wikipedia article and it doesn't mention something so it must not exist.

Congress authorized it in 1950; it's extremely visible. [1]

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is authorized and governed by the "National Science Foundation Act of 1950," as amended, as well as other statutes authorizing NSF activities and making appropriations to the agency.

[1]: https://new.nsf.gov/about/authorizing-legislation

Yes, 42 U.S.C. 1861, et seq is the legal basis for the NSF. What’s the Constitutional basis for that law? The Congress only has the powers granted in Article I and further amendments. For example, the Congress does not have the power to regulate rents outside of federal territories. Which enumerated power enables 42 U.S.C 1861?

The Tenth Amendment clearly states, ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ If the Constitution does not grant a power to the Congress, it does not have it and it has no more legislative authority in that regard than you or I do.

Uh, Congress absolutely does how the power to charge money outside of federal territories [1] and it's a long standing complaint of ex-pats that they have to pay federal taxes.

Section 7 [2] lets them write laws as well as Section 8 [4] . Section 8 aslo lets them pay for it [3].

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-c...

[2]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...

[3]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...

[4]: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...

Congress absolutely does how the power to charge money outside of federal territories

Of course it does. It has no power to regulate rents outside of federal territories, which is what I wrote. It cannot pass national rent control, for example.

Section 7 lets them write laws as well as Section 8

Section 7 describes how bills are passed; Section 8 describes what those bills may do. Congress has no Constitutional power to require that every home in the United States have yellow shutters. I feel like this should be uncontroversial! I’m genuinely surprised anyone thinks otherwise.

This type of political movement always claims to be against the exact things they’re for. They claim to be against censorship while using their actual influence to do things like forcing TikTok to change their moderation policy. They claim to want to protect children while putting child abusers in positions of power. It gives members of the movement an easy way to deflect criticism and express their feelings of grievance—don’t you know we hate censorship, and anyway it’s you who was censoring us! It’s only fair for you to feel a little of that pain that we feel!

As context, the NSF requires grant writers to include a “broader impacts” section [1] in every grant proposal. This includes things like improving education, national security, economic competitiveness, and also inclusion - for example, ideas to attract more talent from underrepresented groups. So every NSF proposer works hard to satisfy the NSF on this requirement. I happen to think that these are worthwhile goals (we shouldn’t be wasting our limited talent due to historical crankiness) and simultaneously I believe the sections ends up being a bit performative. If the NSF were to change its criteria for grants going forward I might disagree with that approach but it would be consistent with what I’ve heard from these folks, ie they think “DEI” is getting in the way of science. However: the current approach is just destructive: if involves asking researchers to augment their proposals with these goals, and then retroactively refuses to pay already-awarded grant recipients who did what they were asked to.

I will leave the question of whether this is constitutional to other folks. I will even leave aside the question of whether we can afford to defund science in our current crazy geopolitical environment. The real point here is that this is just plain wrong.

[1] https://new.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts

I agree that the goals are worthwhile, and also feel that requiring every proposal to include this is not efficient and/or very effective. They should take all the funds and time spent on this every year as part of every award, and just fund programs specifically designed to attract inner-city kids to science, or funnel talented, low-income, high school students to be mentored, taught advanced classes, etc.

I would be happy to spend time mentoring URM, etc. But it'd work a lot better if others managed such a program, thought about how to attract them, etc. Specialization is good.

That seems like a reasonable middle ground to me. But I didn't have any problem with DEI. If you have inner-city kids underrepresented by 50% then fund according to %population * %underrepresnted -- if 25% population then 12.5% of funding for programs to increase participation (don't think it would be that high). Maybe divide that by N if you have N different groups you would like to be more represented (eg rural kids). Performance is just that. Funding would be more effective. I expect anti-DEI folks would like the funding effort even less than the performance effort. It's obvious they believe diversity itself is part of the problem (whether admitted or not).

Do you have any thoughts (which you feel comfortable sharing) on the actual effectiveness or otherwise of these initiatives? Setting aside the dogma on both sides, do they achieve their stated aims?

It's difficult to isolate the effects of DEI - there are far too many confounding factors interfering. You might use effective masking when analyzing a submission that removes your own personal biases, but, after the hire, there is no way to hide the difference that could have impacted your assessment.

Keeping biases in check is a daily exercise. I am aware of many of my own biases and I have to continuously fight back. There are people whose company I enjoy more than others, but I can't let that interfere with my professional judgment.

I agree that there's not much information to be gathered from a small sample, but there ought to be some tangible effects at the macro level. Is academia actually becoming more equal due to these initiatives? Are researchers who are hired as a result of inclusivity programmes as effective as researchers who are hired outside those programmes? These are things we ought to be able to measure.

Brazil has some long running DEI programs for public colleges and universities and the general conclusion is that minority students who performed worse in admission tests but were enrolled based on quotas show very similar academic performance to the students who came from wealthier backgrounds. Some data hints that they perform better than their non DEI colleagues.

I work for a university. I know that for several undergraduate degree programmes (not by any means all of them, but several) we've measured and there's no evidence of any correlation between the academic achievements in related subjects prior to study and the eventual degree classification.

Since apparently there's no point in testing them for "aptitude" or we don't know how to do so, it makes sense to have other criteria such as broadening participation.

Or, you know, enrol the ones who'd be better on your sports teams, or who look prettier for prospectus photos, or something - just don't fool yourself that you care about some sort of pre-existing "talent".

I'm a bit confused, or maybe I've been doing it wrong. DEI-related things don't usually go in Broader Impacts, do they? When I've written grants, Broader Impacts was just generally for "how is your research going to help society?"; it was the Broadening Participation in Computing section that was oriented toward DEI.

This seems great. It's increasingly apparent that the government was spending countless billions of dollars to push ideology in plainly weird ways. Why should somebody researching e.g. fusion for the Department of Energy also need to create a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan, to even apply?

This should greatly reduce the overall bureaucratic nonsense in science and help get back to science simply being science without imposing ideological conformity tests.

It's increasingly apparent that the government was spending countless billions of dollars to push ideology in plainly weird ways.

Did you miss the last 80 years of anti-communist, pro-capitalist, free-market propaganda? The american government has been the most powerful ideological force in the world for basically all of living memory.

You're definitely right and I also do not agree with that stuff either, but it was mostly done "appropriately" in that it was through avenues, like the State Department or CIA, who have propaganda as part of their mission.

In this case you had things like the Department of Energy requiring Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research plans to even apply for funding.

The two big differences I see is that that is a wholly inappropriate avenue for ideological enforcement, and that it's also exceptionally divisive.

Things are changing in modern times but historically free markets, capitalism, and so on were very widely shared values. The contemporary equality of outcome (versus opportunity) stuff is extremely new and extremely divisive. The government pushing it, and frequently in very inappropriate ways (the military also comes to mind) is just very weird.

requiring Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research plans

equality of outcome (versus opportunity) stuff is extremely new and extremely divisive

Equality of outcome, in the sense that we should hire unqualified people for research positions, is thankfully an incredibly rare and frankly insane position that almost nobody holds. Also thankfully, that's not what these required plans were. The requirement was that groups applying for grants have a specific and actionable plan for making sure that equality of opportunity was ensured. In fact, advantaging one group over another, such as with quotas, would directly violate DEI policy[1]. Typically, a plan would reference existing enrollment/acceptance policies of the company/university/department making an application, which are designed to make sure employees/students are not advantaged or disadvantaged by immutable or protected characteristics. Common examples would be:

- Make sure that your hiring panel is diverse to avoid bias towards whatever groups are over-represented at your company already. It's a well-studied phenomena that people are inclined to like others who are similar to themselves. Without any other factors in play (skill is randomly distributed in applicants, all of your employees are free of sexual/racial bias), if your company consists of, say, 80% men and 20% women, and you pick your interviewers totally at random, you will continue to hire more men than women. If you use a 50/50 split on your interview panel then your hiring becomes more meritocratic by virtue of factoring out self-similarity biases.

- Implement structured interviews and standardized qualifications-based hiring, rather than relying on interviewer preference.

- Learning about potential subconscious biases helps people account for them. Incorporating bias training can mitigate (though not eliminate) hiring biases. Of course, as you have no doubt experienced, these training courses tend to be pretty boring and patronizing, but that's true of most employee training, so /shrug.

- Diversifying applicant sourcing. If you only look for applicants via one platform, adding some more that tend to be used by different groups to your sourcing strategy.

You have bought into the oft-repeated lie that DEI is some Harrison Bergeron-esque attempt to cripple institutions. You were probably pointed to one or two extremely poor implementations of such policies that were genuinely unfair. The broader movement, and most implementations of it, are about equality of opportunity. The intentional destruction of public perception of these policies and subsequent removal only guarantees that existing self-perpetuating gaps in opportunity will persist.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20241222222206/https://science.o...

Archive link, because of course the new admin took down the page.

advantaging one group over another, such as with quotas

Make sure that your hiring panel is diverse

How do you make sure your hiring panel is diverse without having diversity quotas for it?

Equality of outcome, in the sense that we should hire unqualified people for research positions, is thankfully an incredibly rare and frankly insane position that almost nobody holds. Also thankfully, that's not what these required plans were. The requirement was that groups applying for grants have a specific and actionable plan for making sure that equality of opportunity was ensured. In fact, advantaging one group over another, such as with quotas, would directly violate DEI policy[1].

I understand that many people say this, but academics routinely understand government DEI initiatives to be racial quotas. See for example https://archive.is/So06G about the NIH FIRST program. I don't think that DEI is secretly aiming to cripple institutions, but I do think that its advocates genuinely feel racial balancing is a good idea and dissemble about this in contexts where it would be illegal.

This is an ideological conformity test.

Yes, being opposed to discrimination is an ideological conformity test.

You do realize that the EO this replaced has almost the exact verbiage about discrimination, right? We should be focusing on what is different between the two instead of being sidetracked by that argument.

this replaced has almost the exact verbiage about discrimination, right?

It would be useful to show the comparison, rather than claim it. Could you be more specific about this, by at least providing the section that you read, or the EO references?

Why should somebody researching e.g. fusion for the Department of Energy also need to create a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan, to even apply?

To try to ensure that the people working on the project are selected fairly and on merit, rather than unfairly and on personal prejudice.

Is that not what Equal Protection under the 14A (applied to the USG through the Due Process clause of the 5A) is for?

Without enforcement mechanisms (a PIER plan in this context), the 14th Amendment is just blots of ink on paper.

A PIER plan is not Equal Protection. For the last few years, a PIER plan is explicitly about Un-equal Protection in the service of achieving "equitable" outcomes.

How do you explain the un-equitable outcomes that we have been getting? The whole point of DEI is that there are (largely unconscious) biases that have been producing these un-equitable outcomes, and we need some conscious effort to get rid of them.

If truly being race-blind (or any other way of dividing people that is not strictly merit) is really your goal, and you are aware of unconscious bias, then what are people really objecting to?

Can you offer any other possible explanations than "unconscious bias" that would lead to different outcomes?

"Unconscious bias" is sociological dark matter. It is a kludge used to prop up otherwise ineffective social theories.

Exactly. This [1] headline from the NYT pretty much sums up the issue: "To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions."

Different groups of peoples have different strengths and different weaknesses. This isn't some sort of a problem that needs fixing.

And if one does want to 'fix' it you need to start way earlier than at the e.g. hiring point. Want to beat that kid who's been playing violin for hours a day since he was 6? Ok, then your target demographic is 6 year olds, not professional orchestras.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...

Unconscious biases are well studied, and a good presenter can show it live on stage.

Please explain to me how %85 of Fortune 500 CEOs are white men. I don't believe for a moment that white men (myself included) are generically better at being CEOs, or at performing any of the roles that lead up to those positions.

The unconscious biases that the people in those positions choosing their successors to look like them selves is a strong explanation of this, and studies have been show that in controlled situations this sort of things happens all the time. Even by those who want things to be color-blind.

You can read about PIER plan requirements here. [1] Archive since the page is already dead. Things are moving ridiculously fast for government to the point I suspect there was alot of desire to get rid of all this stuff before, but people were unable to do so.

Anyhow it had nothing to do with the merit of the project or the team which were obviously already being evaluated. It was nothing but an unrelated ideological conformity test added as a requirement.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230104150813/https://science.o...

Great resource. imo Trump is jerking the wheel too hard in the other direction but some of this stuff was legitimately crazy. FAQ:

Q: I am only requesting support for one graduate student; do I still need to submit a PIER Plan?

A: Yes, all applications for funding to the Office of Science, with the exception of supplemental proposals, conference proposals, and proposals to the SBIR/STTR Programs (at this time), require a PIER Plan. All applicants are encouraged to consider what contributions they can make to creating more equitable and inclusive research environments. It is expected that the complexity and detail of a PIER Plan for a smaller research project and fewer project personnel would be less than that for a larger research project. [and no we won't provide you an example, it needs to be from your heart]

When you're requiring the greengrocer to submit a personalized statement justifying how each single apple he sells contributes to the project of worldwide socialism you might be risking provoking a reactionary counterrevolution. Americans need to just chill with trying to enforce micromanaged ideological conformity on a continent-sized country of 350 million people. And avoid winding up in a place "eroded by the ideological rituals that the entire power structure depend on, 'that are ever less credible, exactly because they are untested by public discussion and controversy'".

I applied for and won a small NASA ROSES citizen science seed funding grant ($80K). The call focused on outreach and equity in a way that encouraged me come up with a plan to get underprivileged high school students involved. This improved my results and made a difference in their lives.

The pendulum went from "DEI totally just means learning about slavery in school, everything else you're noticing is just in your head" to "everything bad is caused by DEI". I hope once this runs its course we can find a middleground between the extremes.

I'm sorry, but this hope needs to be put to rest. This political reality has been under construction since Watergate.

The winner take all, take no prisoners approach worked. Its counteracted evolution, climate science, even reality. Creating your own media outlet, ditching bi-partishanship, has only helped the Republicans.

People here are talking about how MAGA is not the conservative voter. This is a distinction without a purpose, because Maga and the Tea Party movements won elections.

The left and dems must and will follow suit.

You will only see more extreme points, and frankly outright violence. This is only the first 11 days. The impacts of removing fact checkers and the new free speech moderation stance is going to result in a direct uptick of hate speech.

As things get worse, theres going to be even more incitement with utterly fabricated content. This is going to only further entrench the dominance of the media powerhouse that exists.

The greater the animosity, the easier people are going to respond to the perceived threats - and since being disconnected from reality works, it will not matter if its true or not.

All that matters now is winning elections.

As things get worse, theres going to be even more incitement with utterly fabricated content.

Speaking of fabricated content, are you describing the actual future or a simulation of it?

Hmm. Dunno, I can't really answer that without sounding like I am tooting my own horn. Would it help further if I said that my day job is about disinfo/ fraudulent content, and that I make these statements based on work experience?

I could add that I've made these calls, since 2008, and they've been predictable.

Thing is, any rando online can claim these things, so I don't know how to answer your comment.

So what would you look for to differentiate between prediction and simulation?

You are interpreting this through a really uncharitable lens. That statement is not about ideology, the whole premise is stewardship of taxpayer funds.

If a grad student is funded on the project but gets pushed out because of toxic culture, discrimination, or some other kind of marginalization, then that is a waste of research funds and slows down research. Successful teams need to be able to work together effectively and mitigate conflicts. People are diverse, and conflicts are likely to arise because of this: anyone running a research team needs a plan to manage their team, just as they need a plan to manage their data. Its boring HR stuff that is necessary in a diverse society.

Anyhow it had nothing to do with the merit of the project or the team which were obviously already being evaluated

Oh thats an interesting point to make. Were you part of these things? I really like unbiased merit based societies, so I was wondering what your experience was.

I really like unbiased merit based societies

Just thought I would recommend some reading about this: "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?" by Michael Sandel.

Basically, think about what the longer-term, overarching effects on society would be in a perfectly-meritocratic society. It likely wouldn't be all unicorns and rainbows.

Here's a review about it: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/08/montage-michael-sand...

May not change your mind, but we should always try to expand it :)

Here's a take that I came across which I'd like your views on if possible:

When the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act were created, people asked the government to enforces these acts. Whatever you think of merits of DEI, the government decided to create DEI in order to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities act.

The problem is because they decided that DEI would be the mechanism to do this with, once DEI is rescinded the question is: If you're not going to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act through DEI, which mechanism do you plan to use to enforce them? According to this take, once DEI is rescinded there is no mechanism to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act anymore.

I'm pretty sure that most leftwing and rightwing people will agree that out of 3 millions government workers it's not entirely unlikely that there would be some some valid cases of discrimination against minorities and those with disabilities. The claim is that, whether DEI sucks or not, there is no avenue to contest racism and discrimination in government hiring anymore.

Whatever you think of merits of DEI, the government decided to create DEI in order to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities act.

This part is foundational to the rest, and it's straightforwardly untrue. The government agency which most often enforces these two laws is called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which remains active under the new administration; the new acting chair has given no indication that she intends to stop enforcing the Civil Rights Act or the ADA.

Thanks for the info.

Doesn't "revoking the Equal Employment Opportunity executive order" entail that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will be affected? [0]

EDIT:

Trump also fired the EEOC chair it seems. Can the commision work with just two commisioners if he doesn't hire a replacement?

“These removals leave the E.E.O.C. without a quorum, which hobbles the agency’s ability to protect workers from unlawful discrimination,” [1][2]

[0] https://archive.is/QHQJD

[1] https://archive.is/C1voe

[2] https://www.lawandtheworkplace.com/2025/01/eeoc-like-nlrb-la...

The Civil Rights Act and related topics are part of the US Code (laws) [1] and are completely unrelated to DEI. The legal redresses available for discrimination have not changed whatsoever.

The Civil Rights Act is exclusively about equality of opportunity and requires affected employers hire without regard to race, religion, and other protected classes. So for instance universities using racial quotas was deemed unlawful precisely because of the Civil Rights Act.

DEI stuff was in a very different spirit that really ran against the ideals of the Civil Rights Act. For instance it compelled affected organizations to specifically endeavour to hire based on the race and other characteristics of applicants. It's not entirely clear to me why it wasn't tossed immediately as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/chapter-21

DEI is a way to avoid disparate impact liability. Such laws / precedent is derived from the Civil Rights Act (VII). So it is quite the opposite. It also means that disparate impact liability will return without DEI / race quotas so unless the new administration also gets rid of disparate impact and the civil rights act this whole thing will end up right back where it started.

Actually, it's still illegal to engage in discrimination even if it's done to avoid disparate impact liability: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano

This is why disparate impact tends to cause institutions to drop skills based testing entirely. In theory, proof that the test is relevant to the job is supposed to be a defense against allegations of disparate impact. But in practice the courts have rarely accepted that line of defense.

Considering a candidates suitability for a role based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation is the opposite merit based selection.

Huh? Really? Aren't people by default biased towards their ingroups and things familiar to them?

Don't we make movies of the times someone actually got noticed and was able to enrich our society through their merit?

Perhaps I am wrong.

The whole concept of 'got noticed' runs entirely contrary to the notion of merit, to an absurd degree in tech.

One does not hope to get noticed - they strive to excel on their own or by bringing others in to help them.

Your merit is not what you might achieve, but what you do achieve.

You haven't addressed what I said. You've identified a problem (let's just assume you are correct about the problem for arguments sake). I've pointed out the problem with current "solution": making decisions about individuals based on their race, sexual orientation or gender seems far from good, but you haven't addressed that.

I guess this derives from what you think the most common form of skill assessment error we are meant to deal with.

Let me ask you this, what is the principle or goal you want to achieve? is it more fairness, or more effective systems, or maybe even better conditions for white american men (and to me, this is ok. Its just what you want to optimize for)

Again you haven't addressed the point I've made.

Because DEI audience leaned Democrats and everyone here is trying the hide the sun with a transparent glass. This is backfiring in a big way and the only hope is that it sets strict rules to who gets the money (ie: rather than going the other way, where the incumbent disburse the money to his audience).

This is not backfiring at all, great success, people are really happy about this. Trump's approval rating is higher than ever.

[flagged]

Hollywood is not a trustworthy source. For anything.

Why should somebody researching e.g. fusion for the Department of Energy also need to create a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan, to even apply?

Why?

Because a homogenous culture of researchers is less effective.

Because you are not just doing research on a topic, you are also training the next generation of scientists and field experts.

And the implication that the old boys club of white dudes is intrinsically the best "meritocratic" outcome is ridiculous. The history of science is full of people who had to fight that norm and succeed despite it.

This should greatly reduce the overall bureaucratic nonsense in science and help get back to science simply being science without imposing ideological conformity tests.

Sure, sure. Except for the part where they're also censoring any science topics deemed "woke", where all funding now has to meet the president's ideological conformity test on subject and staff as well.

Your stereotypes belie a lack of familiarity with researchers. Here [1] are the demographics of PhD researchers.

White individuals are significantly under represented (and even more so in STEM) though it's not for any nefarious reason. Science has traditionally been merit > all. And lots of highly skilled individuals from China, India, and so on are pursuing education and work in the US, which makes the competition for these spots very different than a random sampling of Americans.

[1] - https://www.zippia.com/phd-researcher-jobs/demographics/

You either don't know what you're a talking about or a in bad faith. The demographic or PhD researchers is, in fact, the problem because the ration of women to men is very high at the beginning of the career but declines as the career progresses and becomes embarrassing at the professorial stage. This is the whole reason why DEI became essential because it aimed at removing those anti-meritocratic barriers that promoted male career at the expenses of females.

This is the case in biological sciences, for instance, the field I am in: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Scissors-Diagram-Showing...

I wonder if there are any biological reasons for why women would drop out of a professional workforce over time.

Men raise children too. And parental leave exists to make having kids compatible with having a career. Not clear to me why we should just accept women dropping out after becoming parents as a given.

Having the government do anti -DEI purity tests for research is the exact opposite or reducing bureaucracy.

Funny how they replaced one performative mantra with another, which is just the same as the one they wanted to get rid of: you have to recite the $SYMBOL_OF_FAITH before you can have a job or apply for a grant.

I wonder what could go wrong with constraining federal funding to political ideas the current president personally approves of?

"Great" isn't how anyone will describe it once the second-order consequences land. (There won't be many who like it once the first-order consequences land.)

Sure now apply this thinking to the transition from the pre-DEI times to the status quo which Trump et al are dismantling

You may agree with the incoming anti-DEI policies, but don't let that obscure what's happening here.

Previously, federal funding was controlled by congress, and subject to its collective politics, via long-playing out machinations/compromises/horse-trading, etc, and then to the collective politics of the various enforcement bodies.

It now appears that federal funding is generally subject to the personal politics of the current president. That may seem nice for the specific policies you agree with. But... there are likely to be many policies you don't agree with. Especially since there will be a new president after not too long.

Also, since political purity tests have to be subjectively enforced, they are inevitably subverted to corruption. You can pass the test with the right amount of money delivered to the right people in the right way. That's nice for the people receiving the money, but the corruption quickly becomes horrifically inefficient and costly.

The question isn't whether the previous system was perfect -- it wasn't. The question is whether the new system is worse, and how much worse.

I'm pretty surprised how unaware people seem to be about the power/money grab that is happening. People never seem to learn that you have to look at what people do, not what they say.

Really level headed and well-informed response.

I do agree that this is a totally new paradigm, but I would call it more of a popular revolution than a "power/money grab".

I'd also characterize the last system (which you described perfectly btw) as corrupt and ineffective. The most non-political evidence I can offer is the observation that spending decisions only ever went one direction: more spending. This probably seems fair at the "dem vs gop" level but too the taxpayer it was more theft every year.

So this newly emerging system does appear more susceptible to corruption, so I totally agree with you there, but as a taxpayer I am very happy that someone is slowing down spending.

Like I said, watch what they do. The narratives people promote are self-serving and often counter-factual.

Federal spending went up during our current president's last administration (and down the following administration). It's almost certainly going up again this time. The deficit doubly so.

The evil genius of this move is that it gets everybody arguing about DEI, and we’re letting the continued expansion of absolute executive power centered in the president go unchecked. It’s not even about party; this started with FDR or even earlier, massively expanded under LBJ and again under W and Obama, and now here we are. The president feels no obligation at all to execute what the Congress authorized him to. Instead the limits of power are whatever the president can get away with. We have a constitutional problem where the Congress is unwilling or unable to legislate effectively and the executive gets to make policy unilaterally. This is not the balance of powers from the U.S. constitution. This is something else.

We have a constitutional problem where the Congress is unwilling or unable to legislate effectively and the executive gets to make policy unilaterally. This is not the balance of powers from the U.S. constitution

The Republican party controls both houses and the presidency, having already stacked the supreme court, so they get to do whatever they want and there is no balance of powers.

Inevitable consequence of a two-party system with first past the post voting.

There is still a very clear balance of power.

All Republicans and all Democrats don’t act and think as one. Take any collection of humans, of any size, and their opinions will be spread across a spectrum.

There are, and always will be, some members in either house and of any party that find it’s in their political interest to debate and pull new laws left or right.

This is especially true under FPTP because each member has to answer to an area, and different areas of a country have baked-in differences in their ideal political outcomes and points of view.

Looking at the past voting records, Democrats often vote as a block in both houses of Congress. The same can't be said about Republicans.

Trump has definitely purged the Republican party of its most moderate members, leaving him surrounded by only the most radical of sycophants. Why do you put so much trust into your institutions? Trump has promised that "we won't ever have to vote ever again", he has been made untouchable by the supreme court, and is now passing budgetary laws without congress.

The opposition is powerless, his own party has become an echo chamber for fascist talking points.

I think fascism is about totalitarian dominance of the population by the government, no?

Seems like cutting taxes and bureacracy does the opposite.

Unless “fascist” and “nazi” means “people I don’t like”.

The Republican party controls both houses and the presidency, having already stacked the supreme court, so they get to do whatever they want and there is no balance of powers.

- No, the supreme court is the same size it's always been.

- No, members of congress don't always vote the party line (although this has consistently gotten worse over time)

- No, that's not what "balance of powers" means.

Point of order, the supreme court has changed size 6 times

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/institution.aspx#:~:text=...

A point of order means someone has violated congressional procedure.

Or just Robert's Rules.

Conservatives realized that they could effectively lock down Congress, take over the Supreme Court and then vest all power in the executive. The whole arguments against DEI, smaller governments etc are all a smoke screen because they have zero issues with nepotism and favoritism as long as it benefits them. And no issue with government overreach as long as they control it.

Unfortunately I think the only direction is balkanization of the states. And I don't think that is going to end well.

It may be easy to get mad as the Republicans for this, but there’s a clear bipartisan precedent here. Remember DACA? Might have been a good policy if Congress had enacted it. Bad precedent as an executive action though, because it establishes that the president’s ability to make immigration policy is effectively unlimited. Today’s ICE raids are made possible by DACA.

No, ICE was established in 2003, post-9/11, way before DACA in 2012, and it was always intended to be used for this purpose.

I'm not particularly going to disagree that the Dems are useless or not part of the problem, because they absolutely are. A lot of the issues we have is because of continued attempts at bipartisanship watering down bills into oblivion, means-testing and obsession with locking out people further left.

But ultimately a lot of our core foundational agencies have been functioning well regardless. And it's only the right that's intent on tearing them down no matter the consequences. So while the Dems enable this, the Republicans enact it.

What the Democratic party did to Sanders was a disgrace. The people wanted him, the powers-that-be (donors?) didn't. He'd probably have won against Trump, according to surveys.

The Republicans did go with the (sadly) popular guy. I guess he was palatable (by the definition that matters) because there was no talk of increasing taxes on high incomes.

What the Democratic party did to Sanders was a disgrace. The people wanted him, the powers-that-be (donors?) didn't.

More people who voted wanted Clinton and Biden. Sanders himself admitted not enough young people voted and his platform was less popular in more conservative states.

AFAIU, there were party shenanigans to decrease his chances in the primary?

Very very minor party shenanigans. Serious enough that they should be called out and punished, but not serious enough to effect the voting.

"She was given the questions tonthe debate," is the most serious accusation. But anyone with a dozen brain cells knows whats going to be asked during the debates.

I agree with your broader point, but I really wish people wouldn't refer to MAGA Republicans as "conservative." Right-wing, or reactionary, certainly. But there's nothing "conservative" about undermining the rule of law and ignoring the Constitution.

By the same logic, I don't like calling far-left cancel culture "liberal." I'm afraid our partisanship has blinded us to genuine liberal and conservative virtues.

I used to think the problem of governance by EO was getting worse too but the stats tell a different story:

https://www.statista.com/chart/7658/number-of-executive-orde...

Somehow "number of EOs" doesn't sound like the right metric to use when determining whether executive power is growing. Surely it's the content that matters.

Especially when there are EOs for naming post offices and other boring mechanical work of the executive.

It would take some serious effort (and there’d be disagreement) but maybe you could classify “important” government changes and if they were enacted by congress, EO, courts, etc.

FDR forced people to give up all their gold assets at a fixed rate, under threat of imprisonment for a decade. He then proceeded to nearly double the declared exhange rate up once the government had confiscated everybody's gold.

All done by executive order. Makes basically all modern EOs look pretty innocuous by comparison.

That said I actually agree and would love to see a sharp reduction in executive power, especially as it comes to using the military. If we're going to go bombing places, that should require a declaration of war from Congress. And 'emergency' powers should not be enabled for decades on end.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Nothing evil about not wasting taxpayer money.

I wouldn't call him genius, but maybe you're right.

Whoever got the idea of flooding the space with outrageous EOs is a genius. Certainly evil as well.

Pretty sure it’s the work of Stephen Miller - who is now his senior policy advisor.

8 years ago the Trump admin had no idea what to do. Now they’re prepared and much more dangerous.

Some things will be reversed in 4 years time and we can ride out the storm. but others - like renewed emphasis on fossil fuels to reward the big donors and have energy for AI - will have lasting effects on my children and their children — those make me truly furious.

The word evil is a bit overused, but in the case of Stephen Miller it fits like a glove.

I’ve said since the beginning that that saving grace (if there is one) of Trump’s first term was that he was disorganized, and he surrounded himself with people who kept him in check to some degree. People who were willing to tell him that he couldn’t do certain things (prime example: White House legal counsel kept Trump from doing the crazy things that people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell suggested after he lost the 2020 election).

He’s not going to make that mistake this time, and he’s putting people in power who will do what he wants without question. That’s the scary part of the next four years.

Why do people think there is some riding out this storm? I am curious, what do people mean by this?

I mean you just hunker down, stop reading the news, go about your life, and hope that the “storm” doesn’t do too much damage, and then work like hell in 4 years time to avoid a repeat (won’t be Trump but to prevent another fascist president, also you can bet that Trump will try for a 3 rd term on the basis that he didn’t serve 2 consecutive terms).

I think there are some active things you can do to help. Give money to legal groups challenging unconstitutional actions. Write to your various federal reps to let them know how you feel. Be kind and supportive to those being targeted by hate and bigotry.

We won't be riding out this storm if we all hunker down.

Some things will be reversed in 4 years

Or never. We should be prepared for Term 3 (which is already being floated) or a landslide GOP win in 2026, 2028, and beyond. Expect future Presidential elections to look like '86.

You all are openly admitting that these people are evil geniuses. Keep that in mind when thinking to the future. They are going to continue their evil genius behavior and it's going to keep working.

And thanks to Biden's final decisions, presidents and their entourage are effectively immune to prosecution. They just need to "pardon" their friends at the end of the administration. So there is really no limit to what Trump can do.

Ehh… the Supreme Court actually did this for Trump. All “official” actions of the president are immune from prosecution.

Biden just acted on it.

That's way older than Biden.

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby_clemency_controv... for example.

Hell, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon

I think it’s a little early to call the end of the U.S. Constitution. There is a time component to the rule of law that can be frustrating in the moment but has always been true.

The President is free to assert his desires. Other parts of the country are free to push back if they choose. This takes filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress, pursuing prosecutions, etc. all of which take time, money, and effort. Which in turn allows short-term disruption to happen as the legal process plays out. Which again, is frustrating.

Political mood is also more fickle than people usually believe at the beginning of a new administration. FDR, LBJ, W, Obama, and many other presidents passed through a time in which conventional wisdom held that they had changed the game and amassed too much power. In every case we can look back and see that while they each have left a legacy that endures, it’s smaller than expected at the time. The pendulum swung the other way later on.

My own opinion on this is that “don’t tell me what to do” is among the most popular political positions among Americans. So for example, to the extent DEI felt like being told what to do, it became unpopular. But now that anti-DEI is in power, I expect the bloom will come off pretty quickly. In part because of overreach by a new administration overestimating their mandate. (As most new administrations do.)

@dang this is turning into flame throwing. Can we please kill the thread as there is nothing intellectually curious being discussed here.

This. There are like 3 or 4 comments that are worth reading right now.

the overton window has a new view. According to the old direction, these subjects are 'not to be discussed in professional society', i.e. they are to be decided by government and are considered intellectually dirty. Under the new rules, anything goes and needs to be publicly debated in order to remove the previous biases.

Curious to see whether HN is also following suit in changing its window, like every other online medium seems to be doing.

I hope not; you can often see rightwing nonsense in threads, and lord knows I argue with them often enough, but it's not reached the Twitter point of total unusability yet and still manages to have interesting discussions sometimes.

Lots of politically charged comments on this discussion. If you disagree with NSF’s merit and broader impact review criteria, that’s fine and it’s important to have a healthy conversation about it, but I think it’s important to take a step back and thoughtfully address concrete ideas that are actually contained in the proposal review criteria.

These are the kinds of issues at stake in terms of the broader impacts criteria:

- Is it good that NSF promotes applications that include historically minority-serving institutions (as opposed to just the same few R1 universities)?

- should NSF prioritize proposals with strong scientific outreach activities aimed at boosting engagement and opportunities in under-represented demographics?

Keep in mind that NSF funding is extremely competitive. It’s not like subpar research is ubiquitously getting funded over better research with lower “broader impacts” scores. Successful proposals excel on both fronts.

It's the first time I'm seeing accessibility put under the same umbrella as DEI. Is "DEIA" in the executive order, or is NSF overreacting, or... is being disabled and wanting to have some quality of life "woke" now?

Accessibility has always been part of DEI. (Certainly it's been a repeated topic of conversation in my campus's Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board.) And yes, any effort that involves spending time or money to make sure that every person gets to "have some quality of life" falls under this same umbrella. That is literally what people are referring to when they call things "woke".

There is still a difference between actually doing hard work to help disadvantaged and marginalized folks and thinking that “being annoying about one’s pronouns” or “making lists of coworkers who are not woke enough” (both examples are quotes from self-proclaimed social justice activists) solves any problems.

However, thinking that this crop of politicians would take a nuanced stance on anything at all is idiocy at its purest.

Sure! There are always people out there who obsess over linguistic and behavioral purity, and they tend to be very loud. I'm not certain that I've ever met one of them in person. (I've certainly met people who might say (e.g.) "Here's why I've started including pronouns in my email sig," but I think that's not what you're talking about.)

If the current "anti-woke" movement were just about shutting down those obnoxious purists, I think it would be a lot less controversial. But from what I've seen, the political rhetoric (and the associated policy positions now being implemented) strikes just as hard or harder at the folks actually trying to do the hard work.

It is wild to pull already granted money. I meet so many scientists who just need $X to continue pursuing their research and it’s generally not a large sum. So this is incredibly disappointing for the research ecosystem which feeds the startup ecosystem. This hurts our competitiveness on the global stage and decreases our future quality of life.

Without going into the discussion about polarized points. I have some observations

1- NSF budget is about 10 billions, I always had in mind that it is much more. That's about 0.17% of the total federal budget. If we include DOE R&D funding and NIH we will get to 1%. This is the funding for most of research in science in the US. Seems like not a great area to achieve huge reduction in deficit.

2- Even if we ignore the whole point of DEI and say that we need to end support for some of the projects. You do take your time and evaluate projects that needs to take action. You don't stop all the funding and pause critical support for projects and cause huge problems on medium and long term. And it also hurt the reputation of the country and its competitiveness.

3- The current NSF director was actually appointed by the current setting president in his first term.

This does not hurt the reputation of the US.

The media coverage of it does.

In whose eyes? Iran's? Russia's? China's?

Germany, France, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, India.

China looks at America and shows its citizens what an alternative fate could be, and it works.

Europe is circling the drain, Taiwan is inconsequential and becoming less so by the day, and China does not respects it's citizens, they treat them like cattle. But okay sure, India's opinion is super important, especially as they are profiting off the Ukraine war.

Aren't Japan and Taiwan are ethnically homogenous?

China looks at America and shows its citizens what an alternative fate could be, and it works.

Not really though. Still, around ~10k PhDs from China get green cards.

I am not sure if it can be quantified.

Suppose you are a scientist. Would you be interested in USA grants and universities as career options? Certainly much less than last year.

I fail to see why a scientist won’t be interested in the grant now. Maybe if you’re talking about some areas like social sciences, yes, but for everything else not much seems to have changed.

I have not been paid because my salary is funded by an NSF grant and they've shut down the payment system and cancelled payments. (It is still down.) I'm not in the social sciences, I'm in mathematics.

The instability this has created has me looking to leave academia as quickly as possible; I'm sure others in similar situations are having the same thoughts. This has wreaked havoc on all of academia.

For those of you who haven’t lived under an authoritarian regime, this is what it looks like (though it gets worse).