The National Science Foundation (NSF), the government agency tasked with promoting scientific progress, will allocate over a million taxpayer dollars to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to study Latina resistance and “intraminority solidarity.”
The NSF, which controls $9.9 billion of federal money and exists to “promote the progress of science,” “advance the national health,” and “secure the national defense,” pledged $498,271 to a three-year study at Loyola University Maryland focused on “Latinas resistance behaviors in engineering programs at predominantly white institutions” as part of its broader diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda.
It granted another $618,465 to support a study at the University of Washington centered around “promoting intraminority solidarity,” particularly looking into “how different framings of racism influence Asian Americans’ intraminority solidarity with Black Americans.”
An agency spokesman defended the studies to The Daily Wire, saying the projects are both “worthy of support.”
“Each proposal submitted to the U.S. National Science Foundation is reviewed by science and engineering experts well-versed in their discipline or field of expertise,” the spokesman said. “All proposals submitted to NSF are reviewed according to two merit review criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. These awards reflect NSF’s statutory mission and have been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.”
The stated goal of the Latina resistance study is centered around “oppressive” structures in society.
“The disparities in [Latinas’] engineering access and attainment are the result of historically oppressive racist and sexist structures embedded in STEM space that perpetuate sexism and racism,” the description of the federally-funded study claims. “Guided by a combination of LatCrit theory of resistance, intersectionality, and cultural wealth model (CWM), the goal of this project is to investigate how Latinas choose to engage in various resistance behaviors.”
“This project aims to investigate how Latinas choose to engage in various resistance behaviors in different engineering cultures and campus climates and how these different cultures and campus climates influence their resistance,” the description goes on to add. The funding will specifically be granted to Qi Shi, the Director of the university’s Center for Equity, Leadership, and Social Justice in Education. Shi did not respond to a request for comment.
The other study, on “intraminority solidarity,” is aimed at analyzing “allyship” between minority groups.
“It explores whether framing racism against Black Americans as the result of anti-Blackness increases Asian Americans’ sense of solidarity with Black Americans, compared to framing racism as the result of White supremacy,” a description of the project explains. “Understanding how different framings for intergroup conflict affect allyship from members of other minority groups is important for building a more comprehensive understanding of intergroup relations.”
The grant went to Sapna Cheryan, a professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology. Cheryan did not respond to a request for comment.
The two studies are just a small sampling of the DEI efforts that’ve been funded by the federal government. The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is set to spend nearly $800,000 to study the effect of “structural racism” on kidney health, utilizing “critical health praxis” to apply an “anti-racism lens” to the field of health. The HHS has also funded “an inclusive teen pregnancy program for transgender boys” to the tune of nearly $700,000 taxpayer dollars. The program intends to “reduce internalized transphobia” and affirm the gender identity of children as young as 14 years old.
Millions of taxpayer dollars have been allocated to highly ideological DEI efforts as the Biden administration has worked to embed leftwing ideology throughout the government through executive orders.
Former President Donald Trump has pledged that he will gut the federal bureaucracy through executive orders of his own which aim to remove civil service protections from bureaucrats who occupy a position that impacts policymaking. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States,” Trump said at a rally, touting the plan. “The deep state must be brought to heel.”
Biden hopes to preempt this move and recently implemented a policy intended to strengthen the civil service protections enjoyed by federal bureaucrats. Trump and his allies are still preparing to gut the bureaucracy, however, with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 assembling a personnel database to take the place of outgoing bureaucrats.