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Comment by ANewFormation | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period

This is not true. If I submit a project to study the large-scale effect of DEI policies in institutions, that will get rejected because "anti-DEI" is in the current government's idelogy, as written down in presidential orders.

They are not simply removing the previous ideology and leaving a void in place. There are no voids in power structures.

> Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period.

It does not sound like that. At least, not at the NSF, which is freezing funds until it's had an ideologically-driven purge.

The Office of Science seems to have a better approach, removing the need for the previous administration's PIER plan and ignoring any already submitted

> Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period.

That is literally the opposite of what the linked article claims. They aren't "stripping requirements" placed on funding, they're stripping the actual funds from existing grants, based on new requirements that just happen to be phrased along the lines of the ruling regime's political rhetoric.

Your Orwellian version only makes sense if you assume a priori that the funds were granted incorrectly, which again is sort of the opposite of what science is.

You mean they're idealogically stripping idealogical requirements...

>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;

>prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals

Did you know the EO that was rescinded had similar verbiage too?[1]

[1] https://archives.federalregister.gov/issue_slice/1965/9/28/1...

> 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.

Trump has outright been banning transgender individuals from enlisting in the military and serving. Presumably in a merit-based society you would judge them on the basis of merit, not on a secondary characteristic.

>What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character.

Conservatives are OK with rolling everything back and hiding behind words, since right now, most people at the highest levels of power - that do the judging - are white men.

How else do you explain such "merit" based nominations like Hegseth for SecDef, Gaetz for Attorney General, etc. (Gaetz withdrew but getting nominated at all was ridiculous). And if Hegseth is qualified to lead the DoD, then so is anybody who ever served in the military at the rank of Major or higher.

MLK explicitly supported reparations for black people. He did not support a system of institutional colorblindness. You can only get this from his writing if you take one famous line from one famous speech and ignore the rest of what he wrote.

Im sure guys that think foreigners are dog eating criminals judge everyone based on merit now. We have a doctor with asian sounding name and people at work were wondering if they need translator when they visit.

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